Addressing children's life changes in the early childhood curriculum

Young children may experience stress from changes in their lives. These changes may be developmental, critical, or catastrophic. Early childhood educators need to establish partnerships with parents to help families cope with all three types of changes. Teachers can facilitate children's emotional expressions, build understanding through the use of dramatic play, provide a stable routine, monitor post-traumatic play, and discuss events that affect individual children, the entire class, or the community. Teachers can also serve as a resource to families by providing books for parents and children, and building a referal file of agencies and helping professionals.     

More than a shortage of early childhood teachers: looking beyond the recruitment of university qualified teachers to promote quality early childhood education and care

In Australia and internationally, government policies aim to increase the supply of early childhood teachers and thus improve the quality of early childhood education and care services. In this paper, we suggest that such a policy-quality trajectory in Australia is not as straightforward as policy discourses suggest. From industrial relations and broader policy contexts, we argue that the early childhood profession is a profession on the margins and that this marginalisation complicates efforts to enhance numbers of early childhood teachers. Mindful of this marginalisation, we draw upon preliminary findings from a study exploring the motivations, beliefs and expectations of mature age postgraduate students to highlight practical issues pertaining to students and early childhood teacher education programs that further complicate policy drives to increase the supply of early childhood teachers. We propose that the success of such policy drives is dependent on a comprehensive addressing of the complexities raised in this paper.     

The contextual nature of university-wide curriculum change

We explored the relationships between social contexts and factors that promoted and inhibited curriculum change at two universities. Thirty interviews were analysed using a general inductive approach to identify factors and forces in three social contexts (lecturer, departmental, and institutional). Curriculum change was characterised by six forces: ownership, resources, identity, leadership, students, and quality assurance, each composed of factors that differed in their direction (enabling or inhibiting) and/or intensity (strong or weak). Academic developers should find the approach and lessons learned useful for planning interventions and identifying where they may encounter resistance or enablers in the process of change.     

The enactment of literacy curriculum policy by early childhood teachers in two Australian schools

Since the early 2000s, literacy education has become an area of intense focus in Australian education policy, positioned to have a role in Australia's pursuit of enhanced international competitiveness in the “global knowledge economy”. Policy called for improvements in literacy outcomes, monitored by mandated annual assessments, and policy statements recognised the need to establish solid literacy foundations in early childhood to facilitate learning, and desired improvements, in later years. This article is derived from a larger study that investigated the production and enactment of literacy curriculum policy by early childhood teachers in Australian schools. It focuses on the school level within the State of Western Australia, presenting findings derived from thematic and critical discourse analysis of participant interview and documentary data collected in two case‐study schools. Comparative analysis revealed that literacy curriculum policy processes in both case‐study schools were focused on achieving improved test results in mandated testing regimes. This was impacting upon literacy curriculum in the early childhood years of schooling, in Australia deemed to involve children up to 8 years of age, in many, possibly adverse, ways. These findings may offer insights in other contexts about literacy curriculum policy processes that are focused on enhancing competitive positioning.     

Early childhood arts curriculum: a cross-cultural study

Many countries, including Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have included art subjects in their core curriculum. Using the theory of governmentality as a critical lens to investigate the intricate power–knowledge system in relation to curriculum, arts and pedagogy, this paper makes a comparative document analysis of two contemporary arts curricula for children aged 5–6 years—the Beijing Kindergarten Happiness and Development Curriculum in the arts learning area (upper class in kindergarten), and the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (Foundation level). Curriculum is best understood as a multi-faceted phenomenon and this paper draws from research which categorized curriculum into three phases: the intended (or planned) curriculum, the enacted (or implemented) curriculum and the experienced (the learner experience) curriculum. By focusing on the first phase: the intended curriculum, this paper compares the documents that comprise the planned curriculum from two very different contexts, and thus makes a contribution to cross-cultural understanding of early childhood arts curriculum in ways that may lead to social change.     

A study of early childhood education programmes in Delhi,India

Early years is the period of rapid physical and mental growth wherein the foundation for the child's development is laid and therefore, these years are considered extremely critical for the overall development of the child. Given the critical significance of these early childhood years, it is imperative for every child to get the opportunity to develop in a stimulating environment. The early childhood programmes provide this stimulating environment to the children. Extensive research evidence indicates towards the positive impact of early intervention and both short-term and long-term gains of an early childhood programme. However, mere participation in an early childhood programme is not sufficient. The quality of the programme attended by the children at this stage is also crucial. The various provisions provided by the programme to the children determine the quality of an early childhood programme. Curriculum seems to be the basic variable that influences the provisions provided to children in an Early Childhood Care and Education programme and in turn determines the quality of the programmes for children. This article is an attempt to study the variability of provisions provided and curriculum implemented in different early childhood programmes.     

