Approaches to Learning
The domain of Approaches to Learning refers to the skills and behaviors that children use when learning, including emotional, behavioral, and cognitive skills.
Children are constantly learning. Their brains are rapidly developing, and millions of connections are being created. Young children are learning to use their bodies. They are learning to express their feelings and learning about relationships. Communicating with others and understanding and using language is a major focus of their learning. Skills and concepts are acquired rapidly during early childhood, when children explore and make sense of experiences.
Most importantly, young children are learning how to learn and manage their learning. The domain of Approaches to Learning refers to the skills and behaviors that children use when learning, including emotional, behavioral, and cognitive skills. Emotional and behavioral skills referred to in this section include engagement, excitement, curiosity, and risk-taking. Cognitive skills include the way we sense, perceive, think, understand, and represent. Approaches to Learning focuses on the foundational skills that children must develop so that they can be successful as learners in later schooling and throughout their lives.
An important part of children’s growth in the Approaches to Learning domain includes the development of executive function skills. This term describes skills that allow people to control their own behavior and direct it toward longer-term goals (maintaining a friendship or learning to write letters, for instance), rather than what is automatic or easiest to do.1 A child’s community and home cultural norms are the foundation for the development of executive function skills.2
Rapid brain development during early childhood and adolescence increases the capacity for the development of executive function skills.1 Children develop the ability to control their own emotions and behavior first through co-regulation with important caregivers, a key developmental step in children’s social and emotional development. As trusted, safe caregivers respond to young children and help them return to a regulated state, children gradually become more able to regulate themselves internally.
As children develop emotional regulation, they can develop the skills of executive function: working memory (the ability to hold and work with multiple pieces of information at a time), cognitive flexibility (the ability to switch back and forth between different ways of thinking), and inhibitory control (the ability to resist distraction).1 These skills dovetail with those listed in the Approaches to Learning domain and help set the tone for how children approach learning.
Much like an air traffic control system at an airport helps planes on different runways land and take off safely, executive function skills help our brains prioritize tasks, filter distractions, and control impulses…The increasingly competent executive functioning of children enables them to plan and act in a way that makes them good students, classroom citizens, and friends.3
Current research supports the importance of children’s approaches to learning and success in school. For example, studies have found that children with higher levels of attentiveness, eagerness to learn, task persistence, learning independence, flexibility, and organization, generally do better in literacy, math, and science over time.4, 5 Approaches to learning skills “set the foundation for learning in early childhood”, and “serve as mental tools that enable children to construct new knowledge.”6 In addition, strong cognitive and social skills may also promote approaches to learning skills, which suggests that child development and learning are connected and work together over time.
Supporting children’s skills in this domain helps children acquire knowledge, learn new skills, and set and achieve goals. They learn to successfully navigate learning experiences that are challenging, frustrating, or simply take time to accomplish. How children engage in learning influences development in all domains and directly contributes to success in school.7
The Approaches to Learning domain includes four components:
- Components AL1-2: Curiosity and Inquisitiveness
- Components AL3-4: Attentiveness
- Components AL5-7: Imagination
- Components AL8-12: Processing and Using Information
The sub-components and indicators identified for the ages of birth through kindergarten entry address the specific expectations across the developmental spectrum.
- For infants, indicators focus on how infants show interest in their environment, interact with others and objects for short periods, begin to manage frustration, generalize experiences, and recognize cause and effect relationships.
- The indicators for toddlers include how they are beginning to examine the characteristics of objects, make some independent choices, handle transitions, seek out others to play and carry out play plans, pretend, and identify and communicate about problems.
- The indicators for preschoolers focus on how children show their eagerness to investigate new things, engage in play with peers for extended periods of time, persist, experiment with new ways to combine materials and contribute relevant information to discussions.
Depending on familial, cultural, and community values, the development of approaches to learning may look different for different children. In addition, activities and objects need to be relevant and engaging to individual children; when children are not presented with developmentally appropriate and engaging materials or experiences, they may present as inattentive or demonstrate behavior that looks “challenging.” It is important for the professional and the caregiver(s) to communicate their expectations and goals for individual children while also understanding what is meaningful and appropriate for each child.
Components AL1-2: Curiosity and Inquisitiveness
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| Subcomponent | 0-1 Year | 1-2 Years | 2-3 Years | 3-4 Years | 4-5 Years | K Alignment |
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| AL1. Curiosity Child expresses interest in novelty. |
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| AL2. Inquisitiveness Child explores the environment and seeks interaction with people and objects; willingly tries new things. |
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Components AL3-4: Attentiveness
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| Subcomponent | 0-1 Year | 1-2 Years | 2-3 Years | 3-4 Years | 4-5 Years | K Alignment |
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| AL3. Focused Attention Child focuses visual and auditory attention on aspects of the environment when presented with developmentally appropriate and engaging objects, people, or activities. |
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| AL4. Choice Making Child makes choices from developmentally appropriate and engaging objects, people, or activities offered by caregivers. |
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Components AL5-7: Imagination
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| Subcomponent | 0-1 Year | 1-2 Years | 2-3 Years | 3-4 Years | 4-5 Years | K Alignment |
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| AL5. Creative Play Child demonstrates imagination in their play. |
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| AL6. Symbolic Play Child uses sounds, actions, objects, and materials (paint, clay, blocks, etc.) to express ideas and understanding as well as to make new connections. |
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| AL7. Originality Child expresses ideas, thoughts, and opinions and creates products that are unexpected, original, and relevant. |
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Components AL8-12: Processing and Using Information
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| Subcomponent | 0-1 Year | 1-2 Years | 2-3 Years | 3-4 Years | 4-5 Years | K Alignment |
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| AL8. Working Memory Child stores and retrieves information to use it purposefully. |
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| AL9. Managing Attention Child manages attention and thoughts. |
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| AL10. Flexible Thinking Child considers more than one possible outcome to a problem or question. |
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| AL11. Problem Solving Child notices problems, finds solutions, and persists through frustration or boredom. |
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| AL12. Cause and Effect Child begins to create theories for why things happen; can recognize how one thing relates to or affects another thing. |
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References
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1.
Center for Early Education and Development (CEED). (2023). Introducing it: Executive function and self-regulation development in young children. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
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2.
Miller-Cotto, D., Smith, L. V., Wang, A. H., & Ribner, A. D. (2022). Changing the conversation: A culturally responsive perspective on executive functions, minoritized children and their families. Infant and Child Development, 31(1), e2286.
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3.
Harvard Center for the Developing Brain. (n.d.). What is executive function? And how does it relate to child development?
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4.
Bustamante, A. S., White, L. J., & Greenfield, D. B. (2016). Approaches to learning and school readiness in Head Start: Applications to preschool science. Learning and Individual Differences, 56, 112-118.
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5.
Sung, J., & Wickrama, K. A. (2018). Longitudinal relationship between early academic achievement and executive function: Mediating role of approaches to learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 54, 171-183.
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6.
Bustamante, A. S., White, L. J., & Greenfield, D. B. (2018). Approaches to learning and science education in Head Start: Examining bidirectionality. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 44, 34-42.
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7.
US Department of Health and Human Services (US HHS) & Administration for Children and Families (ACF). (n.d.). Approaches to learning.
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