ABSTRACT
I studied early childhood education in a college of education. My terminal diploma says that I have a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction. The transcripts from all three of my degrees show that I had extensive coursework in child development and early childhood education, but I was also exposed to heavy doses of curriculum theory and design as well as lots of coursework in instructional theory and research. My path as an early childhood professor has taken me far away from my roots as a student of curriculum and instruction, but the notion that curriculum can be thought of as a separate and distinct discipline from instruction provides an interesting tool for considering the topic on which I have been invited to write: the application of developmental theory to early childhood curriculum. Given the way developmental theory is usually construed in our field and my
take on curriculum as the intellectual substance that should be taught in educational settings, I argue that the connections between developmental theory and curriculum are tenuous at best. To organize my case, I present a brief description of what I take to be the hegemony of developmental perspectives in theorizing and policy making in mainstream early childhood education. I then make distinctions between curriculum and instruction and point out how these distinctions are largely missing when child development theories dominate the discourses of early childhood. Describing the impact of developmental theory on early childhood instruction (as opposed to curriculum), I contrast the implications of applying precepts from Piaget to those from Vygotsky. I conclude with examples from math and science that demonstrate the advantages of distinguishing curriculum from instruction and highlight the disadvantages of the field’s overreliance on Piagetian-influenced developmental theory.
