The Importance Of DAP In Education

My research was focused on developmentally appropriate practices or DAP. DAP guidelines are broken into several different categories which can assess a teachers’ professional practices in their classroom. DAP is assessed based on students’ physical activities in a classroom, their social and emotional behaviors that occur from cognitive development inside a DAP centered classroom, student learning just to name a few. Based upon my findings in the five journal articles that I read regarding DAP, there is not a definite correlation to whether or not DAP has a positive or negative influence on student achievement, social behaviors and learning. More research on DAP needs to be conducted in order to justify its use in classrooms. The most obvious …show more content…
This is known, because all the journals I found on this topic were within the last fifteen years. Although, there is not a definite answer on whether or not DAP is connected to higher student achievement, there have been both positive and negative results in research. Teachers who use DAP in their classrooms do have a better understanding of their students and has had a positive result in this study. They know when students are learning, have mastered a skill, or need help when struggling and what strategies to use. I think this is a research topic that should be continued to be looked at because I think there needs to be more studies done to see if this is something teachers and schools should be concerned with implementing in their classrooms. Researchers should want to also continue this study to see if a definite answer can be found. I personally think if there is a positive link between DAP and student achievement, then we need to make sure teachers are implementing this type of student led learning. If there is no correlation, then we shouldn’t be focused on student led learning solely, but having the teachers actually teach for the purpose of student learning. There might even be a higher student achievement linked to DAP if both types of learning are happening, teacher led first, then student led learning for further discovery of a …show more content…
My research question would be, “Does DAP have a positive impact on higher student achievement?” I would want to conduct my research in the Duval County Public School District (DCPS). I would use grades three through five, because most of the research was conducted in the lower grade levels. This might raise some new questions, concerns and answers on this topic. The reason for using DCPS in my research studies would be because it is one of the largest counties in Jacksonville, Florida. Duval County Public Schools has a wide range when looking at demographics, a large number of families with different income levels, ethnicity and DCPS is a lower performing county. There are many factors that play a role in whether or not DAP is successfully linked to student achievement and social/emotional skill levels. I think DCPS would give the research a good run for its money so to speak. I think there would be a lot of interesting information found as a result of this research