needs to be specially trained as a pre-school or nursery school teacher. Some pre-schools for young children are often called Montessori schools. These are schools based on the principles of early childhood education as outlined by a well-known educationist Maria Montessori. It is worth mentioning that the Government of India has addressed the needs of this age grouping by offering pre-school education through the anganwadis that operate under its Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS ) .
There are angawadis in urban and rural areas. Some of the other concepts related to this field that we need to know, deal with understanding the fact that children at this age have a very different approach to understanding the things that happen around them. The developmental psychologist Jean Piaget spent his life trying to comprehend and explain that young children have different ways of understanding the world, due to which, they need a supportive environment to explore phenomena in their own ways. You have studied these features of children’s development last year in Class XI.
It is important to keep those details in mind in order to understand the principles of care and education of young children. Another important principle to be kept in mind is the fact that any ECCE institution must realise the importance of the cultural context within which it operates and works along with, rather than in opposition to, the family. Although this is true for all ages, it becomes more significant for the young child since he or she is unable to make distinctions about different perspectives and different realities in the ways that an older child or adult can. Thus we have to understand that the educational and care arrangements for children must follow these principles.
As per the NCF ( ) on ECCE, the guiding principles of ECCE are: Play as the basis for learning Art as the basis of education Recognition of the special features of children’s thinking Primacy of experience rather than expertise (i.e., experiential learning is emphasised) Experience of familiarity and challenge in everyday routines Mix of formal and informal interactions Blend of