Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Committee Chair

Jessica Van Cleave

Abstract

Children’s experiences in kindergarten classrooms occur during a critical period in their development and can have a long-term impact on not only academic abilities but other areas as well, such as social emotional development and socioeconomic status in adulthood. Kindergarten in America has undergone many changes over time, leading teachers to feel torn between meeting rigorous academic standards and addressing young children’s developmental needs. This mixed methods study investigated North Carolina kindergarten teachers’ understanding of child development and developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) and identified both the types of practices they use during mathematics instruction and whether the use of those practices corresponded to their teacher preparation path. Data were gathered using an online survey, a focus group, and individual interviews. The results of this study suggest that the participating kindergarten teachers understand that children progress through developmental stages at their own rate and that there are specific practices that are especially effective with young children. The participating kindergarten teachers described using a number of developmentally appropriate practices in mathematics instruction on a regular basis; however, they also reported using developmentally inappropriate practices, often as a result of pressure from outside their classrooms. One key finding was that the participants attributed much of their understanding of developmentally appropriate practice to postgraduate experiences and conversations with colleagues rather than to their teacher preparation.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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