Embracing Complexity and Diversity: A Vision of Early Childhood Curriculum

Abstract

This book, co-authored by Philip Hui Li and Jennifer J. Chen (2023), offers a critical set of theoretical frameworks that can help bridge the policy–practice and belief–practice gaps widely documented in the existing research literature on Early Childhood Curriculum (ECC) reforms in different contexts, especially in the Global South (e.g., Altinyelken, 2010; Bautista et al., 2021; Sikoyo, 2010; Yang & Li, 2022). Li and Chen (2023) make a strong argument that meanwhile promotes an advanced understanding of ECC. In this book, aligned with a recent line of research (e.g., Bautista et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2017; Yang & Li, 2022), they propose a new hybrid model for curriculum making in early childhood as they present the historical evolution of theoretical perspectives on ECC. Alternative frameworks are presented in this book to provoke Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) stakeholders to reflect on a reliance on the developmental perspective. Li and Chen (2023) criticize the simplistic, naive, and fragmented traditional discourse, despite its being widely taken for granted, and fully restore the complexity and diversification of ECC by paving a “middle way” via a “fusion” discourse that may be inspired by the Doctrine of the Mean (or “Zhongyong” [中庸]) in Confucianism. Various old and new theories are explained in simple