Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Studies

Gain a full understanding of early childhood educational development and behavior.


The Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Studies program is designed to help equip you with the skills needed to begin, or advance in, careers in child care and early childhood studies (from birth through age eight or third grade). The program is not designed as a teacher certification program nor does it lead to state licensure.

We provide childhood education professionals with a recognized degree that may prove invaluable when pursuing growth and promotion opportunities in administration, management, or specialized areas.

Enjoy Flexibility – 40 courses with start dates every 2 weeks
Choose Where You Learn – 100% online courses
Affordable Monthly Payments

The Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Studies is aligned with the professional standards in the field, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). This program provides you with multi-disciplined knowledge, insights, and strategies that you can apply to the job right away. You will receive a comprehensive education that comprises foundational liberal arts courses as well as specialized courses covering ECS-specific topics such as child development, educational psychology, and curriculum design.

For students who have accumulated undergraduate credits and would like to transfer those studies to a recognized and accredited college degree program, Aspen also offers a Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Studies degree completion program.

Successful completion of the program may enable graduates to work with age-appropriate child care organizations, early childhood education programs, preschools, private kindergartens, private elementary schools, and Head Start programs. Additional information about the Head Start and Early Head Start programs can be found at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website.

For more information about the program, see the Academic Catalog.

Admission Requirements

  • Application – A completed application.
  • High School Transcripts – An official high school transcript or its equivalent. Waived if student has completed at least 15 credits of college-level course work.
  • Official Transcripts – Official transcripts for all previous college credit earned.
  • Minimum GPA Requirement – A minimum cumulative GPA of 2.00 is required for all previous high school or college credit.
  • Military Documentation (Optional) – A copy of the most recent orders; or a copy of DD214 (This can be requested from the National Archives.)

Courses:

    This course provides a study of human communication by covering major communication concepts, theories, research, and trends. This introduction communications course will help students to understand their own communication behavior as well the communication behavior of others. Concepts covered include basic theories of communication, understanding individual communication styles, the use of communication across cultures, and listening and critical thinking skills. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: SPC 2300

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course is designed to inaugurate the students’ investigation into the roles associated with early childhood, and gain inquiry into how to grow and develop as a professional in this field. Students gain a historical and theoretical foundation for early childhood studies while exploring instructional and assessment techniques appropriate for this age level. This course addresses effective early childhood strategies that focus on the whole child and are influenced by family centered practice, culture, and community.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course provides comprehensive coverage of personal financial planning in the areas of money management, career planning, taxes, consumer credit, housing and other consumer decisions, legal protection, insurance, investments, retirement planning, and estate planning. The goal is to teach the fundamentals of financial planning so students can make informed choices related to spending, saving, borrowing, and investing that lead to long-term financial security. Provided financial planning tools help identify and evaluate choices as well as understand the consequences of decisions in terms of opportunity costs.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course prepares students to work as a professional in early childhood settings. This course introduces pedagogy designed to help early childhood students learn about themselves, provides experiences to be successful, build supportive relationships with peers, develop social skills, and learn how to appreciate others. The materials are based on self-concept, social, guidance, physical, cognitive, communication and creative skills. It examines indoor and outdoor environments that invite early childhood students to move and explore, offering opportunities to use their muscles and gain new physical skills. Other content includes understanding their environments, building thinking skills, language development, literacy-rich environments, expression through music and movement, and nurturing creativity through art experiences.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course is designed to help students master the traditional five-paragraph essay and variations of this essay. Four principles are presented as keys to effective writing: unity, support, coherence, and sentence skills. The first part of the course focuses on the first three principles and to some extent on sentence skills. It shows, respectively, how these four principles apply in the different patterns of essay development and in specialized types of writing. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: ENC 1101

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course provides a foundation of factual knowledge about biology in order to help students build a cognitive framework for critical scientific thinking. Students will learn key biological terms and theories and exhibit understanding of these terms through assignments that incorporate case studies, essays and ethics questions concerning current biological issues.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    College Algebra will dive deep into problem solving, algebraic reasoning, linear functions, exponential and logarithmic functions, compositions and inverses, and graphing and analyzing data. The student will develop a personal framework for problem-solving. Real-world scenarios are used throughout the course to ensure an understanding of how each concept is used in one’s life. Students will create, interpret, and revise models and find solutions to problems while utilizing real-world situations. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: MAT 1140

