The Role of Formal Curriculum Documents in Early Childhood Education Reform: China and Australia
This chapter discusses the role of formal curriculum in early childhood education and care (ECEC) reform. China introduced a draft curriculum guideline in 2001 but most major policy documents to support curriculum reform have been produced since 2010. Aus
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The Role of Formal Curriculum Documents in Early Childhood Education Reform: China and Australia Xin Fan and Berenice Nyland
4.1 Introduction Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has received increased attention from policy makers in recent years. Reasons for this are multiple reflecting the fact that ECEC has diverse goals that include child development and education outcomes, support for parent employment and/or training, the growth of future workforces suited to a knowledge economy, early intervention for vulnerable children and wider social and civic well-being. Curriculum in early childhood is a contested concept and differs greatly from curriculum in other educational areas. Even the language used by policy makers to describe early childhood curriculum suggests ambiguity. Two popular terms used to refer to early childhood curriculum are ‘guidelines’ and ‘frameworks’. The Chinese document is referred to as guidelines (MoE 2001) and the Australian curriculum is a learning framework (DEEWR 2009). The introduction of accompanying policies to support successful implementation of these policy documents has been a common practice in many countries including China and Australia. The Chinese data is drawn from interviews with Chinese early childhood directors across 16 provinces who were attending a national in-service in Beijing. As directors they all felt they were considered leaders in the implementation process. The Australian data was drawn from interviews with staff across three ECEC
X. Fan (*) Sun Yat Sen University, Guangzhou, China B. Nyland School of Education, RMIT University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. Ng, B. Nyland (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Early Childhood Education Reforms in Australia and China, International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development 32, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53475-2_4
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centres. They held various positions, director, room leader and educators. Findings suggest varied interpretations of curriculum reform among these educational directors and staff and a variety of constraints. For the Chinese participants there were issues because of differing applications of policies across jurisdictions. For the Australian staff the problem of differing policies across states and borders was one of the reasons for the reform so they were all under shared national legislation, regulations, curriculum and quality assessment for the first time. Many of the Chinese directors found the curriculum policy document abstract and some were confused by opportunities for commercialisation that the national curriculum provided. Some Australians had a similar reaction to the EYLF, also finding it ambiguous, while one participant was wildly enthusiastic. The EYLF has also seen commercial systems introduced, especially in the documenting of children’s learning. A challenge for both groups was the role of play in the curriculum documents. The question asked in both stu
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