Moving from imitation to innovation: Exploring a Chinese model of early childhood curriculum leadership

Curriculum awareness

Curriculum awareness means that the leaders could understand the importance of curriculum to school development. This awareness would then allow for follow-up curriculum leadership and construction. Both SZ1-L1 and SZ2-L1 said that they had learned the concept of ‘curriculum’ during the late 1990s, and had recognised its importance as the whole ecosystem for young children’s learning since then. SZ3-L1 commented that SZ1-L1, who had directed their kindergarten for five years, had a very strong awareness of and clear direction for curriculum development. This awareness drove them to reform the kindergarten’s original curricular practices to align them with the new round of national early childhood curriculum reform, which advocated child-centredness and active learning. This finding is consistent with the experience shared by Glatthorn et al. (2012: 280): ‘Principals need to become aware and knowledgeable about new approaches to curriculum supervision. They have to know how to write and direct curriculum’.

Leading notions

New values were introduced with the requirement of changes. The leaders tended to be pioneers in promoting progressive notions among the teachers. Among these progressive ideas, differentiated instruction was found to be the consensus shared by the participating leaders. From the very beginning, the leaders had oriented children’s differentiated learning as the direction of curriculum development. For instance, HK1-L2 stated that the new curriculum aimed to respect and scaffold each child’s strengths and weaknesses in learning. The pace and choice of learning content could be different for each child in the new curriculum. HK2-L1 shared the same sentiment, stating:

I believe every child is different. If I [as the teacher] teach them the same thing, the absorption of each child is not the same. So, we cannot require them to learn exactly the same thing with the same standards. What to learn depends on the children themselves.

The leaders described differentiated instruction as the key to children’s active learning, and the right solution to traditional pedagogical malpractices. They also tried to influence their teachers’ thinking while leading their professional growth and curriculum implementation.

Questioning, borrowing and planning

Prior to the implementation of a new curriculum, the leaders led the teachers to question their traditional practices. Consistent with expansive learning theory, questioning is the first step to allow a new learning cycle that aims for change (Engeström and Sannino, 2010). Curriculum developers including principals and teachers started to question or criticise some aspects of existing curricular practices. The same narrative was reported by all the participating leaders that there were traditional curricular and pedagogical practices in their kindergartens which created uniform learning experiences for children, without valuing children’s interests and multiple intelligences, and tended to be subject-based (i.e. fragmented in children’s learning experience) whole-class teaching with an academic focus (i.e. completely uniform academic requirements for children) in the classroom. SZ1-L1 described the situation at the time as follows:

Before 2000, our kindergarten mainly used subject instruction and area activities. Subject-focused teaching split the knowledge system and failed to encourage [children’s] initiative and [teachers’] appreciation of children’s [multiple] learning styles. The area activities did not establish a reasonable system for children either.

Similarly, HK1-L1 said: ‘In the past, [thematic activity] was fragmented. Now, it is conducted using the [integrated] form of story. The past teaching was poor without a thread to link [various activities] in a series’. All of these less than satisfactory curricular practices were waiting to be improved. Solutions came from other models, naturally, when the leaders sought external assistance from curriculum experts. They tended to agree with imported western curricula such as the Montessori method, Project Approach, HighScope curriculum and Reggio Emilia approach. These curriculum systems seemed to provide an operational framework for reference. In order to achieve a curriculum upgrade and school improvement, they conducted their own curriculum planning by referring to these well-established models. HK2-KG was a typical example. According to HK2-L1 and HK2-L2, HK2-KG’s curriculum was planned to embrace a hybrid structure with diverse approaches:

Spiritual education is the core of the curriculum, while thematic activity forms its overall structure. The HighScope approach ensures the breadth of the curriculum, and the emphasis on the Project Approach achieves its depth. Play is the major channel through which children learn.

Based on the overall structure, the leaders would further lead their senior teachers to design detailed learning activities. Corresponding to the approaches and activities, a system of curriculum objectives was set up to allow the follow-up delivery of curricular aims and content, with the expected outcomes being achieved.

