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denote. . . . The playful nip denotes the bite but it does not

denote what would be denoted by the bite” (1955, p. 41). Play

is therefore paradoxical because the behavior engaged in by

the players is at once real and not real. Thus, the child play-

ing mother is both a mother and yet not a mother. Other play-

ers’ awareness of this paradox is, according to Bateson

(1955), a form of metacommunication.

Both Garvey (1977) and Schwartzman (1978) have ex-

panded Bateson’s perceptions of play. Their body of work has

concentrated on how children organize and communicate

about make-believe, how the message “this is play” is sig-

naled, and how play is initiated, sustained, and concluded.

Schwartzman (1978) extended Garvey’s work by focusing

on the meanings children attached to the texts they generated

in play. Following the work of Geertz (1972) and Ehrmann

(1968), Schwartzman (1978) argued that children’s pretend

play could be analyzed “as a text in which players act as both

subjects and the objects of their created play event” (p. 232).

In her interpretations of play texts, she emphasized the im-

portance of social and cultural contexts and suggested that

play was very much about dominance and manipulation.

Schwartzman’s understanding of hierarchical relationships in

play “illustrates the weaving of the children’s social histories

with the texts of their play and the relationship of both ele-

ments to the wider sociocultural context of the place of chil-

dren and their hierarchical ranking in a variety of institutions

such as the family and school” (Kelly-Byrne, 1989, p. 12). As

children weave their social histories into their play texts, they

fashion their relationships with others and express in subtle—

and sometimes not so subtle—ways their individual percep-

tions of the world around them (Bakhtin, 1981). In other

words, play is a medium through which children communi-

cate and make sense of who they are in relation to others.

Closing Thoughts on Play in Early Childhood Education

Play has been defined and examined across a number of dis-

ciplines including biology, psychology, linguistics, sociol-

ogy, anthropology, art, literature, and leisure studies. It has

provide the means to delve into children’s inner thoughts and

feelings, extend their cognitive growth and development, en-

hance their language and literacy development, and under-

stand how they communicate their perceptions of the world.

Such diversity in the interpretation of play both augments and

constrains our understanding of the phenomenon, making

reconciliation among play scholars difficult. Perhaps the best

point of convergence is for both researchers and teachers to

adopt an interdisciplinary approach focusing on the meanings

that children themselves attach to play. Children are, after all,

the ultimate authorities on the subject.

DIVERSITY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION:

INDIVIDUAL EXCEPTIONALITY AND

CULTURAL PLURALISM

Giftedness and Early Childhood Education

Gifted children are found in every community. These very

able youngsters reason, create, speak, write, read, interact,

feel, make music, or move in ways that distinguish them from

their age peers. They are developmentally advanced in one or

more areas of human accomplishment and often demonstrate

early indicators of their gifts as infants. As they enter ECE

settings, they may encounter mixed reactions to their abilities

that have consequences for the educational programs they

are offered. Appropriate educational experiences for young

gifted children are impacted by different macrosystem fac-

tors: the ideologies of parents, teachers, and society as a

whole; the education system; and psychology, the discipline

that provides a knowledge base for understanding and edu-

cating young gifted children and important directions for re-

search. This discussion on giftedness presents some of the

issues relevant to ensuring appropriate early childhood edu-

cation for gifted children within the context of contemporary

psychological knowledge. It also summarizes directions for

research that will have implications for gifted children in

ECE classrooms, for although the early years are acknowl-

edged as critically formative, a significant body of research

focused on gifted young children has yet to accrue (Robinson,

1993, 2000).

Prevalent Ideologies and the Education System

A number of powerful ideological factors may influence how

young gifted children are educated. In some cases, ideology

is combined with systemic factors, resulting in school admin-

istrative structures that are not responsive to individual chil-

dren’s needs. First, an age-grade mindset may prevail,

resulting in the belief that, for example, all 6-year-olds be-

long in first grade for both academic and social reasons

(Robinson & Robinson, 1982). Second, a prevalent ideology

is that special programming should begin in middle child-

hood. Underlying this ideology are several beliefs: (a) Ability

will have stabilized by the time children are about 8 or

9 years old; (b) psychoeducational testing is unreliable before

middle childhood; and (c) early childhood and primary

school educators are well equipped to meet individual needs

within their classrooms.

