journal choice

Journals in Teaching and Early Childhood Education

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is the preeminent professional association for early childhood professionals in America.  The annual conference draws thirty to forty thousand teachers, center staff, and family child care providers (NAEYC, 2010). The bi-monthly journal sent to members of NAEYC is Young Children, and the scholarly journal is Early Childhood Research Quarterly.  Both publications contain peer-reviewed articles that are timely and informative.  I have been an avid reader of these journals for many years and draw on the articles for my research papers.  However, while these publications are about my field of early childhood development and education, they do not cover teaching early childhood educators on a regular basis.

            I have discovered another professional association through my investigations for this assignment that is just what I was looking for.  The organization is the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE), and their publication is called Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education (JECTE).   Previous years’ issues are available for purchase back to 1993, but only the issues from 2005 through 2009 are available through the George Mason library system and EBSCOhost.  The most current year’s issues are not available for perusal.  These limitations are frustrating, but I hope to glean some good information from the available material. I decided to join NAECTE at the graduate student member level, so I will begin to receive the journal.

In an issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education in 2005, the editor talks about the need for those who teach early childhood professionals to create more carefully and purposefully designed courses about curriculum content in literacy and language and mathematics for young children (Williams, 2005).  The change in emphasis in teaching young children is dramatic since the early years of daycare centers and preschools in the 1970s when many young mothers joined the American workforce and needed full time care for their children.  Before licensing and established standards in early childhood education, structured curriculum was not considered necessary for very young children.  As those of us who have been in the field for many decades can attest, the early years of early childhood care were more about keeping very young children in group care safe and comforted.  As the expectations for children’s achievement in grade school, starting in kindergarten, are much higher than previously, there has been a trickle-down effect into the pre-kindergarten years.  Children as young as two are being drilled about numbers and letters, sometimes before they are developmentally able to understand the concepts of reading, writing, and mathematics.

I will look forward to reading the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education in addition to reading Young Children and Early Childhood Research Quarterly.  Two other journals I am interested in are the Journal of Teacher Education and the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

            http://www.naeyc.org

Williams, L. (2005) Greetings from the editor. National Association of Early Childhood                 Teacher Educators (NAECTE), 26 (1), 1-2.     http://www.naecte.org/

Ginny