California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

FOUNDATIONS IN
Social-Emotional
Development
This section describes foundations
for the behavior of preschool
children in the domain
of social-emotional development. The
goal of the California Department of
Education (CDE) in developing these
foundations was to describe the behaviors
that are typical of preschool children
who are making good progress
toward readiness for kindergarten. The
research focus was, in particular, on
behavior reflecting age-appropriate
competency for children in the 40- to
47-month age span and children in
the 52- to 59-month age span.
These competencies are included
as foundations for children “at around
48 months of age” and “at around
60 months of age,” respectively. In
focusing on the social and emotional
foundations of school readiness, a
central assumption—well supported
by developmental and educational
research—was that school readiness
consists of social-emotional competencies
as well as other cognitive and
motivational competencies required for
success in school. The foundations
of social and emotional development
described here—including the growth
of self-awareness, self-regulation, cooperation
and responsibility, social and
emotional understanding, empathy and
caring, interactions with peers, friendship,
group participation (such as in
the classroom), initiative in learning,
attachments to parents, close relationships
with teachers and caregivers,
and interactions with familiar adults—
are each predictive of children’s adaptation
to school and their academic
success. Research literature highlighting
the social-emotional foundations
of early school success has been published,
and relevant studies from that
literature are cited in the bibliographic
listings at the end of this section.
School readiness consists of
social-emotional competencies as
well as other cognitive and motivational
competencies required for success
in school.
The CDE’s endeavor to describe the
behaviors typical of preschool children
who are on course for school readiness
involved three additional assumptions.
The first was the assumption
that young children have access to the
appropriate kinds of social interactions,
experiences, and environments
that normally support healthy development.
Young children growing up in
markedly deprived settings experience
California Department of Education • Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1 1