Children’s Perspective to Curriculum Work: Meaningful Moments in Finnish Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Recently, and especially in early childhood education, there has been a transition from understanding child perspective to understanding children’s perspective. Taking children’s perspective as a foundational starting point, we explore and identify moments that children find important, meaningful, and positive in their daily life at the context of preprimary education. We use empirical evidence from our research situated within the cultural context of Finnish early childhood education where children documented their preprimary education experiences with digital cameras and reflected upon them in joint discussions with their peers and researchers. We discuss to what extent these documentation and reflection practices can be used as tools for understanding children’s perspective to meaningful moments in the Finnish preprimary context and what implications this kind of approach would set for curriculum, curriculum assessment, and curriculum development.