Giant steps in pedagogy: The development of preschool and elementary school children

Abstract

The study is a tribute to Professor József Nagy (1930–2021). József Nagy was one of the most outstanding researchers of Hungarian educational sciences of the second half of the 20th century and the years of the turn of the millennium. During his professional work of about six decades, he renewed Hungarian educational research and different fields of the public education. Among his valuable works, his decades-long research on early childhood stands out as being of crucial importance and unique contribution to the international education sciences. He developed a novel method for measuring the skills of children aged 4 to 8 years. Its first version, PREFER (Preventive Development Assessment System), was created in the seventies. The revised, improved version was published in the early 2000s: DIFER (Diagnostic Assessment Systems for Development between ages 4–8). At present, DIFER tests are used by at least half of the Hungarian kindergartens. This assessment is also recommended by law to use in the first grades of Hungarian schools. József Nagy and his colleagues developed many improvement programs for DIFER skills and proved their effectiveness by pedagogical experiments. Skill improvement methods and programs were published in a series of books. Fortunately, I worked with József Nagy during those research studies for 25 years. He is also my former mentor whom I will always remember with respect and love.