Quality in curriculum decision-making in early childhood education (in classrooms for children of 4 and 5 years old)

Abstract

This article presents a quality analysis on early childhood education (ECE), built on a case study about curriculum decision-making. The study considered four scenarios of discussion regarding the concept of quality: (1) universal and cultural values of the concept that goes through the teaching process; (2) associations between quality and available structural factors; (3) discussion on the selection of academic or developmental contents; (4) pedagogical decisions applied to practical classroom teaching. Results describe decisions that are conditioned by local regulatory gaps (territorial, institutional, curricular, teacher training, and governance), with naturalized, cultural approaches to overcoming teaching challenges. Structural factors present a diverse range of conditions that can be associated to pedagogical autonomy of early childhood education. When considering the federal curriculum program, decision-making is more oriented towards early childhood developmental contents than academic skills, which are considered in different types of pedagogical decisions, and mostly focused in the central activity of the school day. These “collection of activities”, in the majority of cases, are not linked to learning goals or common topics. Spontaneous and reflexive decisions that organize teacher interventions and children interaction are not recorded or conceptualize by teachers, although they can be observed in class. A reduced number of good practices were pertinent, in terms of contents, learning goals and knowledge about the group of children, records for self-observation, based on teachers’ individual decisions.