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course is on thinking about and understanding your physical surroundings. It is a straightforward but substantial introduction to the fundamental behavior of matter and energy. It is intended to serve the needs of non-science majors who are required to complete one or more physical science course and will introduce basic concepts and key ideas while providing opportunities to learn reasoning skills and a new way of thinking about your environment.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course explores the idea that that interacting with the early childhood student extends beyond education programs that focus on child-centered care to family-centered practices, taking into account that the early education student always comes to school in a context. UrieBronfenbrenner’s ecological model of human development is introduced to emphasize the numerous influences on early childhood students, including families, teachers, schools, communities, and so forth. This course explores how building relationships with families requires inclusive collaboration, effective communication, and ongoing development for parents and the adults in the early childhood student’s lives. This course examines developmental theory and adds diverse perspectives from a base of solid academics, constructivist theory, and the experiences of the author of the text.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course focuses on the many voices of psychology. To some, the science of psychology provides its students with a better understanding of others' behaviors. Others view psychology as a pathway to self-understanding. Others see the potential for a future career, and some are drawn to psychology by the opportunity for intellectual discovery that its study provides. The overall goal of this course is to provide a comprehensive overview to the subject of psychology. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: PSY 2012

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course focuses on understanding and managing diversity. Clearly, diversity is an interdisciplinary field. Much of its theoretical framework originates in the social sciences. There is some disagreement among scholars on the definition of diversity; much less what materials should be included in a course about diversity. To meet this challenge we have selected a text for this course that gathers a wealth of information from the salient issues surrounding the topic of diversity. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: ANT 2410

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course puts the humanities in perspective by discussing the arts and ways of knowing art's main concerns, purposes, and functions. The course also discusses artistic style and how to apply critical skills. This course is designed for students with little or no background in the arts.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course focuses on the skills and strategies that managers need in today’s workplace. The role of communications will be explored, as well as an examination of effective communications in hiring and promoting, conflict management, presentations, routine messages, and reporting and proposals. Studies consistently report the importance of communication to business success, and managers frequently correlate communications proficiency with career satisfaction and progress. This course builds that ability central to managers as they pursue goals and objectives.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course covers American history from the 1500s to post Civil War Reconstruction. You will study a diverse range of cultures from these time periods and how migrations, social and economic changes and interactions between cultures have shaped the history of America. You will study the shifting frontiers and political landscapes of the land before and after the Revolution and examining associated patterns to form a big picture of the historical story of America.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    In this course we focus on grammar, sentence structure, and other aspects of the "mechanics" of English. Our emphasis is on creating arguments that persuade, convince, and inspire. The goal of this course is to develop writing skills that enable students to develop powerful arguments that are more than just correct; they produce the results intended. We identify the fixed types of questions that an argument can address, helping students to build writing projects around the need to develop answers to significant questions concerning facts, definitions, causes, values, and actions. These questions form a logical progression - questions of fact and definition must be settled before questions of cause can be addressed, and so on - which means that they can serve as the basis of a sequence of assignments.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course introduces strategies for addressing the needs of early childhood students from diverse backgrounds.  Observing and interviewing early childhood students is an approach to understanding their behavior, learning, and development and allows teachers to make connections to the work of major developmental theorists and educational researchers. Understanding the background of students allows for effective teaching and learning. This course provides practical tips for incorporating observations and interviews of early childhood students into education professionals’ busy schedules, and discusses the analysis of observational data and its uses for guiding educational practices (e.g. learning activities, cooperative grouping, and parent conferences).

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    Using an interdisciplinary approach that emphasizes culture and family, Human Development challenges students to understand development from a broader perspective. Students draw on their own experiences as they weigh the research and ideas presented in the course. The course explores controversies about human development, often within a specific cultural context. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: DEP 2004

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course covers principles of microbiology with emphasis or microbial anatomy, microbial disease, and disease prevention and treatment. The course includes a broad overview of both the historical and current field of microbiology with focus on microbial pathogenicity, the spread of microbial pathogens, the methods of human immunity, and best practices for the diagnosis and treatment of microbial disease. A lab component is included within the course. Florida Course Numbering System Equivalent: MCB 2010

