Plan of Graduate Study

Being interested in working in the classroom with young children, I decided to study early
childhood education after graduating from university. Concentration in Early Childhood Education
for Diverse Learners (ECDL) is a 30-credit program, which leads to a master's degree in early
childhood education field. There are 18 credits for core courses and 12 credits for electives. In the
first semester, I studied Developing Language, Literacy, and Communication of Diverse Young
Learners (ECED 522, 3 credit hours). For the rest semesters, I plan to study these courses to
complete my graduate program.

Core courses (15 credits):
ECED 601: Frameworks for Early Childhood Education, Credit hours: 3
ECED 585: Research in Early Childhood Education, Credit hours: 3
As a new student in early childhood education field, studying the foundational knowledge is
the essential step. ECED 601 analyzes foundational frameworks for developing perspectives for
working with diverse young learners, birth to age 8, and their families. ECED 585 develops
fundamental concepts, principles, and methods of research in early childhood education, with
emphasis on interpreting and applying research results. These two courses are prerequisites for the
other courses.
ECED 503: Inclusive Curriculum for Young Learners: Planning Instruction and Guidance, Credit
hours: 3
Planning meaningful curriculum activities for the child and family is main work for a teacher.
This course introduces principles of learning, curriculum development, and relationship between
assessment and instruction. It can help students to analyze their own teaching practices and to set
appropriate goals for teaching change. In addition, this course requires field experience which
helps students accumulating practical experience.
ECED 504: Families, Communities, and Schools, Credit hours: 3
The course focuses on strategies for developing culturally appropriate family-professional
partnerships to benefit children. It discusses theories and research supporting a family-centered
approach. In addition, it describes the historical, philosophical, and sociological foundations
underlying the role, development and organization of public education in the United States. It is
useful for an international student to have knowledge of American education system.
ECED 511: Assessment of Diverse Young Learners, Credit hours: 3
The course demonstrates knowledge of the theory, research, and application of child
development and assessment within a sociocultural context. Not only describe legal mandates and
their implications for diverse learners, but also explain the connections among assessment,
instruction, and monitoring student progress. The ability about how to make a selection,
administration, analysis, and interpretation of formal and informal assessments for children and
family is important for a teacher.

Elective courses (12 credits):
ECED 501: Developmental Pathways of Diverse Learners, Birth-Adolescence, Credit hours: 3
The course describes the major theories of development and critically examines the theories
as they apply to the lives of culturally, linguistically, and ability diverse children and their
families.
It identifies typical developmental milestones of diverse children from birth through adolescence
and their cultural and socioeconomic variations. This course helps students to understand child
and adolescent development from diverse perspectives.
ECED 502: Foundations of Language and Literacy for Diverse Young Learners, Credit hours: 3
This course examines complexity of language acquisition and literacy development. It
describes social, cultural, affective, cognitive, and educational factors that play a role in language
acquisition and literacy learning (reading and writing). It emphasizes first and second language
acquisition.
ECED 512: Language and Literacy Assessment and Instruction for Diverse Young Learners,
Credit hours: 3
The course describes research-based teaching and assessment strategies and approaches that
promote reading, writing, and oral language development using a balanced phonics and literacy
approach. It examines ways to assess and develop reading, writing, listening, and speaking in
preschool through third-grade classrooms. Students can learn the ways to promote comprehension
strategies for children.
ECED 790: Internship in Early Childhood Education, Credit hours: 1-6
Student internships are regarded as a critical component of teacher education programs. This
course enables students to participate full time in an internship in early childhood education. It
links university course work to real world of working with diverse young learners and their
families. The student internship is a time to focus on the art of teaching and working with diverse
young children and their families under the guidance and support of practicing professionals.
Students can benefit greatly from being able to learn from courses and apply the knowledge in the
field.

All these courses utilize a distributed learning format including instructor
presentation/facilitation, small group and large group discussions and work, videos, student
presentations, assigned readings, projects leading to written products and whole class sharing to
support course content.

Before I came here, I was an English teacher in kindergarten in China. Teaching children is a
great thing with many challenges in my opinion. Teachers should show their higher interest and
greater enthusiasm of what they want to teach than the children themselves. Whats more, they
should be more sincere to everything, since the teachers curiosity would encouraged their
children students to study what they taught. I chose all courses from two directions: one is
fundamental knowledge about early childhood education, the other one is information about
language and literacy development. As an unacquainted person in this field, learning fundamental
knowledge is essential for me before studying other professional theories. Besides that, studying
strategies and approaches about how to promote childrens reading, writing, and oral language
development is my main target. In order to be a professional and responsible teacher in the future,
more knowledge I learn, better quality of teaching will be.