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In making the study accessible, it is also important to maintain the confidentiality
of the research participants. The research design passed through a level of rigorous
ethical approval. Careful consideration was given to protecting the identities of the
research participants; this included their names and the locations of their respective work
sites. The teachers and the documentation of their project work were the focus of my
observations during my visits to their classrooms rather than the children.
Participant selection.
After receiving ethical review approval, I sent out invitations to participate to all
the child care centres that I knew were employing an emergent curriculum. This was not
a systematic process. It was only through my own practice and contacts that I had become
aware of these programs; I cannot say for certain that every program of this nature was
contacted. Of the fourteen child care centres who received an invitation, four individuals
responded with expressed interest to participate in the research. These were the four
participants chosen to participate. The invitation to participate can be found in Appendix
A. The informed consent form signed by each participant can be found in Appendix B.
The respondents were chosen, not to represent all early childhood educators as it
is difficult in case study research to make generalizations, but to illuminate these
particular cases representing four individuals. I was fortunate that four individuals fitting
the profile of early childhood educators implementing an emergent curriculum responded
positively to my invitation. According to Cresswell (1998) the researcher typically
chooses no more than four cases. A larger number was not a consideration as I wasn’t
trying to achieve generalization, as it is a term that holds little meaning for most
qualitative researchers (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992). Stake (2000) argues that damage