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The purpose of accounting is to provide a means of recording, reporting, summarizing, and interpreting economic data. In order to do this, an accounting system must be designed. A system design serves the needs of users of accounting information. Once a system has been designed, reports can be issued and decisions based upon these reports are made for various departments. Since accounting is used by everyone in one form or another, a good understanding of accounting principles is beneficial to all. Accounting is concerned with the design, interpretation of data, and the preparation of financial reports. Three forms of business entities exist: 1) sole proprietorship, 2) partnership, and 3) corporations. Corporations have the unique status of being a separate legal entity in which ownership is divided into shares of stock. A shareholder's liability is limited to his/her contribution to capital. Whenever a business transaction is recorded, it must be recorded to accounting records at cost. All business transactions must be recorded. All properties owned by businesses are assets. All debts are liabilities. The rights of owners are equity.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course provides a basic foundation of skills needed to equip students for future leadership activities. It introduces the history, philosophy, theories, and concepts of leadership and its relationship to the management of organizational change. Students identify and hone their own personal characteristics that will help them develop into effective leaders.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The management of human resources is critical for companies to provide ""value"" to customers, shareholders, employees, and the community where they are located. Value includes not only profits but also employee growth and satisfaction, creation of new jobs, protection of the environment, and contributions to community programs. All aspects of human resource management including acquiring, preparing, developing, and compensating employees can help companies meet their competitive challenges and create value. Also, effective human resource management requires an awareness of broader contextual issues affecting business such as changes in the labor force, legal issues, and globalization. Both the popular press and academic research show that effective human resource management practices do result in greater value for shareholders and employees.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The quantitative approach involves using numbers to help define, describe, and resolve a wide range of business problems. Quantitative Methods is an overview of statistical techniques used in business decision-making. Students examine research design, statistics, data analysis, and research methodology.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    We believe the combination of performance and team management can produce dramatic improvement in organizational success. Too often performance management programs are more about classifying or categorizing employees rather than improving their performance. These approaches tend to be administrative in nature, rather than tools managers can use to improve performance. In today's organizations, teams - not the individual - have become the basic unit of performance management. As a result, team building and development has become critical. This course addresses two of the most important challenges managers face. The first half of the course is devoted to managing performance toward achieving the organization's strategic objectives. The second half of the course is focused on creating, developing, and leading high-performance teams.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course identifies how to modify  learning activities for both the early childhood and special education student. Students develop and understand a variety of education practices for teaching the early childhood student with exceptionalities. This course allows the student to develop greater versatility in his/her chosen field as they explore alternative early interventionist careers in the field. Early childhood students with exceptionalities are now enrolled in a variety of settings and are served by professionals and paraprofessionals with diverse backgrounds and expertise in the field. Our objective now is to present a course that plays a major role in the development of all who serve early childhood students.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The factors addressed in Infant and Toddler Mental Health prepares future professionals who work with Infants and Toddlers with exceptionalities with specialized knowledge, training, and experience. This course provides an excellent overview for the beginning professional in this field. In looking toward the future of early intervention and early childhood special education, the core values and approaches early childhood specialists and developmental psychologists have long advocated for, continue to guide the development and evaluation of effective practices in working with both students and families. In the era of accountability, this course prepares professionals who work with early childhood students with exceptionalities how to demonstrate that the services provided result in improved outcomes for students and families.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course explores the aspects and impacts of CRM. It examines how Web 2.0 technologies and social media tools are being woven into CRM strategies. The course identifies the new business models being used by the most successful companies and also provides guidance on how other companies can and should adopt these innovations. Students will explore companies that are providing the best tools, provide various recommendations and insights and present insightful interviews with industry leaders on how to establish and maintain customer relationships.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course was written for early childhood professionals of students from birth to 8 years of age. It was prepared in response to the need for present and future professionals to understand the role of the early childhood student’s development within the curriculum. In this course, the curriculum discussed is planned for the early childhood stages. Attention is given to increased legislation and mandatory testing that affects how teachers are expected to teach early childhood students. This course explores national and state goals and standards in the language arts and mathematics with strategies for how these specific standards may be met with appropriate learning activities.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The purpose of this course is to provide students with current information for developing an integrated approach to curriculum in the early years of education. This course intends to bridge the worlds of child-care and early education, as well as those of preprimary and primary programs. In addition, it addresses early childhood education professionals working in settings with young children from birth to age 8. The ideas in this course have been extensively field tested and found to be effective. All are designed to give students a cohesive view of the what, why, and how of developmentally appropriate practices. This course is valuable to a broad range of early childhood professionals.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The purpose of the Language Development course is to provide early childhood professionals with a foundation of knowledge needed to develop learning environments where language development is enhanced. This course is designed to examine effective learning activities that are appropriate for the early childhood student’s motivation and development. This course reviews language acquisition assessments used to determine the early childhood student’s level of progress and the appropriateness of each learning experience. Students review how to recognize the beginning of the early childhood student’s language development and communicative competencies through the critical nature of parent-infant interactions established through eye contact, shared reference, and turn-taking,.  Students analyze early attempts at writing by invented spelling, while reflecting on how to respond to the writing and provide learning activities that enhance the development of literacy. 

