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Child-centred teaching: Helping each child to reach their full potential
Research has shown that schoolteachers often prepare children for success in standardized reading assessments by 'teaching to the test.' Concurrently, research exploring children's emergent literacies and 'school readiness' has shown that early childhood teachers often feel pressured to 'prepare' children for school and may do so by focusing on print-related literacies, to the detriment of earlier stages of the oral-to-print continuum. This raises the concern that teaching children as a group, preparing them for the next 'stage of education,' will disadvantage children who are working below or above expected levels of development. Using an individualized, child-centred pedagogy, informed by a combination of standardized and informal assessments, allowed the teacher to support her students to develop a range of reading abilities and to reach their full potential.