Early Childhood Curriculum in Chinese Societies

Policies, Practices, and Prospects

Weipeng Yang,Hui Li

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351027243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

Although Chinese societies have generally become striking as the classic over-achievers in international measures of academic performance, there has been no specialised publication exploring early childhood curriculum in Chinese contexts. Through this book, readers will learn more about how the Chinese context and culture collide with educators' beliefs about the right activities for children and educators in early childhood settings. This book will be the first one of its kind to focus on early childhood curriculum in Chinese societies – from social context and culture to reforms and practices, and finally to the lessons that researchers, policymakers and practitioners could learn, as well as future directions. Is play valued? Are young children schooled earlier in Chinese societies? How do Chinese children learn in kindergartens? What is valued by Chinese educators when they implement early childhood curricula? How do Chinese teachers deliver early childhood curricula for their young children? Why were Chinese early childhood curricula implemented in these ways? Answers to these questions and more will be provided in this pioneering book.

Part 1

Early childhood curriculum policies in Chinese societies

1 Early childhood curriculum in the era of globalisation

An overview

The world is changing dramatically as a consequence of the accumulatively accelerated development of science and technology. In the face of these changes and challenges, the education field is also evolving and transforming gradually and inevitably. At the core of these educational reforms is the continuous pursuit of an effective and appropriate curriculum to meet the needs of students (Print, 1993). Early childhood curriculum (ECC) has drawn considerable attention from policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, and has become a topical issue since the turn of the new millennium (Siraj-Blatchford, Sylva, Muttock, Gilden, & Bell, 2002; Sylva et al., 2007; Yang, 2018). China is no exception. For instance, its educational authorities issued a set of new curriculum guidelines since 2000 to enhance the quality of curricula at all levels and promote curriculum innovations (school-based curriculum development or SBCD in particular) in the field of early childhood education (ECE). Although SBCD requires full participation, democracy, teacher autonomy, professionalism, and decentralisation, which might be conflicting with the hierarchical and centralised education system in China, educational authorities keep promoting its implementation in Chinese kindergartens (Li, 2006). Such a kind of ‘blind reform’ is not a uniquely Chinese phenomenon because many other countries have also followed the same track. This ‘blind reform syndrome’ has become a ‘syndrome’ around the world, reflecting many misconceptions and misunderstandings, and deserves academic research. This book aims to find the cause of this ‘syndrome’ and, accordingly, figures out some theoretical and practical solutions to cure it. This chapter will open this book by reconceptualising the key concepts, understanding the major foundations of ECC, reviewing the contemporary ECC models, and re-examining the paradigm shift against the backdrop of globalisation and internationalisation.

Early childhood curriculum: key concepts

Reconceptualisation of ‘Curriculum’

‘It is a truism, perhaps, to say that one can find at least as many definitions of curriculum as one can find curriculum textbooks’ (Gress & Purpel, 1978, p. 1). There is no consensus on the definition of curriculum, due to the term’s complexity and flexibility. Li (2007) identified six general categories of definitions of curriculum: (1) curriculum as learning subjects and teaching materials; (2) curriculum as children’s learning experience of the children; (3) curriculum as a school-organised learning activity; (4) curriculum as a teaching plan; (5) curriculum as an expected learning result or target; and (6) curriculum as an autobiographical text constructed by teachers and students. Almost all existing definitions of curriculum can be positioned in one or more of these categories. For example, Head Start Bureau (2001) defined curriculum as ‘a written plan that includes the goals for children’s development and learning; the experiences through which they will achieve these goals; what staff and parents do to help children achieve these goals; and the materials needed to support the implementation of the curriculum’ (p. 120). Skilbeck (1984), on the other hand, defined curriculum in terms of children’s learning experiences, which ‘are expressed or anticipated in goals and objectives, plans and designs for learning, and the implementation of these plans and designs in school environments’ (p. 21). While Cuban (1992) saw it as ‘a series of planned events intended for students to learn particular knowledge, skills, and values and organised to be carried out by administrators and teachers’ (p. 221). These examples are contained within the categories presented by Li (2007).

Conceptualising curriculum has been likened to ‘blind people describing an elephant,’ in that everyone bases their understanding of the whole on the small part they can ‘touch,’ without realising the whole truth (Saxe, 1869) – those who only grasp the elephant’s trunk, metaphorically speaking, have a far different image of the whole beast than those who just feel its tusks. To ensure that the definition of curriculum in this study is sufficiently broad to cover the research questions, a general definition from the statement given by NAEYC and NAECS/SDE (2003) could be borrowed, which depicts curriculum as ‘a complex idea containing multiple components, such as goals, content, pedagogy, or instructional practices’ (p. 6). Keeping in mind Li’s classifications (2007), and based on this definition, this present chapter defines curriculum as a complex system comprised of multiple components, including goals, content, learning experiences, daily activities and routines, pedagogy, and/or instructional practices. This definition further implies that a comprehensive and inclusive framework with multiple perspectives should be used to accurately examine the curriculum and its changes.

Curriculum must also be understood in the context of ECE. ECE has become the hot focus of and important agenda item for nations throughout the world, effectively becoming a global trend. Over the last quarter-century, some significant strands of research have greatly influenced governments to attach importance to fostering ECE enterprises for the public. The foremost of these has been research on early brain development, which has demonstrated that the human brain develops most rapidly in the early years, and affects future stages of overall development; thus environmental stimulation should be well designed or prepared to improve the development of children’s brains in education’s early years (Mustard, 2010; Shonkoff, 2009; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Furthermore, economists have shown that the return on investment for government financial support of early childhood development is larger than that for investment in adult development, suggesting promoting ECE quality is important and meaningful for families, governments, and society (Dodge, 2004; Heckman, 2004; Lynch, 2004; Shonkoff, 2009). As Heckman (2004) strongly asserted, ‘the real question is how to use the available funds wisely. The best evidence supports the policy prescription: invest in the very young.’

