Early childhood is a time of great promise and rapid change, but significant disadvantages in the lives of young children can undermine their development.
In a child’s development and learning, there is continuous interplay among the child’s genetics, nervous system function and structure, environment and interaction.
From an early age, children influence their own development by choosing activities and areas of interest and by interpreting their experiences based on their current knowledge and experiences.
Children are active learners from birth and throughout the early childhood years; therefore, it is important that educators understand that children’s current abilities are largely the result of the experiences – the opportunities to learn – that children have had.
Understanding normal development can also help recognize delayed development. Development and learning also occur at varying rates from child to child and at uneven rates across different areas for each child.
Development and learning advance when children are challenged to achieve at a level just beyond their current mastery and when they have many opportunities to reflect on and practice newly acquired skills.
Children’s motivation to learn is increased when their learning environment fosters their sense of belonging, purpose and agency. A sense of belonging requires both physical and psychological safety.
Child development in early childhood
Early childhood is a time of great promise and rapid change when the architecture of the developing brain is most open to the influence of relationships and experiences. However, significant disadvantages in the lives of young children can undermine their development, limit their future economic and social mobility and thus threaten the vitality, productivity and sustainability of an entire country (1).
For anyone with the opportunity to observe the development of multiple children, there is wonder and amazement at how similar yet, at the same time, different children of the same age can be. A child’s individual style of behaviour and response, which we refer to as temperament, can be observed from infancy in how they react to their environment and interact with others. On the other hand, we can also observe that there are similarities or patterns in development when it comes to learning new skills. Some skills are less influenced by an adult’s conscious guidance (e.g. learning to walk or talk) than others (e.g. reading or arithmetic skills). We also know that the acquisition and consolidation of new skills may occur at different ages in children. The same developmental outcome can be reached through different developmental pathways; conversely, beginning from the same point, development may later lead to different outcomes (Katz, 1997).
In a child’s development, there is continuity but, at every moment, also qualitative and quantitative changes, building on the child’s previous developmental history and reflecting on future development, either immediately or with a delay (Bornstein, Putnick, & Esposito, 2017). To understand a child’s development and learning, we must examine the processes that drive development and how the continuous interplay among the child’s genetics, nervous system function and structure, environment and interaction shapes these processes. In this examination of development, we need to use very different timeframes, ranging from the millisecond analysis of brain research to periods spanning multiple generations.
Principles of child development
Many different theories aim to explain the key aspects of development and learning, and they are quite unanimous about certain fundamental principles (Miller, 2022). One of these is the idea of the child’s activity. From an early age, children influence their own development by choosing activities and areas of interest and interpreting their experiences based on their current knowledge and experiences. What happens to this activity throughout life largely depends on whether it elicits positive or negative reactions from the environment and whether it leads to situations that, through experiences of success, further enhance the child’s activity.
Children are active learners from birth, and throughout the early childhood years, young children continue to construct knowledge and make meaning through their interactions with adults and peers, through active exploration and play and through their observations of people and things in the world around them. Therefore, it is important that educators understand that children’s current abilities are largely the result of the experiences – the opportunities to learn – that children have had.
Interaction of developmental domains
All domains of child development (physical development, cognitive development, social and emotional development and linguistic development, including bilingual or multilingual development), as well as approaches to learning, are important. Each domain supports and is supported by the other domains. Changes in one domain often impact other areas and highlight each area’s importance.
For example, as children begin to crawl or walk, they gain new possibilities for exploring the world. This mobility, in turn, affects their cognitive development and their ability to satisfy their curiosity, underscoring the importance of adaptations for children with disabilities that limit their mobility (Campos et al., 2000). Likewise, language development influences a child’s ability to participate in social interaction with adults and other children; such interactions, in turn, support further language development as well as further social, emotional and cognitive development.
Social activity, in turn, promotes not only interaction skills but also emotional and ethical development. The experience of emotions is linked not only to social relationships but also to aesthetic and spiritual development. Aesthetic development, both as a producer and recipient of artistic expression, opens spiritual values, for example, through experiences of beauty, while ethical development is related to the experience of justice. Other types of spiritual experiences include gratitude, hope and humour. Reflection on the meaning and purpose of life, as well as spirituality in various religious forms, is also part of spiritual development. Activities may be emphasized differently in different developmental stages, but the diversity of influences at each stage enriches experiences and creates opportunities for personal choices (Pulkkinen, 2023).
Understanding normal development can also help recognize delayed development
Typical child development follows certain basic principles. Some of the more commonly reported developmental concerns include global developmental delay, intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, delayed speech and language, attention deficits, autism and specific learning disabilities. The clinical presentation of atypical development varies depending on the age of the child, with motor delay in early infancy and learning difficulties in school-age children. Regular surveillance and periodic screening help identify specific areas of developmental and behavioural concerns and suggest the need for further appropriate evaluation (Brown et al., 2020).
