Final Version May 5 07

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As I articulate my experiences with emergent curriculum and incorporate the voice of
others, actually working with children, my perspective and understanding broadens.
Audience
I am engaging in the process of inquiry in order to construct knowledge in
conjunction with my research participants and with a view to ultimately provide readers
with the materials for their own constructions (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). The challenge
will be to provide cases rich in description to enable the reader to experience what the
participants have experienced and relate it to their practice.
It is likely I will be emphasizing my interpretations more than the interpretations
of those I am studying as I bring my own contexts to the process of inquiry. However, the
eventual aim will be to try to preserve multiple realities (Stake, 1995). The particular
audience that this dissertation is written for is the early childhood educator. The objective
is to bring the practitioner into the discourse on curriculum.
While based on theories of learning and the nature of knowledge, child-centered
practices in early childhood education are still being questioned. Emergent curriculum is
not standard practice in early childhood education. Still there is a growing trend to take
an instructivist rather than constructivist view of teaching (Katz, 1999). Without critically
examining practice, early childhood educators are adapting scripts for action that render
the child powerless. The concentration is no longer child-centered but teacher-centered,
and the overuse of themes suggests a process that is mimetic with the children repeating
or miming newly presented information.
When theorists, researchers and academics alone make decisions about pedagogy
(Wells, 1994) the practitioner can be left speechless. Ayers (1989) claims that the voices