Curriculum in preschool - Springer Link

CURRICULUM IN PRESCHOOL Stig Broström

SUMMARY The author introduces and discusses the new Danish preschool curriculum for children ages ½ to 6 years from a critical point of view and calls for a more extensive perspective embracing the German Bildung theory. The author advocates a curriculum emphasising a critical content, which in a much more emphatic way gives the future generation a chance to cope with future challenges.

RÉSUMÉ L’auteur présente et critique le nouveau programme préscolaire danois pour les enfants de 6 mois à 6 ans et fait appel à une perspective plus large incluant la théorie allemande de la formation (bildung). L’auteur prend la défense d’un programme mettant l’accent sur un contenu critique qui donne de façon beaucoup plus importante une chance à la future génération de faire face aux défis de l’avenir.

RESUMEN El autor nos presenta y discute el nuevo currículo danés para la escuela infantil (que abarca niños de 1/2 hasta 6 años de edad) desde un punto de vista crítico insistiendo en la necesidad de dotarlo de una perspectiva más amplia que incluya los postulados germánicos de la teoría de la formación. El autor defiende un currículo que enfatice la perspectiva crítica que es la que vía más clara de preparar a las futuras generaciones para afrontar los retos que les esperan.

KEYWORDS: Early Childhood Education; curriculum, Bildung; critical content

INTRODUCTION The tradition in early childhood education has strong roots in developmental psychology, which during the last decades more than less has been replaced by curriculum theory. The question is if the increasing curriculum thinking will contribute to more educational quality and quality in children’s life or will we see a step towards formalism in preschool education. In order to answer this question or at least to illuminate this, I will describe and discuss the new Danish preschool curriculum in the light of a number of educational theorists. While the present article deals with the development of the education in the Danish preschool some statistical information shall be given: Denmark has 65

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International Journal of Early Childhood, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2006

among the world’s highest percentages of daycare enrollment. 50% of Danish children up to 3 years are enrolled in crèche or home daycare, and 93% of the 3 to 5 year olds are enrolled in preschool. Kindergartens range in size from 20 to 80 (or more) children, divided into groups of 20 or 22. Two or three adults supervise a group of 20 children. As a rule, two of these adults are professionally qualified, while the third is not. The ratio is 6 children per adult or 10 children per preschool teacher. Preschools usually operate from about 6:30 in the morning to 5:00 in the evening. Most of the children stay in preschool about 6-10 hours five days a week to accommodate parents’ work schedules. In the Nordic countries, for more than one hundred years, preschool has been seen as having both a social and educational function. However, in contrast to preschools in some other European countries, where preschool in form and content has been more or less like formal school, the Nordic preschool has been characterized by a child-centred care ethos. Thus, preschool education has not been described by concepts like teaching, learning and curriculum, but rather more by concepts like care, relationships, activity and development. Nordic preschool teachers generally have a strong conviction that early childhood education has to be something quite different than formal education in school. Nordic early childhood education has its roots in the theories of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel and was influenced and reformulated by a critical progressive wave early in the 20th century. Together, these approaches give a background embracing concepts such as play, child-centredness, selfdirected activity, self-development, and holistic development. All these concepts are related to developmental psychology, which for almost a century has formed the basis for the development of early childhood education. Related to humanistic psychology, preschool teachers have also highlighted the importance of a rich environment and the child’s own activity in providing best opportunities for the child’s holistic development, which is defined as an externalisation of the child’s self. It is envisaged that the realisation of the self will come into effect through the child’s self-directed activity. Consequently, education in preschools is viewed as primarily activity-based. However, in order to develop himself/herself, the child has to interact with an adult, who is able to understand the child, to interpret the child’s needs, and in accordance with these, create an environment in which the child can act and develop. That is to say an empathetic adult to whom the child is strongly attached (e.g., Howes & Hamilton, 1992). In other words, the preschool teacher expresses care in two-way relationship of equals, to which each party must contribute, at subject-subject relation. Care is seen as “a connection in which each party feels something towards the other” (Noddings, 1992, p. 15). The preschool teacher expresses a caring attitude and the recipient accepts the care. In order to obtain a subject-subject relation or an I-thou relation (Buber, 1958), the protector has to express a specific emotional relation to the recipient (Noddings, 1984). Thus, the child is given space to be active on its own premises, balanced with the preschool teachers support and influence.