Transplanting, tailoring and integrating

The evidence indicated that, in each of the case-study kindergartens, the school-based curriculum development led by the leaders evolved through stages, from imitating diverse models to innovating practices through localisation and harmonisation. As stated by SZ1-L1: ‘There is no development without a reference. Even creation is based on the previous innovation … This is our multi-integrated curriculum; its development is the most difficult’. Likewise, other participating leaders admitted that their curricula would be integrative after learning from and absorbing others’ models or approaches. This process was named as huicui (荟萃) in Chinese. The concept of huicui could refer to the process through which exquisite objects are gathered together for a common purpose. Linked to the Chinese philosophical idea of Zhongyong, which could be generally understood as ‘eclecticism’ (Yang and Li, 2018b), the concept of huicui is useful to further explain Chinese leaders’ motivation to get the best things from diverse curricula. As stated by SZ2-L1:

I came across a lot of curriculum theories and also did the curriculum practices. Based on these [experiences], I came up with our own model … For example, the thematic inquiry we did starting in 1998 was learning from the western Reggio Emilia, HighScope and Montessori curricula. In fact, I have integrated the advantages of these curricula.

The process of huicui in curriculum leadership coincides with the findings of previous studies on school-based curriculum development in Chinese kindergartens that multiple foreign curricula tended to be tailored and adapted for local needs (e.g. Li, 2006; Yang and Li, 2018a).

Professional learning community

This study found that leaders tended to create a professional learning community composed of teachers, parents and experts to support the professional development of staff. Professional development events were highly related to curriculum implementation, including external training, research projects and the establishment of a curriculum group/team, as well as school-based experience-sharing and lesson study. Both formal and informal professional development was valued by the leaders to enhance their teachers’ professionalism during the process of curricular innovations. The importance of professional development was made clear by SZ2-L2:

Teacher training is the most important. If the teacher gets less training in the aspect of teacher–child interaction, he/she will find it more difficult to see the child’s development. We encourage senior teachers to share their experience with young ones, through which those senior ones could also learn from sharing. Still, we need some experts to train [our teachers] more thoroughly because the teachers who develop to a certain level will encounter bottlenecks. Also, long-term training will be more effective than occasional training, and it’s the best if the training is relevant to our own curriculum.

SZ2-L2 actually emphasised formal and informal types of training for both junior and senior teachers to support their curriculum implementation. This sentiment is consistent with Glatthorn et al.’s argument that:

If staff development has helped teachers change their perceptions of a subject, develop the materials to be used in implementing the new curriculum, and acquire the skills needed to deliver it, then it is quite likely that the written, the taught, the tested and the learned curricula will be in much closer congruence. (Glatthorn et al., 2012: 282)

Aside from professional training, the leaders paid close attention to teachers’ motivation. Teachers’ motivation was deemed to be the catalyst for curriculum success. The leaders did motivate teachers and provide them with curriculum support. This support covered the dimensions of time and space, materials, rules and interpersonal relations. This finding was confirmed by HK1-L2:

We need to provide enough curriculum resources for teachers … Based on what we support, teachers can have more choices [in delivering a curriculum] … If you ask the teacher to do new practices without giving them resources, they will be very laborious.

The leaders’ role in motivating and supporting teachers seemed more typical when teachers encountered difficulties in implementing the curriculum. It was the tension between expected innovations and existing barriers that required more guidance from leaders. As described by the leaders, curriculum experts were normally invited to introduce new ideas and theoretical knowledge. Following a curriculum diagnosis, these experts might also provide possible solutions for the kindergarten. In addition, curriculum leaders would assess the gap between their staff’s professional status and the new demands, and then introduce possible training programmes.

Constructing the curriculum repository

The participating leaders mentioned the need to develop curriculum materials for their use. These materials included children’s learning materials, activity plans and teachers’ teaching materials. The evidence indicated that there were three major approaches to building up the repository of curriculum materials – namely, creation, adjustment and sharing. With regard to the creation of curriculum materials, HK2-L1 stated:

We do not use toys. We only use learning instruments. All of them were developed by the teachers themselves. The teachers who created these instruments were laborious as they initially had to learn many new things. For example, in the science area, [you want the children] to play with water, but how? Teachers should use a lot of books, as well as time, to get some ideas [for developing the materials].

However, the pure creation of new materials seemed rare as the kindergartens tended to learn from existing curricula. There was another problem regarding the borrowing of imported materials. When other materials were used in the local context, there was the need to adjust them for the new demands of the stakeholders and culture. SZ1-L2 gave the following example:

We learned from the Montessori, but it has very few materials. Even many of its materials are not suitable for China’s real situations. Like the materials we bought, those for language learning are inappropriate as they use English letters [instead of Chinese characters]. Also, there were no materials for social learning, while the materials for science learning were inadequate. We had to change children’s experience into sets of operational materials; this process was really painful.

Adjustment is also needed to adapt old learning materials to current needs. SZ2-L2 told us that they had adjusted all the lesson plans that were used in the past to become materials for children’s operation in the current learning centres. Although those lesson plans shared the same learning content as the learning materials, teachers spent time and energy in transforming their form from a lesson to an instrument for children’s active learning. This shift also reflected the changing notions of curricular and pedagogical practices from teacher-directed teaching to child-initiated learning.

