Developmental Appropriateness and Cultural Relevance of Early Childhood Care and Education Program in Ethiopia: Reflection on Current Practices

Abstract

Research into the development of young children, and the process by which it is configured
in early childhood care and education programs has transformed our knowledge and understanding
of the importance of developmental and cultural appropriateness of services over recent years. This
theoretical and experiential learning has helped to devise new policy initiatives and evaluate whether
or not programs are age appropriate and responsive to individual child differences to effect holistic
development. The landscape of this change ranges all the way from international child rights
conventions and declarations to policy formulations in individual countries and further goes down to
micro developmental niches promoting children’s developmental milestones. The purpose of this
theoretical and empirical review was to reflect on the current practices of programs in delivering
combination of age appropriate practices and freely chosen individual child initiated activities in
preschool centers. It starts with a brief review of Early Childhood Care and Education landscape in
the Ethiopian context with regard to features of access, quality, efficiency and policy initiatives since
1900 with the opening of the first kindergarten center in the country. The paper argues that over those
years the sector has been crawling and at times deadly stagnating without making meaningful move
despite recent policy developments ushering a glimmering opportunity for young children. The
theoretical reflection begins with the conceptualization of developmentally and culturally appropriate
early childhood development substantiated by empirical evidences documented from researches
conducted locally and internationally. It goes on arguing that early childhood care and education
teaching has dramatically changed as a result of new entitlements ascribed to teachers and discusses
to what extent lack of to-the-standard professional development program impacted care givers
pedagogical skill and the implementation of the developmental curriculum. The paper further
attempted to reflect on the developmental appropriateness of the curriculum in enhancing children’s
free exploration of their environment and their contribution in constructing meanings and
understandings via well planned adult-initiated activities. Implications for program improvement in
the lime light of developmental sciences and child rights conventions are stated.