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Parallel with the teacher-child interaction preschool education in Denmark stresses the interaction at the peer to peer level for the child. First of all children’s togetherness is expressed through play (Bruce, 1991) and other selfdirected activities, where friendship (Broström, 1999) between children are in focus. Often the rationale of the child-child interaction is based in a Vygotskian theory of social interaction arguing for the transformation of the exterior to an interior level will only succeed through interaction with other people (Vygotsky, 1978). However, because the interpretation of this approach in general stresses the teachers active role and with that has been criticised for being too authoritarian, in decades a constructivist perspective has had a big influence in preschool education. Piaget (1929) and others, including Glaserfeld (1995), build on the theory of constructivism, which gives more attention to the child as an active subject, who creates or constructs his or her own world. Because individuals want to understand their world, through activity in a mental way they experimental with the surrounding culture, and hereby they construct a meaning. Instead of given the child fixed knowledge, to transform ideas to the children, the theory of constructivism wants to give the children the opportunity to be active themselves, and to help them solving problems and to construct their own understanding. In such a child-oriented approach to care there is a risk of the preschool affording the child so much freedom that learning and development may be compromised in some way. For that reason the “Nordic model” has been discussed and reformed during the last decades of the 20th century in order to ensure equal opportunities and a comprehensive development for all children. Consequently, the Nordic countries, like most of the European countries, (e.g., France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, England, Scotland and Malta), have recently devised and implemented preschool curricula: Norway in 1995 (Barne- og familiedepartementet), Sweden in 1998 (Utbildningsdepartementet), Iceland in 1999 (Menntamálaráduneytid), Finland in 2000 (Opetushallitus) and finally Denmark in 2004 (Socialministeriet) (for more details, see Broström & Wagner, 2003). CURRICULUM IN DENMARK PREVIOUSLY Up to 2004 Denmark had no national curriculum at preschool level except for the specification of a few general aims and educational principles. These included for example: “The development of social and general skills with a view to stimulation the all-round development” ”to stimulate imagination, creativity and linguistic skills”, and “to encourage the children’s understanding of cultural values and interaction with nature” (Socialministeriet, 1998). Such overall principles served as a starting point for the preschool teacher’s own independent reflections and classroom actions. The principles in conjunction with the child-oriented educational tradition, encouraged Danish preschool teachers to define early childhood education practice as comprising children’s own free play and, self-directed activity

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coupled with a small number of teacher initiated activities (Vejleskov, 1997). Similar findings emerged from an investigation carried out in 2003 (Broström, 2004a). Like preschool teachers in other countries (Cullen, 1996), many Danish preschool teachers expressed a resistance to curriculum theories and curriculum programmes previously applied. Thus, a further Danish investigation in 2002 shows that preschool teachers generally used the concepts of curriculum and learning with reservation (BUPL, 2002). In general, during the 20th century there has been very little interest in early childhood curriculum work in Denmark. Danish preschool teachers, as well as the Ministry of Social Affairs, have been opposed to more formalized curricula for preschools and more detailed and reflective planning concerning preschool teachers’ daily work with children. Recently however, the fact that most of the European countries decided and implemented national curriculum, and also results from PISA investigations (Artelt et al., 2003) showing a low level of Danish children’s learning, have influenced the educational debate and also effected new educational understandings in Denmark. During recent years, then, Danish preschools have moved slowly toward a slightly more formal structure, where general goals and aims, but not specific expectations and outcomes, have been articulated. For example each year all preschools have to devise their own curricula including goals, aims and educational content (Broström, 2001). Terms like learning have been cautiously introduced into kindergarten discourse (Socialministeriet, 1998), alongside with firmly entrenched notions of development as something separate and valued. Preschool teachers have begun to discuss child centredness vs. extreme child-centredness and to examine the role of preschools with regard to early language, literacy, and mathematical development. Reflecting these developments the Ministry of Social Affairs took in 2003 the initiative to raise the educational quality in day-care centres with an initiative termed the KiD program (Quality in Day-care Institutions) (Bjørg et al., 2003; Herskind et al., 2005). This developmental research program focused on the development of appropriate aims, content and principles in early childhood education, with a view to developing a learning guide or an optional nonbinding curriculum, which was to be ready in the spring of 2005. In the meantime, the politicians decided not to wait for the research results of the aforementioned program and in August 2004 an act regarding curriculum for children in educational settings from 0-6 years: Lov om pædagogiske læreplaner (Act on Educational Curricula) (Socialministeriet, 2004) was passed through parliament. The curriculum enshrined in 2004 is not a traditional national and centralized curriculum, but a requirement on each single preschool to implement six dimensions of aims and content which are expressed as general themes: 1) Personal competences, 2) social competences, 3) language, 4) body and movement, 5) nature and natural phenomena, and 6) cultural forms of expression and values (Socialministeriet, 2004). The parents and preschool

