Often curriculum studies in early childhood education fail to recognize the curricular perspectives. For the field of early childhood education to be vital and significant, diverse views on curricula must be nurtured. In this article, 1 present curric...
Often curriculum studies in early childhood education fail to recognize the curricular perspectives. For the field of early childhood education to be vital and significant, diverse views on curricula must be nurtured. In this article, 1 present curricular perspectives on early childhood education. By reviewing early childhood education and curriculum literatures according to their core epistemological and ethical assumptions and views on the concept of a curriculum, I identify four schools of thought: 1) idealists, who advocate that the aim of early childhood education is the unfolding of the child's rationality; 2) developmentalists, who assert that a school task is to create the environment which enables a child to encounter and solve ever more complex and demanding problems; 3) empiricists, who view an early childhood curriculum as a series of specific educational content or objective to be attained; and 4) reconceptualists, who regard the curriculum as a tool fer emancipating children, parents, and teachers from unequal and of often unjust social orders.