Comparing Concerted Efforts in the US to Establish a Unified Approach to Early Instruction in the Early Twentieth Century and Twenty-First Century

Abstract This paper compares concerted efforts to unify early instructional practice in the US in the early twentieth century and in the twenty-first century. The first effort began with the founding of the National Council for Primary Education in 1915; the second began in 2005 with calls for pre-K-3 alignment. Analysis of relevant sources indicates that today’s unifiers are attempting to achieve three of the same goals that their predecessors pursued in 1915: increased child activity, teacher autonomy, and use of early instructional practices up through grade 3. During the early twentieth century, kindergarten served as both the model for the upward extension of activity-based early instructional practice into the early primary grades and the locus of efforts to defend against the downward extension of skill-based elementary practice from the primary to the lower levels. During the second round of unification in the twenty-first century, however, preschool has become the model for extending and the locus of defending early instructional methodology.