Development of the child care and education curriculum to raise spontaneity of children under 3:

With a focus on the emergent curriculum

Abstract

　The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of emergent curriculum. The emergent curriculum approach, characterized by its emphasis on constructing and evolving nursery child-care/education programs based on children’s interests (spontaneity), is considered a suitable approach for children under three, the age group in which children’s desire for independence is most strongly manifested. This study was conducted by discussing the usefulness of emergent curriculum with child-care providers from nursery schools that employ the emergent curriculum approach, with reference to their past activity plans and notes on implementation experiences, and to their perspectives on curriculum development.

　This study produced the following four findings. First, analysis of the under-three curricula presented (annual, monthly, and weekly plans) revealed that the emergent curriculum approach enabled the child-care providers to develop and implement, in real time, curricula tailored to the actual child-care setting and the children’s state of personal growth. Second, the direction being taken in development of the format of emergent curriculum has become clearer. Third, the emergent curriculum approach is a useful means of sustaining a feedback cycle between planning and implementation. Fourth, the results of this study suggest that a key concept for supporting emergent curricula would be to formulate daily activity plans not as mere schedules but as frameworks that put emphasis on how the children experience the transitions from one activity to another. A next step to follow this study would be to explore concepts for communicating to others the usefulness of the emergent curriculum approach.