The Content Analysis And Inspirations Of State Early Learning Standards In The United States

Improving the quality of early childhood education, upgrading school readiness for pre-school children, developing and promoting early learning standards (ELSs) are major trends in early child education around the world in 21st century. Early learning standards of every state in the United States outline what children should know and be able to do before kindergarten entry by documents, in order to help people reach an agreement on expectation of early childhood learning, children improve their learning outcomes, teachers teach more purposefully.This paper analyzed 51 ELSs documents for 3-5 year-old children from all the states with information retrieval and content analysis method, and put forward some references for the development of ELSs in China through clarifying the basic framework, summarizing their core standards, extracting the learning experience.Results indicate that the state ELSs are young children learning and development schemes which are feasible and comprehensive under the supervision of authority. Similarities and differences are both including in these state ELSs. There are 8 domains in most state ELSs documents, which are physical development and health, language and early literacy, math, science, social study, social and emotional development, approaches to learning and arts. The numbers of the indicators in each domain are different. The emphasis in the domain of physical development and health is to strengthen children's physical quality, form Good Habits, and raise self-protection ability; The emphasis in the domain of language and early literacy is to promote children's oral communication ability though various ways and reading ability by increasing print awareness; The emphasis in domain of math is to facilitate mathematical logic ability by learning number awareness, geometry and space, patterns and measurement; The emphasis in domain of science is to let children grasp the basic methods of scientific research, form the basic scientific literacy with the spirit of scientific research; The emphasis in the domain of social study is to let children conform to social norms, understand social customs; The emphasis in the domain of social and emotional development is to let children perform actively and in social interaction, and regulate and express emotion appropriately; The emphasis in the domain of approaches to learning is to hope children show curiosity and persistence during activities; The emphasis in the domain of arts is to let children participate various of arts activities and, understand and appreciate music, art, movement, drama works.At last, according to the findings,4 inspirations have been advanced: ELSs should be comprehensive and focused; should be easy-understanding and feasible; should consider both national standards and state reality; should consider the transit to primary school fully; should close to the life and pay attention to children's participation, together with some limitations in this study and implications for future research.