Preparing early childhood educators for global education: the implications of prior learning

This paper outlines the increasing cultural diversity of Australia’s education settings and explicates the global education movement and the new Australian Early Years Learning Framework. It discusses the implication of these factors for early childhood education practice and early childhood teacher education. The key research question considered in this paper is what prior learnings do early childhood educators utilise to consider global education? Data are presented on a research project that explores the prior learning of pre‐service early childhood educators at a major Australian university. The paper shows that, unlike primary and secondary pre‐service teachers, most early childhood education pre‐service teachers have significant professional experiences in educational settings. These prior experiences have a significant impact on pre‐service early childhood educators’ knowledge, beliefs and attitudes in the area of global education and align strongly with the global education curriculum movement and new national curriculum.     

What troubles early childhood educators in New Zealand: a 20-year cross-sectional study of ethical difficulties in early childhood practice

For more than 20 years, the New Zealand early childhood (EC) sector has had guidance about how to deal with situations of ethical difficulty in daily practice through the ECE Code of Ethics. This paper reports on three surveys undertaken at 10-year intervals that sought to understand EC educators’ experiences of such situations, and how they addressed them within their EC settings. An analysis of educators’ stories of ethically troubling situations from the three data-sets traced shifts and similarities in the content reported, and in how educators responded to these challenges over the two-decade period. We situate this analysis alongside changes in the New Zealand ECE policy context during the same time frame. We argue that a connection exists between the reported situations and teachers’ responses to them, and changes within the policy and professional context of daily EC practice.     

Analyzing teacher narratives in early childhood garden-based education

Learning gardens can provide dynamic learning and developmental experiences for young children. This case study of 12 early childhood teachers explores how teachers describe (1) learning across numerous school readiness domains and (2) how to support this learning by promoting opportunities for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Participants worked at a university-affiliated early education program with a learning garden in the midwestern United States. Data included 19 narrative, photo-elicitation interviews during two growing seasons. Iterative qualitative analyses informed the creation of a Gourd Tee-Pee Model that describes learning across multiple domains and integrates self-determination theory into early childhood garden education. This framework can inform the design and evaluation of early childhood garden education programs.     

Contemporary trends and developments in early childhood education in China

Early childhood education in China has gone through a century‐long development process and has made great progress in the past two decades. Contemporary early childhood education is becoming diverse in its forms and educational approaches, and is aligning itself with the increasingly open and diversified society. It is clear that early childhood education in China is strongly influenced by sociocultural changes and reflects the hybrid of traditional, communist and Western cultures. We should re‐think what happened in past years and continue to promote reform and development in early childhood education.     

Models of supervision in early childhood programs: Implications for training

Many child care directors inherit their role of supervisor without having had adequate training or experience. Given the wide disparity in the field with respect to staff preparation, child care directors, in their role as supervisors, are called on to develop, train, evaluate, and appraise child care workers on a daily basis. The literature in the field suggests that there are common threads among supervisory models in early childhood and that directors of child care programs can benefit from in-service training that specifically addresses their supervisory functions. “The most difficult part of my job as Director is trying to get my staff to change certain practices.” Director, Church Preschool Program “I don't feel comfortable with my role as evaluator; I guess I don't like telling people they're doing something wrong.” Director, Day Care Center     

Early means early: understanding popular understandings of early childhood development in South Africa

Scientific and policy advances are putting early childhooddevelopment (ECD) at the center of efforts to improve humandevelopment. This study was undertaken to understand whatknowledge and attitudinal barriers exist that 25 hinder the full-scaleroll-out of services for the youngest children and their families.We used anthropological methods honed by the FrameworksInstitute to plumb beliefs about early childhood development amongmembers of the public and implementation and policy stakeholders,and compare those with the findings from ECD research. Whilemembers of the public and stakeholders agree on the importance ofECD, as demonstrated in other country settings, a major barrier todirecting services to the youngest children is a perceptual tendencyto ‘age up’. That is, to consider learning and other important skillsas being acquired in the pre-school rather than infancy period.Communication strategies that incorporate debate are neededto give full effect to the ECD and related policies, especiallyaround the topics of prioritizing the youngest 40 children, physicalpunishment, child rights, and the pervasiveness Q5 of threats toECD arising from poverty and disadvantage.     

