In England, early years curriculum is under researched and there is a need to understand what curriculum means (especially in early years). My research will critically explore what is meant by early years curriculum in England and how educators make meaning of what it is. While doing this, my focus will be on educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and their practices.  Curriculum is a guidance for educators to support their work with children, but there are discrepancies in determined outcomes and perceived freedom in practice.

My overall aim is to have clear understanding of what is ‘curriculum’ in an English context because curriculum is under researched in England and there is a vagueness of what curriculum means (especially for early years). This research will also examine how educators make sense of the curriculum and how this affects their practices. While doing this, my focus will be on curricular goals and expectations, and how educators transform the curricular goals into practice. 

Curriculum and national frameworks are mostly seen as guiding documents for educators to support their work in planning and setting practices (Ang, 2013). However, the foundation stage in England contradicts itself in its purposes: guiding educators about what should be done to achieve defined outcomes, while expecting them to make curricular and pedagogical decisions according to needs and interests of children (Wood, 2020).

These are the proposed research questions to explore intended topic:

• What is meant by curriculum in ECEC in England?
• What are educators’ beliefs and attitudes regarding curriculum?
• How and to what extent educators’ beliefs and attitudes toward curriculum have an impact on practice?
• How and to what extent, curriculum informs educators’ practices? 

I am aiming to explore distinct perspectives on what curriculum is and why we need it in early years. Therefore, epistemological and ontological questions play a significant role in my study as I am examining ‘what is curriculum’ and ‘how the knowledge of curriculum is shaped’. The theoretical and philosophical frames in my study will be mainly based on educator’s beliefs and attitudes towards early years curriculum in England, however, I am aiming to provide holistic and comprehensive understanding of curriculum with the help of rigorous analysis about the history of curriculum. I will benefit from social epistemology as I seek to understand how the notion of curriculum is constituted by educators.

Qualitative case studies will be used in this research as qualitative inquiry allows me to build up a picture of the early years curriculum in England and educators’ interpretations of it (Mac Naughton, 2001). Case studies are often described as bounded or integrated systems in the study. In this way, case study is effective in providing general understanding of the real-life phenomena when uncertainty occurs between the real life and the context (Yin, 2009). I collected data from 3 different settings to gain deeper understanding of 'typical' early years setting in England. Typical can be hard to determine in the English early years context, due to the different types of settings that exist, with different staff, financial models etc. Therefore, ‘typical’ will represent that all the settings will follow EYFS as a curriculum and their latest Ofsted grades are ‘good’ I recognise that there are many contentious issues around the use of Ofsted to demark ‘typical’, but it provides a consistent approach by which I can select participants. To aim of this, multiple cases that are selected as the representative of typical can provide more information about a wider population. Data collected through semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Using both interview and observation as a data collection method will help me to see the phenomena from the wider perspective. This is because interviews can allow researchers to explore the core meaning behind observational data (Mac Naughton, 2001). However, in my research, exploring the meaning is my starting point and I need to understand participant’s beliefs and perspectives against the notion of curriculum first before observing their practices.

As my research process is still ongoing. It is difficult to provide a theory with the data I have reached so far. But it is clear that educators beliefs and perceptions on curriculum vary and it is important to understand their ideas as they are close to children and they are the one approaching curriculum. In response to the research question of ‘How educators’ beliefs and attitudes toward curriculum affect their practices’, selective coding is used to find the core category that connects all the codes together. In the analysis, three codes appeared, namely children’s needs and interests, learning through play, child-led adult-initiated practice. These are the principles of child-centeredness, which is now seen as a componenet of quality ECEC. In exploring the educators’ beliefs about curriculum, 2 major categories were identified, namely curriculum as a limiting factor and curriculum as a guidance. Some educators think that curriculum limits their practices as they need more flexibility rather than determined outcomes. However, others see curriculum as a guiding document and it also gives freedom in practice. Despite educators’ beliefs and ideas on curriculum is contradictory, their ideas on what curriculum is nearly the same. Mostly, educators believe that curriculum is what we want children to achieve. This research will contribute to the wider debates and knowledge on curriculum in order to gain a deep and holistic understanding of early years curriculum and its role in shaping practice.

Ang, L. (2013) The Early Years Curriculum: The UK Context and Beyond. Taylor & Francis Group. Mac Naughton, G., A.Rolfe, S. and Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2001) Doing Early Childhood Research: International Perspectives on Theory & Practice, Open University Press Wood, E. (2020). Learning, development and the early childhood curriculum: A critical discourse analysis of the Early Years Foundation Stage in England. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 18(3), 321–336. Yin, R. (2009) Case Study Research: Design and Methods. 4th Edition, Sage, Thousand Oaks