Furthermore, collective efforts were valued by the leaders, who encouraged teachers to share their ideas and materials. HK2-KG would document all the activities conducted by the teachers for others’ and future reference. Likewise, HK1-L2 described that they asked teachers to show other colleagues what they had done in their class regarding project-based activities. This kind of presentation would then facilitate the collegial sharing of resources and information. All of the leaders made the curriculum open to allow for the sharing of curriculum materials across different classrooms. HK1-L2 gave the following example: ‘Children in the next class can play wall games designed by teachers in other classes. After this class has completed five learning materials and five by another class, children in each class can have access to playing ten materials’.

Educating and receiving parental support

It seems common for Chinese parents to be academically focused rather than fully accepting the contemporary early childhood education ideas promoted by kindergartens. This study found that the curriculum leaders had done a lot of work to relieve the tension between parents’ and teachers’ beliefs. They had to convince parents why their curriculum would work to support children’s learning. HK2-L2 commented:

There is a meeting for new parents at the beginning of a new semester. We will introduce our curriculum to parents that no writing task will be assigned at the age of three, as [HK2-KG] is not an academic school … We’ll show them how their kids are happy to learn. So, parents have begun to share the same educational beliefs with us. In addition, there are many opportunities for parents to visit our classes. For example, children can ask their parents to accompany them for a day. Then parents will experience children’s daily curriculum. They will know that children really learn through play.

SZ1-KG would invite its new parents to attend a meeting where principal SZ1-L1 would specifically introduce the kindergarten’s curriculum. Parents could then communicate with the leaders to understand the professional practices in the kindergarten. It is also true that parents were allowed to participate in some of the festival activities in the kindergarten. In addition, to facilitate curriculum implementation, some of the parents were invited to be volunteer teachers or workers in the kindergartens – they gave talks to the children or helped to make learning materials for a particular class. All of these channels of family–school communication and cooperation were made available by the curriculum leaders.

Quality assurance with teacher autonomy

The leaders worked to ensure the quality of the curriculum implemented by the teachers. However, too much top-down monitoring limits teachers’ autonomy in curriculum decision-making. For example, HK2-KG required the class teachers to submit their project plans for the director’s review before they could put them into practice. The leaders would also evaluate the curriculum quality by themselves to see whether the implementation fidelity was high. Meanwhile, a more flexible mechanism of curriculum evaluation was employed by the leaders to lessen the side effects of outcome-based evaluation. In fact, relating to motivating staff, teacher autonomy was valued by HK2-L1:

Themes can be extended to different projects in different classes … We do not want to use the published package because we do not want our teachers to follow existing plans without their own thinking … Giving teacher autonomy is also a way to respect children because the overall development of children in each class is different.

Class-based teaching was mentioned by the participating leaders as best fitting children’s development. SZ2-L1 also offered similar ideas regarding curriculum leadership:

We never say which class is the best. We never do such kind of competition … Our curriculum itself is very open and the children are autonomous. I hope the teachers are autonomous, too; therefore, the teachers’ work is done through the cultivation of autonomy.

Furthermore, the interviewees mentioned that teachers’ optimal performance required a reasonable division of labour. As SZ3-L1 stated:

I feel that teachers have a lot of paperwork. For example, if a child has a portfolio and there are more than 40 children in each class, plus the home-contact manuals and case records for young children, the teachers would have a lot of work to do. Then we think of relieving the burden on the teachers. For example, if we do the same theme in the same grade, we will prepare the activities in a group to reduce teachers’ workload on average; therefore, the teachers can concentrate on observing children and creating learning-area materials. We do this to regulate the workload of each teacher.

By balancing curriculum quality and teacher motivation, leaders can actively monitor curriculum implementation while encouraging teacher autonomy.

Establishing the curriculum system

Finally, the notions, theories, structures, methods, content and culture were gone through by the leaders to establish the curriculum system. This study found that all of the case-study kindergartens had written a curriculum booklet or monograph. The structure and basic elements of their curriculum were clarified and presented comprehensively. From the leaders’ perspective, it was the documentation that would allow the professional learning community to revisit the processes of curriculum development and reflect on the present curriculum for further improvement. In addition, it was also the stage of reflection and documentation set up for teachers’ experience-sharing and knowledge exchange with outsiders. A high-quality, comprehensive curriculum system was deemed to be the core of their kindergarten education in the modern era of the marketisation and corporatisation of early childhood education services (Lim, 2017; Yang, 2016).