Another powerful ideology is that matching advanced de-

velopmental characteristics with appropriate curricula puts

unnecessary stress on young children. Parents and teachers

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who respond to children’s advanced capabilities by offering

them opportunities to develop these abilities often are viewed

with suspicion as being “pushy.” Advocacy for accelerated

school placements may also be viewed as a desire to speed up

development in an unhealthy fashion, with negative social-

emotional consequences (Southern & Jones, 1991). Also in-

fluencing the availability of educational opportunity is the

belief that gifted young children have the intellectual and

social-emotional resources to get what they need from the

educational system; in other words, they will “make it on

their own.”

There is little research support for the ideologies and sys-

temic perspectives just described. Most of these powerful be-

liefs stem from anecdotal data. This is not to say that there

may not be some children for whom one or more of the issues

may be salient. There is always the imperative to consider

each child individually, taking into account family, school,

and community contexts. However, there also is a compelling

imperative to examine these ideologies in light of relevant

research.

Psychological Perspectives and the Nature of

Advanced Development

Psychology offers important perspectives on the nature of

advanced development, including explanations and descrip-

tions of conceptual understanding and skills, different devel-

opmental pathways to giftedness, asynchrony in development,

motivation, and social and emotional development. Precocity

in development may be evident in infancy. Retrospective

parental reports of unusually advanced development in in-

fancy (e.g., Feldman, 1986) may be questioned for their relia-

bility; however, observations and behavioral ratings of infants

have been linked prospectively to intellectual and academic

precocity (e.g., Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, & Guerin,

1994; Louis & Lewis, 1992). Domain-specific abilities (e.g.,

linguistic or mathematical precocity) are apparent in very

young children, and these abilities tend to be stable over time

(Dale, Robinson, & Crain-Thoresen, 1995; Robinson, Abbott,

Berninger, & Busse, 1996).

In addition to the strikingly advanced capabilities of young

gifted children, some age-typical or even below-average ca-

pabilities may be evident. Gifted young children demonstrate

considerable inter- and intra-individual variance, a phenome-

non described as asynchronous development (Morelock,

1996). One of the ways in which their development may be

more closely related to chronological than mental age is in

their conceptual understanding of a domain. Gifted young

children may bump up against a conceptual ceiling that is re-

lated to maturation (Fischer & Canfield, 1986; Porath, 1992).

For example, in coordinating plot elements in narrative or

rendering perspective, abilities that are related to stage and

structure of thought (Porath, 1996a, 1997), gifted children

may be distinguished more by the complex use of the thought

available to them than by exceptional developmental stage

advancement. Gifted young children also may differ from

each other in their developmental pathways.

Multiple Expressions of Giftedness 

Each young gifted child has a distinct profile of abilities. In

addition, there are multiple pathways to, and demonstrations

of, giftedness in any one domain (Fischer, Knight, & Van

Parys, 1993; Golomb, 1992; Porath, 1993, 2000; Robinson,

1993). Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is to introduce

some young gifted children: Jessica, Holly, Sara, Sam, and

Jill, five of the gifted children who participated in a series of

studies on giftedness.

Six-year-old Jessica arrived to participate in a research

project on narrative full of enthusiasm about her abilities to

read and write: “I can read. Do you want me to read? I can

write stories. Can I write a story for you?” (Porath, 1986, p. 1).

Jessica and the researcher settled on tape-recording a story to

allow for production to keep pace with thinking. Jessica told

“The Leprechaun’s Gold,” a story richly representative of the

fairy tale genre (see Porath, 1996, for the story’s text). Jessica

had a strong sense of story and a remarkable feel for language.

Her vocabulary and syntax were mature, and she incorporated

appropriate dialogue into her story. All of the aforementioned

are advanced capabilities in a child of 6 years. Other 6-year-

olds with whom Porath has worked have demonstrated their

advanced verbal abilities in different ways: by playing with

words (a story featuring a cat named Nip); through under-

standing the power of language (using rhymed couplets as hu-

morous additions to a story); and by wanting to know all they

can about words and their derivations.

Holly, aged 4.5 years, drew pictures in an enthusiastic,

confident way with obvious mastery of different media. Her

drawings of human figures were detailed and well propor-

tioned. Most striking was her feel for composition, described

by an art educator as entailing “some rather sophisticated

propositions regarding spatial organization” (p. 31). The sim-

ple formal harmony of the composition also was noted. Sara,

age 6, showed her talent in a somewhat different way, pro-

ducing elaborate drawings with colors chosen for contrast

and detail (Porath, 1993). Sam, age 2, showed advanced so-

cial role-taking ability. While playing with the toy telephone

in his preschool, Sam initiated a conversation with, “Hello! I

fine!” followed by adult-like speech inflections and twirling

of the telephone cord. He engaged both a peer and his teacher

Diversity in Early Childhood Education: Individual Exceptionality and Cultural Pluralism

301

by offering them the telephone and saying, “Talk to you?”

