The place of curriculum in early childhood education: insights from a comparative approach

Abstract

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) has become a priority in education policies within Latin America and across the globe. This has been paired with the progressive institutionalization of provision and the development of the curricula. However, a fragmented scenario prevails in most countries: ECCE is provided in a variety of formats and under the responsibility of different organisms and authorities. This article examines the interaction between the main curricular documents and the map of educational provision in which they are meant to regulate, in six different countries and one jurisdiction. This required a qualitative study which involved in-depth analysis of documents and secondary sources, and showed that curricular documents have diverse regulatory intents which dialogue with the maps of provision. Thus, this paper starts by describing the curricular documents and focusing on their regulatory intent, that is, the type of map transformations they promote. Secondly, it examines whether these intents aspire to modify the maps they are embedded in, in terms of unity-differentiation. The paper argues that in heterogeneous and unequal maps, there is a high probability that the documents will reinforce existing differences. In these contexts, comprehensive and cohesive documents could favor educational justice.