Renovating early childhood education pedagogy: a case study in Vietnam

Since 2003, the Vietnamese government has prioritised curriculum reform efforts and commitment to improving the quality of the national curriculum. The Vietnamese early childhood education renovation has encountered considerable changes and challenges, particularly in the area of pedagogical approaches. Many early childhood teachers continue to favour direct instruction over more appropriate teaching practices for early childhood. This paper reviews the implementation and renovation of the revised curriculum over the past 10 years in Vietnam, and examines the changing realities of early childhood teachers' work to explore ways to implement and sustain changes in pedagogy in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. The paper explores how changing societal expectations and the changing educational philosophies and resultant pedagogy have impacted on the beliefs and practices of early childhood teachers. The teaching profession, as a whole, is facing ongoing change and challenge; not only are ongoing educational reforms redefining teachers' work, but increasing teacher attrition and turnover also creates problems for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Lam Dong province. The paper concludes with suggestions for areas for future research in Vietnam in the field of ECEC.     

Weather worlding: learning with the elements in early childhood

In the context of challenges posed by climate change, this paper draws attention to the significance of children’s relationship with weather. The paper contends that it is time to engage more closely with children’s weather relations when developing and experimenting with new environmental pedagogies. Furthermore, it is argued that there is a need look beyond the ways children learn ‘about’ the weather (where this is presented as something separate to our human selves), to more situated and entangled ways of learning in and ‘with’ weather. Notions such as the ‘weather world’ and ‘weathering’ are discussed here as valuable starting points for re-thinking child/weather relations. These offer a way forward where the lively curiosity of children, combined with the educational practice of being with the weather, may open up alternative, less human-centric ways of coming to know and respond to the environmental challenges ahead.     

Schematising activities in early childhood education

The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of introducing schematising to children in early childhood and to determine whether schematising can be taught to children. This was done using a longitudinal, quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design (N = 133). In this study, the use of schematising was taught to an experimental group of children to determine if it is possible to realise significantly improved results in schematising tasks for an experimental group in comparison to a control group of children who were not taught schematising. Pupils in the experimental group demonstrated significantly better results on schematising, which cannot be explained by maturation. In our future research, we will investigate the mathematical performances of these experimental and control groups in the next grade of the primary school curriculum.     

Factors that impede curriculum change: a preliminary report

The management of curriculum change in religious education is of interest to all who are concerned with a continuing pursuit of excellence in this curriculum area. Utilising a grounded theory approach, this paper describes some findings concerning the management of curriculum change in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia. It reports the perspective of religious education coordinators, who were responsible for managing a major change in the religious education curriculum in Catholic secondary schools. Emanating from a broader on‐going study, the report focuses on factors that the religious education coordinators felt impeded curriculum change.     

Policy-to-practice contexts for early childhood mathematics in England

This article considers the relationship between policy and practice in the early childhood mathematics curriculum for reception-class (RC) children of five years in England. It explores what the policy requires RC teachers to do in terms of curriculum implementation; what RC teachers’ views and understanding of the early childhood mathematics curriculum are; how RC teachers implement early years mathematics policy; and how RC children respond. A case study design included interviews with elite participants who influenced the policy-making process, survey of RC teachers and a detailed investigation of RC classes on three school sites. As elite interviews underlined, international comparison studies have had an important influence on early childhood mathematics policies by creating top-down pressure for standards. Elites and practitioners drew attention to a tension between a play-based pedagogy and a standards agenda. Tensions in policy text were reflected in mixed and ambivalent views and reported practices by elites and practitioners. RC teachers did not merely receive and implement policy expectations but brought their own values and understandings to practice. The study reveals interplay between local and global influences in a context of changing views of early childhood, early learning and early years pedagogy.     

If not quality,then what? The discursive risks in early childhood quality reform

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the findings of a genealogical study and argues that the global discourse of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is based on a number of problematic assumptions that converge to identify ‘quality’ as the site of government investment. Using the Australian policy context as an example, the assumption that only quality ECEC is beneficial for children is linked to the historical privileging of mother-care and the male breadwinner through family policy. Using Foucault’s notion of the ‘art of government’, the implications of the discursive logics of quality are outlined, including how ‘not quality’ childcare is positioned as potentially harmful, yet, the workforce can never be ‘quality enough’. It is recommended that early childhood sector academics, advocates and professionals work to introduce new discursive statements to the global policyscape, in order to create and foster diverse representations and understandings of the benefits and value of ECEC.     

A model for portfolio assessment in early childhood education programs

It is necessary for teachers to consider alternative means of evaluating their students. One method proving to be effective for gathering and organizing student productivity, growth, and development is the portfolio approach. This article describes the Early Childhood Portfolio Assessment Preparation (ECPAP) Model that was used to facilitate the use of student portfolios in two different early childhood education programs. The goals of the model, the six steps followed and the participants' responses to this project are discussed. This article may serve early childhood directors and supervisors who are preparing teachers to implement student portfolios as a supplement or an alternative to the existing assessment and evaluation programs. Also early childhood teacher education students can benefit from the design and implementation of ECPAP.