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teachers in the individual preschool must discuss and interpret these themes, and once a year devise their own curriculum based on their own specific needs and circumstances. Following the passing of the act, a group of specialists were asked to interpret, define and elaborate on each of the six headings or keywords. However, in accordance with a Danish tradition of decentralization and openness their recommendations will not be binding and will serve merely as a reference and guide to the individual preschool in implementing their own specific curriculum. CURRICULA IMPLEMENTATION Because the 2004 curriculum is very open and reflects the preschool tradition, a number of preschool teachers and researchers welcome the initiative. They argue for the need of a national curriculum in order to raise the quality of education as well as the educational competence of the preschool teachers (see e.g. Broström, 2004b). However, a majority of Danish preschool teachers and researchers view the curriculum Act a problematic step towards a more bureaucratic state regulation of the sector, as well as an adjustment to schooling involving closer state surveillance of preschool children (see e.g. Ellegaard & Stanek, 2004). Some regard the curriculum as an inadequate preschool education both in terms of post modernism and supporting children to live in a future society. First of all the most important dimension is not mentioned, namely the perspective of democracy and to see the child as an active part of society participating in democracy and contributing to the development of culture and society and through these processes obtaining knowledge of and insight into society. These aspects are topical issues mentioned in the United Nations’ (1989) Conventions of the Rights of the Child. Furthermore, an urgent and actual dimension like acknowledgement and support of multicultural life and ethnic diversity is absent. This dimension is urgent whilst preschools (at least in the cities) are ethnically mixed with children from backgrounds other than Danish and who are often discriminated against and maybe suppressed. In this context, it is left to the discretion of the preschool teachers themselves to interpret general phrases from the aims written in the overall Act of Social Service (Socialministeriet, 1998) like “learn to cooperate with other, and to be a part of binding communities” to foster development in this core area. Besides the critique outlined above neither the Act nor the guidelines contains a word about the need to take a child’s perspective or to see the child as an active subject, which, among other dimensions, is mentioned in United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). The guidelines only mention that children need to have influence on the improvement of the everyday life in preschool, but the big perspective is lacking; a vision of the future is missing. Fostering democracy it is not sufficient

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only to be involved in planning of specific activities in preschool, children need to experience a democratic life in preschool. Overall, in light of the fact that the Danish preschool curriculum has been narrowed down to a small number of traditional aims and content, there is a danger that a narrow subject understanding and formal school orientation might begin to dominate practice. In contrast, a personal and future oriented developmental curriculum based around the German concept of Bildung may be what is required in the Danish context. BILDUNG The concept Bildung is related to the humanity-oriented Geistwissenschaft (human science) and refers to the process and product of personal development, guided by reason. This means the person is engaging in self-development. In contrast to “education” which focuses on externally purposes and useful effects, Bildung seeks mental, spiritual and moral dimensions. Bildung is seen as the human being’s spiritual formation, a process and expression characterized by a personal, masterful and responsible attitude to values. Although, the concept cannot be exactly translated, but in order to stress the "Bildungstheorie", it has been suggested that the term liberal education can be used. Bildung offers an alternative/contrasting perspective to traditional adjustment socialization. Adjustment aims to socialize people into the social system, to teach them to accept the rules of society without realising that they are open to discussion and change. In the words of the Norwegian philosopher Jon Hellesnes (1976, p. 18): “Adjustment reduces humans to objects for political processes which they do not recognise as political; an adjusted human being is thus more an object for direction and control than a thinking and acting subject. Bildung means that people are socialized into the problem complexes pertaining to the preconditions for what occurs around them and with them. Bildung emancipates humans to be political subjects”. One might claim there is a distance from this macro definition to the educational practice in preschool. However, every day we see adjustment in preschool, where teachers in a friendly way set up activities and compel and force children to participate. Although they usually carry out the activities without objections sometimes they are neither motivated nor they understand the reason for the activity. Although children will benefit from the introduced activities the preschool teachers have to cooperate with the children, support them to influence their own life and help them to understand what they are doing and why. It is also possible together with young children to help them to understand “what occurs around them and with them.” In the eighties in Denmark a critical preschool approach was widespread and themes like “pollution of food, water and air” and “unemployment” were common. The ambitious idea was with the German scholar Jürgen Habermas to make the world transparent for the children. Thus, a Bildung based approach listens to the children’s perspectives and gives them the opportunity to influence their daily lives. Using the word of the American

