Early Childhood Development, Certificate

Program Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this program, students will be able to:

• Know a wide-range of types of assessments, their purposes and their associated methods and tools for making informed choices.
• Know, understand, and value the diversity of families.
• Use professional communication skills, including technology-mediated strategies, to effectively support young children’s learning and development and work with families and colleagues.
• Understand the developmental period of early childhood from birth through age eight across physical, cognitive, social, and emotional, and linguistic domains including bilingual/multilingual development.
• Use screening and assessment tools in ways that are ethically grounded and developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate in order to document development progress and promote positive outcomes for each child.
• Understand content knowledge including the central concepts, methods and tools of inquiry, and structure and resources for the academic disciplines in an early childhood curriculum.
• Understand pedagogical content knowledge including how young children learn in each discipline and how to use the teacher knowledge and practices to support young children’s learning in each content area.
• Modify teaching practices by applying, expanding, integrating, and updating content knowledge in the disciplines, knowledge of curriculum content resources, and pedagogical content knowledge.

Program Requirements: (16 Credits)

• ECED 1110 - Child Growth, Development, and Learning Credits: 3
• ECED 1115 - Health, Safety, and Nutrition Credits: 2
• ECED 1120 - Guiding Young Children Credits: 3
• ECED 1125 - Assessment of Children and Evaluation of Programs Credits: 3
• ECED 1130 - Family and Community Collaboration Credits: 3
• ECED 1998 - Childhood Development Field Experience Credits: 2

Total 16 Credits

NOTE: ECED 1110 should be taken first as it is the prerequisite for the other courses. ECED 1115, ECED 1130 ECED 1125 are prerequisites for ECED 1998. The prerequisite for ECED 1110 is ENGL 109 or demonstrated proficiency on the placement test administered through the Testing Center. Students can also submit qualifying ACT, SAT, AP or CLEP scores to satisfy the ENGL 109 prerequisite. Placement testing is the best way to determine accurate course placement.