A Study on Early Childhood Teachers' Experience and Perception of Curriculum Assessment: Focusing on teacher agency

Abstract

This study examined early childhood teachers’ curriculum assessment experience and perception with a focus on a teacher agency in order to explore the context in which teachers' active and proactive actions occur in curriculum assessment and how the practice in which curricula and assessments are premised on each other is carried out. To this end, 2 focus group interviews were conducted with 30 teachers who had experience in implementing the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum for more than a year, and the results were analyzed. The results showed that early childhood teachers' curriculum assessment experience and perception could be divided into three upper sub-categories of ‘Looking into the world of learning: the meaning of curriculum assessment revisited’, ‘Located in a world where you can’t stay: dilemmas and difficulties faced in curriculum assessment’, and ‘Creating learning entangled with the world: changes implemented through curriculum assessment’, plus seven sub-categories of ‘Acts occurring in the field of education,’ ‘Discovery here and now,’ ‘The point of looking back on the journey,’ ‘A labyrinth wandering in questions,’ ‘Limits one wants to escape,’ ‘Creation together with the educational community,’ and ‘The route we open.’ Through this, this article shows the meaning, difficulties and limitations, and conflicts and dilemmas of curriculum assessment entangled with the here and now. It also discusses early childhood teachers’ curriculum assessment experience and perception as a phenomenon and material in itself by revealing the stories of creation achieved together.