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scholar Giroux (1988, xxxiii), Bildung should “not only empower students by giving them the knowledge and skills they need to be able to function in the larger society as critical agents, but also educate them for the transformative action in the interest of creating a truly democratic society”. The concept Bildung is distinctly expressed in German and Nordic educational theory and practice. The German scholar Wolfgang Klafki has created a curriculum theory based on the idea of Bildung: A Bildung Didaktik named “critical constructive didaktik” (Klafki, 1996), and a big number of Nordic educators have followed and elaborated this educational dimension (e.g. Schnack, 1995). As a parenthesis the English concept curriculum and the German concept Didaktik is not identical while the latter deals with aims and content in the light of political democratic Bildung. However, during the nineties researchers have tried to combine the concepts curriculum and didaktik (Gundem & Hopmann, eds., 1998; Hopmann & Riquarts, eds., 1995). Not many have elaborated and related theory of Bildung to preschool education. However, from my point of view the term Bildung can be defined through following three criteria, which at the same time are concordant with the tradition of early childhood education: 1) The child’s own activity, and dialogue with other children. 2) A feeling of obligation and commitment. 3) Participation, action and democracy. The child’s own activity is in accordance with the tradition of early childhood education. Instead of persuading the child, the preschool teacher tries to establish a dialogue through which the child is supported to reflect and to draw his/her own conclusions in the search for a wider understanding. Here for example the earlier mentioned idea of constructivism can inspire the teacher to give the child a chance to be an active person in its search for understanding the world. The preschool teacher and the child enter into a subject-subject relationship focusing on a shared object (Freire, 1972). Thus both child and teacher have an authentic interest in the object or phenomenon they investigate. Neither the teacher nor the child is doing the activity to satisfy the other but only for his/her own sake. The character of the dialogue can also be described in accordance with Habermas’ concept “non-controlling communication” including four universal-pragmatic rules: a communication in which understanding, truth, correctness and honesty are expressed (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Here the children are subjects in their own learning processes, in order to achieve real knowledge. Obligation and commitment: To achieve knowledge through a practice like Bildung does not mean just to get information. Here, practice is not reduced to technique. Knowledge is closely connected to feelings and actions of the individual. A person characterised by Bildung depends on and actively uses his or her knowledge. The Danish scholar Bent Nielsen argues: “In Bildung, over and above insight in a sphere of knowledge, there lies the fact that a criterion has been established for utilisation of that knowledge, that one has accepted a responsibility for how and for what one will use this knowledge” (Nielsen, 1973,

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p. 40-41). Sure this is not easy to connect to the preschool level, but at least two elements can be expressed in preschool: On the one side helping children to understand what they learn and how they learn and with that support their emerging self-awareness and understanding of their learning, in other words developing their meta-cognitive competence or what Leont’ev (1978, 1981) named learning motive. And on the other side helping children to make use of what they have learned. Thus Bildung is more than taking a conscious stand. On the basis of reflection and assessment, the person acts in agreement with his or her understanding of the particular subject. Thus, one might use the term action competence (Schnack, 2003), which includes the child’s motivation and feeling and desire to use the skills to transform the knowledge into practice. In other words, to be an active participant: Participation, action, and democracy: The distinction from adjustment also contributes to maintaining Bildung as a political liberal education within a democratic perspective. Emphasis is on being treated as a thoughtful active participant in the democratic process and not only an adjusted onlooker. In classroom practice the teacher listens to children, challenges them to reflect and to express their thoughts and actions and to take initiatives themselves. A similar ideal is seen in the Swedish preschool, where children actually influence and participate in planning of the educational process (Pramling Samuelsson & Sheridan, 2003). The Swedish preschool curriculum articulates a democratic approach in early education: “Children develop their ability to express their own thinking and understanding and thus they can influence their own situation” (Utbildningsdepartementet, 1998, p. 14). This is exactly what is mentioned in United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). First of all, democracy is characterized by people’s possibility to participate in social actions. WORKING WITH THE CURRICULUM If preschool teachers are not able to take the above mentioned overall dimensions into consideration, when they are implementing the curriculum in a preschool, there is a risk of reducing the educational practice and experience therein to being merely a place for adjustment and training for formal schooling. This serves to further highlight the lack of vision of the government officers who devised the curriculum in being unable to move beyond trying to achieve competence in narrow skills and knowledge in order to compete with the educational systems in other countries. However, in spite of the missing elements in the act, the preschool teachers themselves are afforded the freedom to include such a perspective. The decentralization clause demands that the preschool teachers complete their own reflections and choose educational content, which is appropriate for their specific children. In this context they can develop and include content, which at the same time provides children with basic skills and knowledge but also helps them to reflect critically.

