Within the field of early childhood education, several issues are currently being debated and many new developments are emerging. One of these trends is toward the expansion and redefinition of early childhood education to include all educational experiences for children from birth to 8 years of age. Another trend is the increased interest in developmentally appropriate education, which takes into account what is known about how young children develop and learn, and matches that to the content and strategies planned for them in early childhood programs. A third trend is the renewed interest in integrated curricula. One approach to this is thematic organization, in which skills, facts, and subject-matter knowledge are integrated around a unifying theme. A fourth trend is toward the authentic assessment of children's learning, which is "the process of observing, recording, and otherwise documenting the work children do and how they do it, as a basis for a variety of educational decisions that affect a child." Another trend is increased interest in mixed-age groupings in preschools and nongraded education in early primary grade programs. A final trend is toward multicultural education and anti-bias curricula in early childhood in response to rapidly growing minority populations, and increasing cultural pluralism and global awareness. (AC)