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What Are Appropriate Goals for Early Childhood Education? 
By Lilian Katz

Dissension about appropriate goals for early childhood education is not new. It is a feature of our long history. The discussion is now conducted under the heading of "developmentally appropriate practices," but interpretations of what it really means still are fraught with problems.

I found an interesting quote on this, as follows:

"To confront a child with tasks for which he is not ready, with the implication that he should succeed, gives him a feeling of failure, and undermines his security. Instead, we must guide him into those learning situations that he can attack effectively and with significant success to yield satisfaction, encouragement, and growth."

This was written by Carleton Washburne in 1939. This is now considered a statement about "readiness" and developmental appropriateness. But the point I most want to emphasize is that the acquisition of worthwhile knowledge and skills is not the only goal of education. It is not sufficient. The two other learning goals of importance to all education are dispositions and feelings. We always influence these two, whether deliberately or by default.

Let's begin with a definition. Dispositions are habits of mind that have an emotional and intentional component, such as curiosity. There are many dispositions of interest to us as educators, and they must be supported throughout development. Once the early childhood years have passed, the desirable dispositions may be lost, and they cannot be "put in."

Dispositions are learned primarily from people who have them, so we must ask: Can the dispositions we want children to have be seen by them in us? Similarly, are there undesirable dispositions that they perceive in us?

A recent issue of American Educator has an interesting article related to this matter, titled "They Can But They Don't," about children who have no trouble learning, but extreme difficulty and reluctance to do the work. The author, J. H. Burns, calls this "work inhibition." He says that 20% of the school population met this definition and three-quarters are boys. It appears across the continuum of students' abilities and skills, including gifted and learning-disabled. "Most of the work-inhibited students not only had good cognitive abilities but had above-average to superior thinking skills, as measured by tests of intellectual ability. It does not appear to be related to social class."

It seems to me that this syndrome is better understood as a dispositional problem. Namely, that these are chil-dren who have good knowledge and skills, but in the process of acquiring them, their dispositions to use them have been either undermined or undeveloped.

It is not much use to have reading skills if the disposition to be a reader has not also been developed. One needs both, and how this happens depends on teaching. Similarly, most children have listening skills, but may not have the dispositions to be listeners. There is also reason to believe that many children have social skills, but lack the dispositions to use them, e.g., to be compromisers, negotiators, cooperators, etc.

One of the most studied aspects of this problem comes from the work of Dweck and Ames. Here is a summary of that research that seems to me to help clarify this issue:

Performance Goals                                         Learning Goals

Ability oriented                                                 Effort Oriented

Judgements of others                                       Own Mastery

Give up in face of difficulty                                Vary their strategies

Believe effort means low ability                         Believe effort works

Take comfort from others' failure                        Magnanimous

Work to performance, low recall,transfer            Slower, high recall, transfer

Distance selves from school and goals              Disposition to learn strengthened

The table shows what happens to children who have a lot of performance pressure. Performance goals emphasize correct answers, while learning goals provide activities that are open-ended and challenge the learner to "see how far he can get," rather than how "correct" he can be.

This formulation of the effects on children of excessive performance pressures suggests that we should strive for a better balance than is typically the case between school experiences that emphasize performance and those that emphasize open-ended learning.

I do not want to suggest that there is not a place for performance goals. On the contrary, I think they have a significant place in education. The problem seems to be in achieving an optimum balance so that children are also having ample opportunity to develop the dispositions that go with learning goals.

Lilian Katz, Ph.D., is Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. She is also President of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. This article is excerpted from her talk to Winnetka early childhood professionals at the Alliance's Networking Event on Jan. 28, 1993.