Young children's curriculum experiences

Previously, I have written about early childhood pedagogies (Murray 2018). In introducing this exciting extended issue of International Journal of Early Years Education, I focus on another key feature of early education, regarded as ‘a foundational fulcrum on which quality pedagogy rests’ (Kagan, Kauerz, and Junus 2022): curriculum. The wide range of manuscripts focused on curriculum that we receive at International Journal of Early Years Education are testament to the prominence of curriculum in the work of those who research in our field; alongside this focus in recent years, we have seen an exponential rise in centralised curriculum frameworks. In this paper, however, I argue that the key actors in any early childhood curriculum that secures learning most likely to be meaningful to young children are those who are directly engaged in its implementation: the learners and their teachers. In building this argument, I consider some definitions and components of curriculum, the potential of curriculum for reproducing or reducing inequalities, its role in an uncertain and dynamic global landscape, merits of an holistic approach, children’s agency in curriculum, and the teacher’s role in reifying a curriculum with value and relevance for young learners whose lives as adults we cannot yet imagine (Wiliam 2011). When the term ‘curriculum’ was originally linked to education in the C16th Europe, it denoted an ordered systematic framework for what is taught and learned (Hamilton 1989). Four hundred years later, curriculum was still being defined as ‘All the learning which is planned and guided’ (Kerr 1968, 16). However, it is important to note that these descriptions refer to the explicit curriculum, as distinct from the ‘hidden curriculum’, which is instrumental in the implicit reproduction of values and behaviours in schools (Jackson 1968). In C21st early childhood provision, the explicit curriculum may be described at its most prescriptive as the ‘organised framework that delineates the content children are to learn, the processes through which children achieve the identified curricular goals, what teachers do to help children achieve these goals, and the context in which teaching and learning occur’ (NAEYC&NAECS/SDE 2009). YetUNESCOproposes amore holistic view of curriculum that encompasses formal and informal curricula: the ‘totality of what children learn while at school – including what they learn through classroom activities; in interdisciplinary tasks; across the school, for example, in the playground, at lunch timewhen eating (civic responsibilities, etc.)’ (Stabback 2016: 9).Moreover, the early childhood curriculum has been defined as ‘everything children do, see, hear or feel in their setting, both planned and unplanned’ (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and Department for Education and Employment (QCA and DfEE) 2000:1).