Setting: A university tutorial room

Participants: An international group of 3rd year BEd (Early Years) students and their lecturer

Subject: Curriculum in the early childhood setting

Lecturer: We’ve spent some time talking around the idea of a curriculum and I think we all have some ideas about what a curriculum is. In your reading today, Peter Moss argues that curriculum development is a political act. He says it is constructed – reflecting the values and beliefs of those involved at a particular point in time. He also says it is contested – there is no one agreed idea of curriculum, but rather multiple views of what it should be. What I’d like you to do in your groups is talk about what you think a curriculum is and what you think an early years curriculum should achieve for children. Take about 15 minutes to discuss this and then we will discuss it as a group. Get someone from your group to record your ideas, so that we can share them.

Students move off into groups of about six people and begin the task set by the lecturer.

Daniel: I hate it when she asks these sorts of questions! I feel like there is never a right answer.

Jacob: Yes, it is annoying – hard to see what relevance this has to what happens in the reality of the classroom, but I suppose we’d better have a go at answering the question or she’s bound to pick on us for an answer.

Kiri: I don’t see what all the fuss is about really, as we have two curriculum documents in my country that dictate what we should be doing: Te Whāriki and the New Zealand Curriculum.

Hui Lee: In my context we only have one – Nurturing Early Learners. It’s the framework for the kindergarten curriculum in Singapore.

Daniel: We have just had our first document developed. It is a national early years learning framework for Australia – Belonging, Being and Becoming. But each of our states and territories has its own curriculum as well.

Kiri: Most countries have some type of written curriculum document. Surely the people who wrote those documents knew what they were on about?

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