Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

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will focus instead on the two most directly related to our concern for human emancipation and a
sense of personal agency (for both teachers and students). Those issues, not surprisingly, relate to
the increasing emphasis on accountability and control and the identity this requires the fledgling
early childhood professional to assume.
One clear and immediate indication of change in this area is seen in the tables of contents.
Assessment becomes increasingly emphasized—moving from only a couple of subheadings over
short sections in the seventh edition to a full chapter near the end of the book in the eighth edition,
to being a chapter in Part I in the ninth edition (following a chapter reconfigured to feature
“public policy”). Such space allotment and placement indicate valuation. Naturally, as one topic
moves up the value scale, something else must move down. In this case, that appears to be the
notion of child-centered education and related topics. We find this especially disturbing since
early childhood education has, in many regards, been the last bastion of a concern for educating
the whole person in our schools.
As of the seventh edition, child-centered education is “alive and well” in the primary grades
(Morrison, 1998, p. 261). It is recommended for preschoolers, with a gentle warning to “strive to
provide a balance between academics and all areas of development” (p. 216). A lengthy section
on Open Education describes it as child-centered education:
Adults do not do all the talking, decision making, organizing, and planning when it is children who need to
develop these skills. Open education seeks to return the emphasis to the child, where it rightfully belongs.
Open education teachers respect students and believe children are capable of assuming responsibility for their
own learning. Teachers consider themselves primarily teachers of children, not of subject matter ...(1998,
p. 87; emphasis in original)
In addition, child-centered education is featured prominently in the seventh edition in a Chapter
1 section entitled “The Return of Child-Centered Education” (p. 55). The same section appears
in the eighth edition (2001, p. 95), although it is downgraded from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3 (“The
Past and the Present: Prologue to the Future”). Significantly, this section disappears in the ninth
edition and the term “child-centered” begins to morph into a concept more compatible with the
age of accountability. Readers are told it is “a widely used term misunderstood by many” (p. 104).
Indeed, Chapter 1 implies the need for a redefinition of the term as it ends with a section entitled
“A new meaning of child-centered education”
Everything we discuss in this book is based on the child being the center of the teaching and learning
processes. Unfortunately, not all teachers have practiced child-centered approaches, nor have they made
children’s learning a high priority. This is changing. Included in the child-centered approach are the ideas
that children can learn at high levels of achievement; that children are eager to learn; and that they are
capable of learning more than many people thought they could. So a new concept of child-centeredness
embraces the whole child in all dimensions: social, emotional, physical, linguistic, and cognitive. (2004,
p. 24)
A comparison of these two descriptions of child-centered education shows an unfortunate
trend away from a pedagogy that is compatible with human emancipation. Success becomes
synonymous with “achievement,” instead of with an increasing capacity for personal agency.
In spite of the ninth edition’s satisfaction that the new child-centeredness embraces the whole
child, we are concerned with the apparent move to value only that which is in line with current
school reform goals of achievement on standardized tests for the purpose of bulking up the
nation’s twenty-first-century workforce. Although the holistic approach in editions seven and
eight is considered valuable for the fact that it met a wide range of needs for children and their