The present study examined preservice teachers` beliefs about developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood classrooms using the Teacher Beliefs Questionnaire developed by Charlesworth, Hart, Burts, and Hernandez(1991). The questionnaire was administered three times over the course of the students` first year in an early childhood education teacher preparation program. Results indicated that students entered the program with conflicting beliefs about appropriate practice with young children, but beliefs about the importance of developmentally appropriate practices increased over the course of the year while beliefs about the importance of inappropriate practices decreased. Three clusters of items (discipline practices, instructional strategies, literacy practices) were identified as tapping different dimensions of teaching practices. The proportion of individual preservice teachers who held conflicting beliefs for each of the three dimensions decreased over time. Results are discussed in terms of the influence of prior belief structures and current program content on the emergence of beginning ideas about practice in novice teachers.