Personalized teaching, practical teaching, effective teaching
Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin
The Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education is a four-year university degree that trains students to be qualified professionals to teach children between 0 and 3 years old (first cycle) and 3 to 6 years old (second cycle). The program aims to enable them to develop didactic strategies for early childhood education, from a global and integrated perspective including cognitive, emotional, psycho-physical and motivational dimensions.
In both cycles of early childhood education, teachers work with children’s progressive development of affective components, corporal movements and control, communication and language, the basic norms of coexistence and social relationships, as well as their discovery of the physical and social characteristics of the environment in which they live. Additionally, work will be done so that children will develop a positive and balanced self-image and acquire personal autonomy.
The purpose of the second cycle of early childhood education is to progressively develop the necessary skills for learning to read and write, and perform numerical representations and calculations in order to increase the intellectual capacities of children and prepare them to take advantage of primary education in the next stage.
For all these reasons, the Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education seeks to combine general and multidisciplinary education alongside specialty training. Early childhood education professionals must know the requisite objectives, curricular content and evaluation criteria of their field and be able to develop didactic strategies, both to promote and facilitate learning in early childhood, as well as to design and regulate spaces and learning situations in contexts of diversity that cater to a variety of unique educational needs. They must be able to adapt, with initiative, to social, cultural, scientific, technological and educational changes, and they must be decisive when reflecting on their practice and in their commitment to the profession.
What can you specialize in?
The Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education at Santa Ana University Center has three curricular specializations that allow students to enrich their training in those curricular areas that interest them the most by earning one or more of the following specializations:
Special Needs Specialization: allows students to intensify their training, enabling them to respond promptly to specific needs for educational support, be those temporary or permanent, that children with developmental disorders or those who are at risk of suffering from them may have.
Foreign Languages (English) specialization: trains graduates to teach in the area of Foreign Language (English), in addition to the areas of preschool education that do not require a specialty degree (Spanish Royal Decree 1594/2011, November 4, which establishes the teaching specialties of professional teachers who work in preschool and primary education, as regulated by the Spanish Organic Law 2 / 2006, May 3, Education, Article 3, point 3).
Specialization in Catholic Theology and its Teaching: allows students to obtain the DECA certificate (the Ecclesiastical Declaration of Academic Competence), issued by the Spanish Episcopal Conference, which confers the academic certification necessary to be a professor of the Catholic religion in public, private and semi-private schools, in both pre-school and primary education. Moreover, said certification is usually a requirement to be a staff member in Catholic educational centers. If a graduate in early childhood or primary education does not have the DECA certification, he or she can take the four subjects needed to add this additional certification to their CV at CUSA.
Professional applications of the degree
The most immediate professional possibility is teaching within the framework of education, both in the public and private spheres, in early childhood education cycles. The teaching profession in early childhood education is regulated by the Spanish Order ECI / 3854/2007, December 27 (BOE 12/29/2007).
Professional possibilities exist in other social sectors with educational projects, such as hospitals, language centers, nurseries, museums and interpretative centers, galleries, publishing houses, sports centers and clubs, libraries, tourism sectors, prisons, special education centers (residences, NGOs, speech therapy), academies, popular universities, insurance companies, schools and universities for the elderly, occupational training centers, etc.
Access to graduate education
Once the undergraduate studies are completed, a postgraduate degree can be completed in a related area, either in a professional field (oriented to the labor market of this degree), or in educational research.
In terms of post-graduate education at Santa Ana University Center, you can study an officially recognized master's degree: the Master's Degree in Educational Psychology.
For students with specific educational needs related to a disability, more information is available here.