Early childhood assessment is increasingly recognised as a pedagogical and professional practice that is culturally, socially, and historically situated rather than a neutral technical procedure. Approaches such as learning stories, originating within the early childhood context of Aotearoa New Zealand (Carr & Lee, 2012; 2019), have travelled internationally and are often presented as exemplars of formative, holistic, and relational assessment (Boss, 2024). Yet the movement of such pedagogies across contexts raises important questions about how assessment practices are enabled, constrained, and transformed within different educational systems.

This proposal starts from the premise that pedagogies do not travel as immutable practices but as ideas, texts, and representations that are reconstituted within different professional, institutional, and policy environments. From this perspective, the meaningful adoption of learning stories depends not only on teachers’ intentions or training but on the broader practice architectures that shape early childhood assessment and teachers’ professional learning. The study, therefore, shifts attention away from the effectiveness of learning stories as a method and towards the conditions under which such pedagogies can be taken up, adapted, or resisted.

In this proposal, we address the following research questions: 1) How are practice architectures of early childhood assessment and teachers’ professional learning configured in Aotearoa New Zealand and Romania, and 2) what do these configurations reveal about the possibilities and limitations of the international travel of learning stories as an assessment practice?

The theoretical framework is provided by the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014), that conceptualises practices as socially organised activities made possible or constrained by three interrelated sets of arrangements: cultural–discursive (the language and ideas through which practices are understood), material–economic (the resources, tools, and organisational conditions that support them), and social–political (the power relations, professional roles, and accountability structures in which practices are embedded). In this proposal, assessment practices and professional learning practice arrangements are examined relationally, with particular attention to how their respective practice architectures align, overlap, or come into tension within specific educational contexts, especially in initial teacher education.

We adopt a qualitative scoping review methodology mapping key concepts, dominant discourses, and research patterns across heterogeneous bodies of literature (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005; Levac et al., 2010). The review is combined with a theory-driven interpretive analysis informed by the practice architecture framework, enabling a systematic yet conceptually generative engagement with the literature. The review includes peer-reviewed journal articles, scholarly books, and book chapters that address early childhood assessment practices and/or teachers’ professional learning related to assessment, with an emphasis on initial teacher education. Searches are conducted in major international databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, and ERIC, complemented by targeted searches designed to capture Romanian-language scholarship that may be underrepresented in international indexing systems. Search terms combine early childhood education, assessment, professional learning, initial teacher education, and narrative assessment, allowing sensitivity to both internationally circulating and context-specific terminologies. Studies are included if they focus on early childhood education (birth–6 years), address assessment practices and/or professional learning around assessment, are situated in Romania or Aotearoa New Zealand, and contribute conceptual, empirical, or policy-relevant insights. Following screening and charting, the literature is analysed interpretively using the theory of practice architectures. Texts are examined for how they articulate cultural–discursive arrangements shaping assessment and professional learning, material–economic arrangements enabling or constraining these practices, and social–political arrangements structuring professional roles, responsibilities, and power relations. Assessment and professional learning practices are analysed relationally across contexts. Learning stories are examined where they appear explicitly, but they also function as a conceptual lens for exploring how assessment pedagogies become embedded within, or come into tension with, existing professional and institutional arrangements.

The comparative intent of the study is analytic rather than evaluative. Rather than comparing systems or outcomes, the proposed analysis offers an interpretation of how different configurations of practices and arrangements create distinct possibilities for assessment and professional learning in each context. This ecological reading makes visible both the enabling conditions and the structural constraints that shape the mobility of pedagogical practices, highlighting the conditions under which learning stories may be meaningfully recontextualised beyond their place of origin.

References Arksey, H., & O’Malley, L. (2005). Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(1), 19–32. Carr, M., & Lee, W. (2012). Learning stories: Constructing learner identities in early education. Sage. Carr, M., & Lee, W. (2019). Learning stories in practice. Sage. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Springer. Levac, D., Colquhoun, H., & O’Brien, K. K. (2010). Scoping studies: Advancing the methodology. Implementation Science, 5, 69. Mahon, K., Francisco, S. & Kemmis, S. (Eds.). (2017). Exploring education and professional practice. Springer.