In recent years, Early Childhood Education (ECE) researchers have paid increasing attention to the quality of pre-service and in-service learning experiences of ECE professionals, in view of the need of enhancing the quality of services provided to young children. Given that curriculum guidelines are key in supporting the overall upgrade of ECE systems, Curriculum-Based Professional Learning (CBPL) has been proposed as a feasible and relevant way to better support ECE teachers’ readiness and skills for the profession. CBPL anchors professional learning in high-quality curriculum approaches and materials that enables teachers to encounter the learning experiences their students will receive and change their pedagogical practices, leading to better student outcomes (Short & Hirsh, 2020). Therefore, investigating and providing CBPL in ECE has the potential to allow pre-service and in-service teachers to receive more classroom-based and content-relevant opportunities in their professional preparation and skills development. However, how to promote and evaluate the CBPL in ECE remains a significant knowledge gap in the international research literature. To fill this research gap, we argue that it is urgent to make CBPL a research priority in the field.

The importance of CBPL for ECE teachers has been well established in the current literature. By highlighting the relationship between curriculum and teacher professional learning, providing effective CBPL can facilitate ECE teachers to use curriculum as a lever for process quality and promote collaborative teacher-initiated curriculum improvement at the school-based level, thereby leading to a boost to teachers’ pedagogical leadership. Despite its potential significance, it is still unclear about the conceptualization, implementation and evaluation of CBPL for ECE teachers. Therefore, the aims of this Research Topic can be clarified as follows:

1) to explore the theoretical underpinnings of CBPL and its framework or components;
2) to address how to create and implement effective CBPL initiatives for ECE teachers;
3) to assess the impact of CBPL on ECE teachers’ beliefs and practices, as well as on young children’s learning and development.

ECE researchers are called upon to make more efforts in researching and optimizing the CBPL initiatives for ECE teachers by addressing these research problems. We hope that this Research Topic will build a community of researchers interested in ECE curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher professional development to discuss the opportunities and challenges in this research field, and exchange their research directions, ideas, and experiences.

This Research Topic will bring together a collection of papers of the following article types: Conceptual Analysis, Original Research, Systematic Review, Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy and Policy Brief regarding CBPL in ECE to encourage diversity and inclusion of research efforts and perspectives in this emerging field.

For research design, we are interested in the large-scale quantitative nature, in-depth qualitative nature, mixed-methods research. Experimental studies focusing on examining the effectiveness of the interventions with innovative curriculum materials and teaching strategies are also highly welcomed.

Themes of interest for this Research Topic include but are not limited to the following:

• Rationales or theories of CBPL in ECE;
• Framework or elements of CBPL in ECE;
• Policy analysis of CBPL in ECE in various countries;
• Diagnosis of ECE teachers’ professional learning needs, motivations, and preferences;
• Integration of curriculum and pedagogy resources for CBPL in ECE;
• Pedagogical content knowledge of CBPL in ECE;
• Learning strategies and learning activities for CBPL in ECE;
• Exploring the influential factors affecting ECE teachers’ learning in CBPL programs;
• Evaluation of the curriculum materials and learning resources for CBPL in ECE;
• Evaluation of the effectiveness of the CBPL programs in ECE;
• Evaluation of the efficacy and/or abilities of ECE teacher educators or trainers in CBPL programs;
• Evaluation of ECE teachers’ engagement or performance in CBPL programs;
• Evaluation of the influence of CBPL intervention on children’s performance.

Topic Coordinator for this collection is Dr Chan Wang

Submit your idea

Impact

Frontiers in Psychology

Participating Journals

Impact