Reconceptualisation of ‘Early Childhood Curriculum’

Early childhood curriculum (ECC) refers to the curriculum for institutions, programmes, or centres that provide early childhood education and care (ECEC) for young children. As pointed out by W. Carr and Kemmis (1986), ‘educational acts are social acts. As social acts, they are reflexive, historically located, and embedded in particular intellectual and social contexts. So, knowledge about education must change according to historical circumstances, local contexts, and different participants’ understandings of what is happening in the educational encounter. And it is clear that the knowledge will to a very great extent be rooted in local historical and social contexts’ (p. 44). As children are the products of a given society and culture, their learning may have different trajectories due to the different experiences in and values of their different communities. Sociocultural theory, therefore, offers a useful theoretical framework that includes the effects of personal, interpersonal, and cultural systems on children’s learning (McLachlan, Fleer, & Edwards, 2013). Based on the sociocultural theory, researchers could further deem ECC to be: (1) the individual entity of curriculum, with its components being examined; (2) the interrelated processes in curriculum development and implementation; and (3) the cultural-institutional processes in curriculum development and implementation.

ECC is shifting under the profound influence of an education reform movement that has become a global trend in the new century. As Howells (2003) said, ‘education is about change, and it is hard to imagine that there will not be a time when the curriculum does not need to be changed to meet changing conditions in society’ (p. 38). Thus, how curricula should be changed has become an important question awaiting answers. As Skilbeck (1984) noted, ‘Changes in society at large have their own momentum and can have a more powerful impact on the school curriculum than the deliberate planning efforts of teachers and others within the school’ (p. 72). Accordingly, the change and transformation of school curricula have become hot topics for educators in most countries.

It is wise to examine the shifts in ECC by referring to the bigger picture of the globalisation of education and education reforms. A large amount of research has been done on the globalisation of education, and various theories have been proposed to explain worldwide education reforms. These research and theories provide different lenses for examining global education discourses, the influence of global forces on education (Spring, 2014), and the delicate balance between global and local concerns in changing education.

Two approaches might be valuable for examining the relationship between change and tradition, and the interactions between global and local concerns in global education reforms. One is to present ‘a big picture’ – comprehensive analyses of education discourses or education reforms on a global scale – while the other is to deeply study and explore how a single case (e.g., nation, region, community, school, etc.) deals with the globalisation of education, to present ‘thick description’ – interesting and meaningful details. The former is more common in extant research. For example, Spring (2014) analysed the intersection of global forces and education, and revealed some crucial forces shaping education globally, including: (1) intergovernmental organisations (e.g., United Nations, World Bank, and OECD); (2) information and communication technology (ICT); (3) transnational nongovernment organisations (NGO); and (4) multinational corporations involving with publishing and testing (e.g., TIMSS, PISA, and PIRLS). Regarding individual nations, Rotberg (2010) edited a book presenting systematic analyses of education reforms in sixteen countries; as Rotberg (2010) said, ‘the reforms in all countries must balance change and tradition’ (p. xi), thus forming a global movement. Likewise, how indigenisation may and should happen in education research and social sciences in China against the background of internationalisation has been reviewed and examined, revealing that the Western discourse and perspective have been emulated while less attention was paid to the cultural heritages and diversity (Yang, 2013, 2015).

Early childhood curriculum: major foundations

Early childhood programmes are different from formal schools, in terms of methods (activities), materials, and decision-making (Saracho & Spodek, 2002). It is necessary to fully review the theories and previous studies on the practices and transformations of ECC, to lay a solid foundation for this current empirical research. Many curriculum models and approaches have been established and implemented in early childhood settings around the world, and are briefly reviewed in this section.

Foundation I: child development

Child-individually appropriate practice (i.e., child-centred/child-sensitive curriculum), which belongs to the mainstream of research and practice in ECC founded on child development studies, can be understood in terms of NAEYC’s globally recognised DAP guidelines – principles built on theories of child development (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009).

In 1987, developmentally appropriate practice (DAP) was first adopted in a position statement proposed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), in the United States. Since then, it has become one of the most influential theoretical ideas in the field of ECE throughout the world (Lee, 2004). DAP derived from developmental psychology in the early part of the last century, and is based on the view that children are a homogenous group, independent of their living environment. DAP argues that knowledge of how children develop and learn can be applied to create ECC (Ebbeck, 2002).

As an ECE pedagogical guideline, DAP has been extended to include culturally appropriate practice (CAP) in subsequent renewed versions (Gestwicki, 2011). However, NAEYC uses the concept of CAP in highlighting that ECE practices should be culturally sensitive and responsive to suit increasingly diverse American classrooms, which should be understood as a culturally responsive practice, rather than a CAP (Kim, 2007). It has become increasingly evident that DAP cannot frame the complex nature of the development and learning of young children from diverse groups in society (Genishi & Goodwin, 2008). Although NAEYC focuses on multicultural education by emphasising CAP, some scholars use CAP to stress the significance of the development of culturally appropriate educational systems in particular contexts (Li, 2005; Li & Chau, 2010; Pei, 2010). To better expand or supplement the guidelines of DAP, the term developmentally and culturally appropriate practice (DCAP) has been used to guide ECC practice to consider cultural contexts more closely (Hyun, 1995; Lee, 2004).

Considering the feasibility of implementing ECC, and applicability of adopting Western mod...