The following principles guide professional development programs at the Emma Eccles Jones Center for Early Childhood Education. Domains of children's development are physical, social, emotional, and cognitive and are closely related. Children demonstrate patterns in their development as they acquire abilities and skills that build on those already mastered. Children have unique timing and patterns of development. Early experiences have cumulative and delayed effects.
Optimal periods exist for specific types of development.
Development proceeds in predictable directions toward greater complexity, organization, and internalization. Development and learning occur in and are influenced by multiple social and cultural contexts. Children are active learners who draw on physical and social experiences as well as culturally transmitted knowledge to construct their understandings of their world. Development and learning are a result of the interaction of individual children's biological maturation and environment. Play serves as an important vehicle for and reflection of children's social, emotional, and cognitive development.