engleski

Early childhood curriculum: from conceptual clarity towards the research of personal practice

In this paper, we discuss the notion of the curriculum as a dynamic and interactive document rather than a static one. Its reading is a dynamic process that, above all, depends on how practitioners read certain settings in the document, i.e., how they interpret it. Therefore, we discuss the meaning of the curriculum as a social construction that is created through practitioners’ reflection on their own experiences and the experiences of others, based on the curriculum as a conceptual framework, personal beliefs, value systems, and theoretical knowledge that are closely related or unexplored without understanding the preschool culture. Direct research of educational practice and the shaping of the preschool curriculum is a continuous and responsible concern for the quality development of early and preschool care and education institutions as a whole. Therefore, we are interested in better understanding the educational practice in which the child is an active, constructive creator of his/her development, care, and education and the adult is a helper who assists and supports the child's development, care, and education. Early and preschool-aged children need a variety of opportunities to engage in discovering, experimenting, and exploring cause-and-effect relationships in their own way in quality, supportive environment. The preschool teacher's role and readiness to develop his/her own practice by documenting and researching reflectively are crucial in the endeavor to contribute to improving working with early and preschool-aged children. As a methodological strategy used by modern practitioners, action research has proven to be a crucial segment of improving the practice, with an emphasis on the processes of developing preschool teachers into reflective practitioners.

action research ; educational practice research ; curriculum ; national curriculum ; professional development

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