Content, Comprehensiveness and Coherence in Policies for Early Childhood: How the Curriculum can Contribute.
In-Progress Reflection No. 7 on Current and Critical Issues in Curriculum, Learning, and Assessment:
Abstract: In the context of international agreements and commitments concerning early childhood, the purpose of this document is to review and renew the challenges that are involved in forging educational and curriculum policies for the first level of education. In the light of early childhood being increasingly included in the public agenda, countries are making sustained efforts to increase equity and quality in the design and implementation of policies for the early years. These are policies that are in the process of changing by including quality and participation criteria; fine-tuning monitoring and assessment mechanisms; going beyond the lack of sectoral and territorial coordination, among other limitations; moving from a needs-based approach to a rights-based approach; and adopting a comprehensive view. The document analyses, from a long-term public policy perspective, some of the challenges that second-generation policies face, positioning the curriculum as the articulating factor for the development of comprehensive policies for early childhood. Based on this, avenues are proposed on which to sustain policy definitions within the framework of the commitments of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, international declarations, agreements and goals promoted by international organizations on early childhood. To this end, five themes that have a direct impact on strengthening public policies with regard to the development and overall well-being in childhood have been identified. These are the conceptualization of public policies for early childhood with a rights-based and comprehensive approach; the complexity involved in discussing the conceptualization of curriculum as well as its design; non-conventional early childhood care and education provisions; the challenges facing early childhood teaching; and the conceptual frameworks that support comprehensive care initiatives as well some considerations on intersectoral work.
Keywords: Early childhood care and education – curriculum – rights-based approach – policies
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These three-minute videos aim to share the perspective of experts from different regions.
“Curriculum in early childhood education needs to be considered from the complexity and not the simplicity. One of the most complex issues is the training of human beings in the first years of their life.”María Victoria Peralta |
“In early childhood education, the holistic development of the child in a comprehensive and integrated manner is of utmost importance in order to produce balanced individuals.”Regina Joseph Cyril
“Developing early childhood education curricula is very complicated. In order to respond to the learning needs of children, curricula must be holistic, and therefore promote cognitive, non-cognitive, and physical development of the child.”Christian Morabito |
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Christian Morabito
