Transformative curriculum: I felt like an artist

Abstract

Contemporary early childhood teacher education is situated in a knowledge and policy environment where on the one hand pre-service educators have the opportunity to connect with unlimited knowledge sources and, on the other, are expected to conform to standardized outcomes. This situation is compounded by increasingly inequitable learning outcomes for children in many countries. In this paper, we argue that this context demands different ways of teaching and learning in early childhood teacher education and that in order to address increasing inequity, pre-service educators must experience a transformative university curriculum. This paper uses the example of an arts topic, with a particular focus on music, to examine ways of positioning pre-service educators that open up, rather than restrict opportunities to re-conceptualize early childhood curriculum. The authors examine data from curriculum documents and student reflections in order to discuss the intended (planned), enacted (implemented) and experienced university curriculum.