A Conceptual Model of Children’s Rights and Community-Based Values to Promote Social Justice Through Early Childhood Curriculum Frameworks

A “rights-integrative approach to early learning” has been proposed as a foundation for curriculum frameworks. Building on this work we conceptually explored the complementarity and compatibility of children’s rights to autonomy, protection, nondiscrimination, and participation, with community-based values of prevention and promotion, empowerment, diversity, and civic participation. We argue that it is necessary to infuse a rights-based approach with community-based values in early childhood curriculum frameworks to promote social justice for children as individuals and as a relational community. Our proposed expanded conceptual framework may be useful for evaluating early learning frameworks, nationally and internationally, from a rights-based social justice perspective.