In today’s standards-focused educational world, administrators, parents, and teachers are all concerned about accountability. As early childhood educational settings embrace new approaches to learning—often referred to as“ developmentally appropriate,” “child-initiated,” or “constructivist”—concerned parties want to
know: are these approaches better than the“ traditional” ones? What evidence is there that students benefit more from these “new” approaches than the “old” ones?

This article includes information about research that supports developmentally appropriate practice (DAP). It includes tables that show the results of research studies comparing programs that used DAP with those that used more traditional, teacher-directed practices, commonly referred to as developmentally inappropriate practice (DIP). The results are grouped by Project Construct’s developmental domains: Sociomoral, Cognitive,
Representational, and Physical.

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