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Inspired by Wolfgang Klafki, the preschool teacher might select knowledge and categories to make the world available to the child and at the same time the child available to the world (Klafki, 1994). This means content which points ahead and helps to make the world transparent, which helps the child to live in a future world and to solve problems of that world. For that reason the children must be afforded the opportunity to experience and deal with some fundamental problems of the time. For example being able to understand and communicate with children with other ethnic background, and to understand and cope with environmental problems. On the basis of an analysis of current modern society and reflections on the future educational content should be devised. The future has to be seen in a dual perspective. On one hand it can be described through an acknowledgement of threatening tendencies in a high-risk society, and, on the other, it can be understood in the light of new visionary possibilities in a global world (Giddens, 1991). According to the threatening tendencies Giddens (1991) describes these as a mutual relation between growth in the totality power, conflict on nuclear power, global war, ecological break down and a collapse of the mechanism of the economic development. Klafki (1994) also discusses the relation between society and decisions on educational content. He outlines six core problems or epoch typical problems: The question about war and peace, the problem of nationalism, the ecological problem, the social produced disparity, and finally the danger and possibility of new management and communication media. Every day such core problems are visible in preschool and we can observe how children cope with these in their own way of doing. For example children play and ask questions based on TV watching about war in Iran, the Palestinian conflict or a specific terrorism event, which influence their thinking and feelings for that reason they need adults helping them to come to terms with these questions. Often, in Danish curriculum studies, these is summarised and described as three crises: ecological, democratic and economic crisis, and in Klafki’s words, such societal risks and possibilities provide the education system with a large and onerous task (Klafki, 1994). However, even on the basis of such a roughly model Danish preschool teachers do have the possibility of defining and selecting such problems and perspectives as educational content. For example a few children in a Danish preschool heard their friends telling them the drinking water was poisoned and it was dangerously to drink. The truth behind the story was the fact that in the neighbour municipality there had been problems with the drinking water which led to educational activities being focused on pollution. This claim for reflection on curriculum content seeks not to reduce such content to narrow, basic subjects or forms of activity but seeks, rather, a curriculum, which strives to help children to deal with current and future problems through appropriate classroom activity.

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CONCLUSION I have critically described the Danish curriculum and emphasized the lack of modern educational reflections, e.g. having a child perspective, a discussion of how to foster a democratic child, and focusing on critical content in order to help the children to live in a future world and to solve problems of that world. More I have outlined some dimensions of such a critical, democratic and liberating preschool education, which might be a starting point for future educational experiments. In spite of my critical remarks, I had welcomed the Danish curriculum for the early years because this curriculum on the one hand can serve as a helpful tool in the process of overcoming the Danish extreme childcentredness, and on the other hand it allows the specific preschool to elaborate their own curriculum. This may establish a new educational agenda in society which might serve both the development of the children’s democratic Bildung and the appropriate construction of knowledge and skills. However, it is an open question if the Danish curriculum will pave the way towards a more democratic and liberating preschool education. It is absolutely a possibility, but the general political demand for quick and visible results documented by narrow tests can be a hindrance. Thus the set up question - will the increasing curriculum thinking contribute to more educational quality and quality in children’s life or will we see a step towards formalism in preschool education – can’t be answered at present time. My future hope is a public preschool debate, an increasing of early childhood research, lots of preschool educational experiments and developing projects which dare to go beyond the narrow educational ideas expressed in the Danish preschool curriculum. Such movements can renew the current early childhood education and draw an optimistic prospect for the preschool.

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Correspondence about this paper should be addressed to: Stig Broström, Associate Prof. [email protected] The Danish University of Education Tuborgvej 164 2400 København Danmark