A Kaleidoscope of Factors: Examining Early Childhood Educators’ Decision-Making Processes When Co-constructing Curriculum
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Children’s play and learning in childcare centres and family childcare programs are influenced by the decisions of early childhood educators (ECEs) as they co-construct an emergent curriculum within their learning communities alongside children, coeducators, professional leadership, and families. This research investigated the internal and external factors influencing the decisions of five ECEs as they responded to their unique and dynamic curriculum development process in their work with children of toddler ages. The metaphor of a kaleidoscope was used to peer closely into the intricate and complex experience of an ECE in their practice. The lens of the kaleidoscope was comprised of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, Pyle and Danniels’ continuum of play-based learning, and Flight: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework.A case study methodology included thematic analysis within and across cases. The ECEs’ “cycle of co-inquiry” for curriculum development was explored through semistructured interviews. Pedagogical documentation, a secondary source of data, provided windows into curriculum moments with toddlers. Five portraits were written using portraiture inquiry to capture a close encounter with the intersection between the ECE’s background, co-inquiry practice, and their reflections about their decision-making processes revealed by analysis of one pedagogical documentation. Four themes emerged describing the factors that influenced ECEs’ decision making across the case studies. The first theme explored how collaborative practice invited multiple perspectives. Second, within a responsive environment established for the ECE, they shared the locus of control with the learning community. The third theme illustrated how ECEs deeply listen to toddlers, which involved attending to their multimodal communication. The last theme revealed how ECEs’ dispositions and values factored into engagement with the toddlers’ learning through play.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.026 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".