Abstract
What are the developmental aspects of early childhood identified and valued by students of the Third-year Childhood Education in the year 2008/2009? This study is a continuation of a study on the development and learning in early childhood valued by students of Initial Teacher Education in Childhood Education. The process of human development is a complex process that the result of several factors - biological, psychological, social and cultural - to be changes in the subjects at the level of your thinking, behavior and structure (Tavares, Pereira, Gomes Monteiro & Gomes , 2007). We asked 50 female students from the School of Education and Social Sciences (Leiria - Portugal) to do a review work about this subject. They made some theoretical research: ?How do children in daycare develop and learn?? Through content analysis we found information from development characteristics. Authorization was sought for all students to perform the study. The data show that students understand the early childhood development as psycho-physiological changes that occur in children over the first three years of life. Making an analysis of the various dimensions of human development presented in the review work, we found that the students relate with greater frequency characteristics of physical-motor development of children compared to other dimensions (cognitive, linguistic and socio-emotional). The socio-emotional domain is the second dimension with a larger number of frequency. These data lead us to question why this divergence of values and also what teaching strategies that can be worked with students to support them to understand the child as a whole. We believe that more and better are childs knowledge, more and better learning opportunities educators offer them. Keywords: development, early childhood, childhood education, learning, higher education