(Porath, 2000, p. 203).

Jill, age 4, demonstrated social capability through her ad-

vanced interpersonal understanding, as elicited through re-

sponses to a picture story of a little girl who has lost her

favorite book. Jill showed remarkable abilities to incorporate

multiple emotions into her responses and empathize with the

protagonist. Part of the discussion with Jill is reproduced

below:

Researcher: How was the little girl feeling? 

Jill: Surprised, mad, and sad—all three. 

Researcher: Why?

Jill: Because her friends were near. That’s why she’s mad;

and she was sad and surprised because her book was

lost.

[Upon being asked what another character in the story

would do, Jill replied that he would help]. 

Researcher: Why?

Jill: Because he didn’t want her to be sad and lost it again.

You know why? Cause I lost my kitty . . . my favorite

kitty, I would be feeling like that. (Porath, 2001, p. 20) 

Motivation, Social-Emotional Development,

and Giftedness 

Young gifted children are notable for their motivation to

learn (Gottfried et al., 1994; Robinson, 1993). Winner (1996)

characterized this high intrinsic motivation as “a rage to mas-

ter” (p. 3). Claire Golomb (1992) powerfully illustrated this

rage to master in her research on an artistically gifted boy

who, from the age of 2, explored topics by drawing numerous

variations on a theme from every possible point of view. Sim-

ilarly, at age 4 Wang Yani, an artistic prodigy, painted mon-

keys until she had exhausted the subject, often sustaining

interest for incredibly long periods of time (Wang, 1987).

Young gifted children may play an important role in creating

environments that sustain them (Robinson, 1987).

In general, young gifted children are well adjusted so-

cially and emotionally (Robinson & Noble, 1991). They tend

to be socially mature, preferring older children’s company.

However, young gifted children’s social-emotional develop-

ment, while mature, still can be discrepant from their cogni-

tive development. This asynchrony can interact with parental

and teacher expectations of across-the-board maturity, with

the possible result of denial of appropriate programming until

the child “improves” socially. Another conundrum is that

young gifted children, faced with an insufficiently challeng-

ing curriculum, will “act their age,” again with the possible

result that social behavior becomes the focus of educational

efforts rather than appropriate curriculum (Keating, 1991).

Very highly gifted children are the exception to the gen-

eral finding of healthy social-emotional adjustment among

gifted children. Because these children’s capabilities are so

unusual, they find it very difficult to find their place in the

world (Hollingworth, 1942; Winner, 1996). When asked how

he was the same as and different from other children, a highly

gifted 6-year-old replied, “I like Raphael and Michelangelo,

but as artists not as Ninja Turtles” (Porath, 1996b, p. 15). This

child struggled to find his place, both academically and so-

cially, from the time he entered school.

Educational Implications

Psychological perspectives on the development of gifted

children have important implications for early childhood ed-

ucation. The findings on the early emergence and stability of

exceptional capabilities strongly suggest that the provision of

an optimal curricular match to these advanced abilities in

early childhood settings is essential to nurture young chil-

dren’s curiosity, motivation, and accomplishment (Keating,

1991; Robinson et al., 1996). Well-designed programs that

honor the constructive nature of understanding sustain chil-

dren’s excitement in learning and extend their achievements

(Freeman, 2000; Robinson, Abbott, Berninger, Busse, &

Mukhopadhyay, 1997). These programs also have the poten-

tial to support different developmental pathways.

The importance of considering the nature and structure of

conceptual understanding in planning educational programs

is underscored by work on expertise. The knowledge struc-

tures of experts are complex; instruction that has as its objec-

tive the nurturance of expertise incorporates meaningful

conceptual material (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1986). Instruc-

tion that fails to incorporate conceptual material can lead to

cumulative deficits in achievement (Meichenbaum &

Biemiller, 1998). This outcome was illustrated powerfully by

Jeanne Bamberger (1982) in her study of gifted adolescent

musicians. These young musicians went through a sort of

midlife crisis when called on to learn formal theoretical mu-

sical concepts. Having experienced a largely skills-based

approach to musical instruction since early childhood, they

were unprepared for the demands to think more deeply about

music and became frustrated and unmotivated.

