Abstract:

The lack of an educational proposal of a curriculum for a day care center, as well as, the lack of observation and evaluation methods for children between the ages of 0 and 3, generated a study based on the personal and social development of those children. This was the procedure found to help understand the children’s educational context, theories of childhood development, educational proposals for the day care center and evaluation of this age period. The objective for this research was to understand the methods of evaluation used by caregivers and identify theories of personal and social development for children between the ages of 0 and 3, which supported the observation and evaluation tables created.
In the child education context the observation/evaluation of psychological development (at least in Portugal) does not have deserved special attention, the same happens for the evaluation of personal and social development of children up to three years in the context of day care.

Although it is common knowledge that a child under three years acquires a range of abilities of solid impact for the later development, it has not been emphasized the importance of being accompanied, in the early years, by child educators, often replaced by assistants with no training. Although the first months of life are regarded as a period devoted to sleep, to care and crying, the teacher has a clear idea that this is also a very rapid developmental period. Babies that are apparently confined to inactivity are in a phase of permanent attention, able to absorb everything that goes around them. Speaking in development means talking about a qualitative change, a change of behavior and attitudes. Is increasingly recognized the importance of educational and environmental contexts as essential to the development of the individual, both in their interpersonal relationships, whether at the level of the whole society.

The day care center as a place where that gives the experience of separation, the emergence of language, the construction of emotional relationships, promoting independence, among other acquisitions, an educational context is extremely fertile. Thus, as the first public space inhabited by children, to promote the socialization and self-fulfillment, must be designed based on these two aspects of what is to educate a child.

The assess of personal and social development of children from 0 to 3 years in day care center was studied from scales of observation created from various authors. The aim of the research entailed the improvement of educational practices related to professional education for children aged between 0 and 3 years, encouraging a more rigorous and individual monitoring, and also the improvement of their techniques of observation and evaluation.

The study had the participation of day care center children educators, in function, and assumed that the first child is from birth until about three years, after when the child has reached a minimum autonomy in different sides of personality: psychomotricity, language, socio-emotional and reasoning. The majority of educators recognize, as their main function in the nursery, the enlargement of the child skills for their autonomy in all areas of development; the children educators asses the educational process and the children development; and finally the observation scales require a closer monitoring of children and the activation and evaluation of personal and social development.

Keywords:

evaluation, personal and social development, day-care centers.