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The Emotional Development of Young Children: Building an Emotion-centered Curriculum
Marilou Hyson has taken into consideration the facts that there is such a variety of ways to teach social and emotional skills and that the early childhood phase can be considered too soon for structured teaching of these skills. This book emphasizes that at this stage it is more important to create the atmosphere of emotional safety and model certain ways of responding to emotions. The very nature of emotions and how they operate in humans lends itself to a curriculum that is not fixed or stagnant. "The Emotional Development of Young Children" takes you through the process of understanding and responding to children's emotions rather than providing specific lesson plans to teach them how to behave in a particular way. Instead of simply adding a lesson or two about feelings to the curriculum which is focused heavily on cognitive skills, the emotion-centered curriculum infiltrates the entire day-to-day interaction between teacher and child. The book is geared towards early childhood (from birth to eight years) education and anyone involved in any way in this process, including family child care providers, home visitors, and family support personnel. The author also attempts to include diversity in age, culture, ethnicity, family environment and individual temperament, and children with disabilities. However, it is clearly pointed out that it does not include children with serious emotional difficulties.
Marilou Hyson states in the Introduction that "in preparing a second edition of this book, I have sought to strengthen the emotional component of the reform agenda in early childhood education." Successfully done. This book is a well-written blend of recent research, theory and principles of emotion and social and emotional learning, and practical applications in the explorations of the seven practitioners featured. It is a good balance of academic reading (the actual text of the book and the resource boxes) and accounts of the actual classroom situations, which read almost like stories. The overall language of the book is clear and straightforward, making it easy to read for long stretches at a time. The book sets the stage for any educator wanting to construct an emotion-centered program by describing the key ingredients of an emotion-centerd curriculum and some of the concerns teachers usually have about such a curriculum.The next six chapters of the book describe effective strategies. The author starts with suggestions for creating a secure emotional environment through helping children understand emotions. She then considers how to model appropriate emotional responses, how to help children regulate their emotions, and finally she discusses ways to connect children's emotional expression to learning. The final section draws on the theory of positive emotions as the basis for motivating learning and behavior change. But the presentation "goes beyond the simplistic belief that learning should be fun" Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Book Review in Emotional Intelligence is owned by Marilyn Robb. Permission to republish Book Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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