Going with the Flow: The possibility of emergent curriculum

Abstract

This article sets out to challenge Early Childhood Educators (in pre-school and infant class settings) in a critical level of reflection on what we have been doing in early childhood education, teaching and learning during the course of the pandemic. The reader will be asked questions to reflect upon and generate responses to prompt further engagement with the challenges and opportunities presented by the pandemic. We mean to raise topics such as concepts of childhood and curriculum that will allow us as a collective to reimagine and action change to our practice. The use of language such as ‘home-schooling’ is also discussed for exploration. Covid 19 has been stressful in a variety of ways, and professionally we have realised how our education practices and structures have not consistently supported the education of our most vulnerable. Somewhere we hear a mantra, maybe in the back of our minds, saying “go with the flow”. But… can we visualise a different approach, is it what we don’t see that means we cannot do? This article asks that we, as Early Childhood Educators, open our minds to the possibility of leading education into the future with an emergent curriculum and playful pedagogues.