Early childhood education – a unique and quasi-hidden curriculum

This paper considers the complexities and debates surrounding the concept of curriculum in Early Childhood Education (ECE). The paper highlights the tension between traditional, structured curriculum models found in schooling and the more flexible, child-centred and play-based approaches advocated in ECE. Starting from the premise that curriculum theory in ECE is underdeveloped, the discussion draws on Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device to provide a theoretical framework with which to analyse how knowledge is produced and recontextualised in ECE in both the official (state) and pedagogic field. Central to the recontextualisation are theories of child development and how they provide an underlying course of study for ECE curriculum. While the official recontextualising field is critiqued for a focus on developmental goals, the child-centred philosophies of the pedagogic recontextualising field create a hidden curriculum, with implicit symbolic systems (e.g. language, resources, the environment) providing signals to children as to what is expected of them.