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course focuses on how literacy develops in young children and the ways in which early childhood professionals can encourage the natural emergence of early reading and writing. This course emphasizes multicultural children's literature and introduces professionals to a variety of multicultural children’s books. This course provides practical supports and strategies for early childhood professionals, such as how to set up a literacy friendly environment, and it provides many suggestions for using classroom materials and centers to support literacy. This course also discusses in detail articles from various researchers in the field, and analyzes a variety of topics that affect the early childhood professional. This course offers an effective approach for guiding early literacy in preschool, and is applicable to most early childhood professionals.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course is a practical guide to understanding and using a child-centered philosophy. The philosophy presented in this course is balanced, and child-centered. This course addresses the developmental needs and abilities of early childhood students and enables professionals to implement high standards for behavior. The problem solving philosophy analyzed in this course emphasizes the early childhood student’s ability to solve their own problems when they are trusted and encouraged to do so. It contains the basic theoretical information needed to understand problem solving, yet its emphasis is on application, on working with groups of children in early childhood settings on a daily basis.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course explores creating and managing a developmentally appropriate early childhood settings. Topics include young children's growth and development, long-term and short-term planning, room arrangements, center ideas, and scheduling and management.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course examines the vital importance of play as a developmental tool, supporting all those who work in the early childhood field and who care in developing and implementing the highest quality play experiences for young children.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course combines a child-centered philosophy with problem-solving strategies and a thorough discussion of diversity. This is an ideal introduction to curriculum and care for infants and toddlers. This course reviews the Ten Principles that are the underlying framework for early childhood studies and reviews respectful techniques on the part of caregivers. In addition, this course emphasizes honoring diversity and infant-toddler exceptionalities while analyzing the latest research in brain development.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course provides a guide for thoughtful consideration of classroom and caregiver practices in preschool & school age settings. The two periods covered in this course are the prenatal period (9 months) and infancy and toddlerhood (birth to 2 years of age).

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course builds on the foundational principles presented in ECE 409 (Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Infant and Toddler Settings) with an introduction to early child development. The focuses of this course include appropriate assessment practices during these developmental years. The two periods covered in this course are the development of young children and children are of school age (middle childhood).

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course is designed for individuals who are preparing to become early childhood educators. This course prepares students to measure or evaluate early childhood students and analyzes the differences between assessing this age range versus that of older students. This course includes discussion of assessment in the early childhood years written from a developmental perspective.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course covers observation techniques for assessing child development in the emotional, social, physical, cognitive, language, and creative areas of development.  Students learn methods and techniques for assessing child development supplemented with exercises and study of how to best apply an understanding of early cognition in order to develop a nurturing and beneficial educational setting for young children.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    This course focuses on early childhood studies by examining theories related to development and learning and provides examples of methods and practices best implemented to ensure healthy, well-rounded development of children in the early childhood education setting. This course also presents current education legislation related to testing, assessment and curriculum development and the effect that this legislation has on the field of early childhood. Students study nutrition, play, and the importance of creativity with a focus on practices designed to assist children with exceptionalities. This course examines cultural awareness in the classroom and how to be aware of multi-cultural issues in a diverse classroom. Students complete assignments to ensure comprehension of the material presented in the course as well as field activities in the classroom or with children in a variety of settings.

    3 Credits
    Required Books

    The purpose of this individualized capstone experience is to enable students, to develop an original, comprehensive research project on a topic of professional or personal interest. This project-based course is designed to encourage students to draw upon knowledge and experience gained over the course of program. The project allows students the opportunity to integrate additional related educational or professional development activities. Projects are intended to be of applied and pragmatic nature, producing valuable research outcomes and findings either in connection with the student’s organizational situation, or in the exploration of entrepreneurial opportunities. This course satisfies the Proctored Exam requirement for this program.

    3 Credits
    Required Books
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