Developmentally Appropriate Kindergarten: An Interview with Christopher P. Brown

Today we have an awesome conversation about appropriate practice in Kindergarten with Christopher P. Brown of the University of Texas at Austin. Christopher is a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in Early Childhood Education. He holds the Maxine Foreman Zarrow Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Education. He is a Faculty Fellow with The Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis and a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He is also the Past-Chair for the Early Education/Child Development Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

His research centers on how early childhood education stakeholders across a range of political and educational contexts make sense of and respond to policymakers' reforms. He has looked at this issue across a range of political and educational contexts using multiple theoretical and practitioner-based perspectives that span the fields of early childhood education, curriculum and instruction, teacher education, and policy analysis.

Such work has led to empirical, theoretical, and practitioner-oriented publications on such topics as: high-stakes standards-based accountability reform in early childhood, early learning standards, pre-kindergarten (Pre-k) assessment, Pre-k alignment with elementary school, school readiness, culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate teaching, the changed kindergarten, neoliberal reform, teacher education, professional development, and teaching a mandated curriculum. Among his publications, 25 have been co-authored with 13 current and former graduate students at UT-Austin.

His recent publications focus on three issues: 1) Examining how familial, education, research, and political stakeholders make sense of the changed kindergarten; 2) Understanding how practicing and pre-service early childhood educators in high-stakes public teaching contexts can engage in practices that support the cultural, individual, and developmental learning needs of children; 3) Examining the development of preservice teachers as they employ iPads in their teacher training program.

You can read more about why the change in kindergarten matters in his article for The Conversation and more of his ideas on how to fix kindergarten in his article for Business Insider. You can also preorder his book through this affiliate Amazon link:

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