Well-planned academic programs also support social and

emotional development (Keating, 1991). Creative and flexi-

ble options are needed to address the diversity of develop-

ment among young gifted children. Most particularly, highly

gifted children need options that are sensitively matched to

the needs implicit in development that includes abilities far

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ahead of even other gifted young children. A “nurturant re-

sourceful environment” (Meichenbaum & Biemiller, 1998,

p. 13) is necessary to support high motivation. Children need

to be helped and supported to be interested (Bereiter &

Scardamalia, 1986), even when they are highly intrinsically

motivated. Intensive early support and education result in

high levels of competence and satisfaction (Bloom, 1985).

Giftedness is apparent in early childhood. Its presence sig-

nals a need to step outside the confines of a lockstep approach

to education in which age and grade seem inextricably

joined. When faced with compelling advanced developmen-

tal needs, the predictive question of subsequent performance

is not relevant; however, an optimal match between school

program and abilities is. Keating (1991) suggested that the

following question be posed: “Is there an appropriate match

between the child and the program?” If the answer is nega-

tive, then we must ask what needs to be done to make the

program appropriate.

Directions for Future Research

Important guiding principles for early educational experi-

ences for gifted children are apparent in psychological re-

search. These principles need to be translated into an applied

research program to guide practice. We need richly descriptive

classroom-based and system-based examples of exemplary

practice and studies of intervention effects. Coupled with a

need to expand how we conceive of intelligent behavior (see,

e.g., Ceci, 1996; Gardner, 1983) is the need for valid and reli-

able assessment tools that go beyond IQ. Basic research into

cognitive processes and the nature of abilities across domains

needs to continue. Longitudinal research that includes an ap-

plied dimension would strengthen our understanding of the

nature and development of giftedness. The complexities of

gifted abilities and achievements are recognized (Freeman,

2000), as is the dynamic relationship between young children

and their environments (Smitsman, 2000). This intensive and

challenging research agenda is essential to ensuring appropri-

ate early childhood education opportunities for children who

demonstrate exceptional potential.

Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Early 

Childhood Education

Recent decades have witnessed an increasing number of immi-

grants to many, if not most, Western industrialized countries.

This continuing upswing in immigration and demographic

changes has resulted in a dramatic increase of students with di-

verse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds in the school

system and in ECE programs of many industrial societies,

especially in North America. Within existing societal contexts

where family values, education equity, and human rights are

discussed, contemporary education faces new understandings

and challenges to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically

diverse students who had been historically placed in contexts

of social, economical, and educational vulnerability.

An important challenge in educating minority students

has been how best to help them learn the majority language

and culture without precluding them from developing and

maintaining their native languages and cultures. In fact,

decades of literature addressing best educational practices for

minority children continue to stress the importance of devel-

oping home languages and cultural identity (Campos, 1995;

Cummins, 1979, 1992; Hakuta, 1986; Paul & Jarvis, 1992).

Such findings, however, have not exerted much influence

on the practices in early childhood education (Bernhard,

Lefebvre, Chud, & Lange, 1995; Kagan & Garcia, 1991;

LaGrange, Clark, & Munroe, 1995; Soto, 1997). Research in

this area has indicated that large numbers of early childhood

settings have adopted at best superficial or token expressions

of cultural diversity, such as presenting diverse holidays,

foods, or customs. The issue of how to balance the competing

interest between developing native and second languages

during the early years has still relied ultimately on parental

and individual struggles. A lack of responsiveness and effi-

cacy for the diverse populations in many early childhood pro-

grams may be due partly to the limited understanding of

cultural and language issues in the process of transition from

the home culture to that of the school in minority children

(Bernhard et al., 1991).

This brief discussion is an attempt to introduce some of

the language and cultural issues raised regarding young im-

migrant children with a focus on the role and importance of

the children’s home languages and cultures in ECE settings. 

Second-Language Learning in the Preschool Years 

Historically, researchers who have explored issues of second-

language learning and language maintenance in immigrant

populations have been more concerned with school-age chil-

dren than with preschool-aged children (Cummins, 1986;

Lyon, 1996). In the past decade, however, researchers

have become increasingly concerned about language learning

of 2- to 6-year-old immigrant children due to the general in-

crease in early education enrollment and growing minority

populations, resulting in more and more immigrant children

becoming exposed to a majority language during this early pe-

riod. In addition, because younger children are presumed to be

better language learners than older children, there has been a

strong emphasis on immigrant children’s being fluent in the