Although general progressions of development and learning can be identified, variations due to cultural contexts, experiences and individual differences must also be considered. The first years of development are crucial for lifelong learning and development. Developmental milestones follow predictable courses in infants and children, and later, developmental skills build on previous ones achieved.
Therefore, understanding normal development can also help recognize delayed development (Developmental milestones). It is important to remember that development and learning also occur at varying rates from child to child and unevenly across different areas for each child. Children’s demonstrated abilities and skills are often fluid and may vary from day to day based on individual or contextual factors.
Early childhood education and child development
Play promotes joyful learning that fosters self-regulation, language, cognitive and social competencies as well as content knowledge across disciplines. According to Finnish folk wisdom, ‘Play is child’s work’. Play is the central teaching practice that facilitates young children’s development and learning, and the right to play is one of the most valuable rights for the child (Wallén, 2023). Play develops young children’s symbolic and imaginative thinking, peer relationships, language, physical development and problem-solving skills. All young children need sustained opportunities for play daily, both indoors and outdoors. Consistently, studies find clear links between play and foundational capacities such as working memory, self-regulation, oral language abilities, social skills and success in school.
Development and learning advance when children are challenged to achieve at a level just beyond their current mastery and when they have many opportunities to reflect on and practise newly acquired skills. Educators contribute significantly to children’s development by providing support or assistance that allows children to succeed in a task that is just beyond their current level of skill or understanding. This includes emotional support and strategies, such as pointing out salient details or providing other cues that can help children make connections to previous knowledge and experiences. As children stretch to a new level in a supportive context, they can go on to use the skill independently and in a variety of contexts, laying the foundation for the next challenge. Provision of such support, or scaffolding, is a key feature of effective teaching. Pairing children can be an effective way to support peer learning, in which children with different abilities can scaffold each other. This movement through one’s zone of proximal development provides a theoretical account of why development is gradual, where new knowledge comes from and how other people and cultural tools (e.g. books and computers) contribute to cognitive development. Vygotsky (1978) showed how cognitive development is always social – in its origins and its expression in particular contexts (Miller, 2022).
Children’s motivation to learn is increased when their learning environment fosters their sense of belonging, purpose and agency. A sense of belonging requires physical and psychological safety. Thijs and Koomen (2018) found that children who experienced emotional security were more persistent and independent in learning situations than their peers. When a child practices a difficult skill, the learning process often involves negative experiences and failures. These negative emotional experiences can undermine motivation and lead the child to avoid practising the skill. In contrast, a child’s sense of emotional security and feeling accepted during learning situations supports learning and engagement with tasks.
Equally important is encouraging each child’s sense of agency. Opportunities for agency – that is, the ability to make and act upon choices about what activities one will engage in and how those activities will proceed – must be widely available for all children, not limited as a reward after completing other tasks or only offered to high-achieving students. For educators, supporting a child’s agency can be particularly challenging when they do not speak the same language as the child or are unable to understand a child’s attempts to express solutions or preferences. In these cases, non-verbal cues and/or technology-assistive tools may be helpful, as the educator also works to address the communication barrier.
Add links or PDF to methods used to follow a child’s development:
1. The text is partly based on these research-based summaries of important aspects of child development. Harvard University Center of Developing Child, Working papers and Research summaries. These are recommended readings for all:
-Center on the Developing Child. 8 Things to remember about Child Development. Retrieved from (2016). Harvard University Center of Developing Child.
-Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment. (2023). Extreme Heat Affects Early Childhood Development and Health: Working Paper No. 1. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu
-National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2024). A World of Differences: The Science of Human Variation Can Drive Early Childhood Policies and Programs to Bigger Impacts: Working Paper No. 17. Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu
-National Association for the Education of Young Children. Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) Position Statement. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap/contents
Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., & Esposito, G. (2017). Continuity and stability in development. Child Development Perspectives, 11
Brown, K. A., Parikh, S., & Patel, D. R. (2020). Understanding basic concepts of developmental diagnosis in children. Translational Pediatrics, 9(Suppl 1), S9–S19.
Campos, J. J., Anderson, D. I., Barbu-Roth, M. A., Hubbard, E. M., Hertenstein, M. J., & Witherington, D. (2000). Travel broadens the mind. Infancy, 1(2), 149–219.
Katz, L. G. (1997, February). Child development knowledge and teachers of young children (ERIC Document No. ED407114). ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. U.S. Department of Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED407114.pdf
Miller, P. H. (2022). Developmental theories: Past, present, and future. Developmental Review, 66, 101049.
Pulkkinen, L. (2023). A developmental psychological perspective. In L. Pulkkinen, T. Ahonen, & I. Ruoppila (Eds.), Ihmisen psykologinen kehitys [Human psychological development] (pp. 16–30). PS-kustannus.
Thijs, J. T., & Koomen, H. M. (2008). Task-related interactions between kindergarten children and their teachers: The role of emotional security. Infant and Child Development, 17(2), 181–197.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
Wallén, T. (2023). Learning through play – Manual. ECE Harmonization in Zambia. Ministry of Education, Zambia, Directorate of Early Childhood Education.
