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Over the past 30 years the early childhood field has created and adopted standards to recognize quality programs for children. Mention the topic of environments and most educators imagine familiar room arrangements all with the same types of learning areas and materials-easy to spot when you peek into most any accredited child care, preschool, or Head Start classroom.
These rooms reflect established professional standards that stress the importance of orderly, safe environments; learning areas; and materials that are culturally and developmentally appropriate. Early childhood educators have continued to develop rating scales and assessment tools to keep us reaching for higher quality (NAEYC 1998; Harms, Clifford, & Cryer 2004). There is much in our profession to be proud of and to celebrate.
However, inherent in most good things are the seeds of their opposites. Now we see homogenization and institutionalization sprouting up everywhere in early childhood programs. It's time to carefully reexamine how our standards and models have begun to limit our thinking and how commercial, if not political, interests are beginning to shape more and more of what we do. Early childhood classrooms (not to mention conference exhibit halls) are increasingly far removed from our roots. In the early years of early childhood education, teachers were encouraged to create a homelike environment for their program, preferably located in a house. There was concern that children would be growing up away from their families and neighborhoods and would suffer in institutional settings. Studies done in the 1960s (Kritchevsky & Prescott 1969) confirmed these concerns. Now most early childhood programs have a school or institutional feel to them, filled with look-alike supplies in primary colors, plastic, and prefabricated games and materials.
In our various roles as authors, college instructors, speakers, and program consultants, we have spent the last 12 years traveling the United States (and a few other countries) and visiting many early childhood programs. Our hope is to convey a sense of pride in our profession, along with strong words of caution and concern about what we have seen: whether in Alaska, Florida, or Massachusetts, all programs are starting to look like an early childhood catalog. Centers do not reflect the identity of the families and communities they serve. Also, the individual abilities of children, families,...