After receiving a grant from the LEGO Foundation, we hired a curriculum fellow to organize and support this work. The curriculum fellow conducted a literature review on currently available curricula for very young children and successful pedagogical approaches for teaching toddlers, oversaw coordination of working group participants, coordinated the distillation of ideas and feedback, and led the writing of materials. As we moved forward, we documented the process of co-constructing our curriculum over the course of the 2022 – 2023 school year.
In this article, we take a retrospective look across our documentation to explore the question: What happens when a group of early childhood practitioners engages in sustained, in-depth collaboration to develop a curriculum for toddlers? By documenting the process, we hoped to highlight the powerful potential of a community-driven, inclusive approach to curriculum development for others to apply in their own settings.
Theoretical Framework
Our work is grounded in a theoretical orientation that practitioners can and should be seen as knowledgeable, capable producers of knowledge for the education field( Cochran-Smith & Lytle 1999, 2009). Practitioners such as teachers, school-based administrators, and educational coaches rarely participate as leaders in research processes; rather, they are most frequently seen as subjects or participants in research conducted by academics( Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2009). We are strongly committed to engaging in research as practitioners, studying our own practice, and sharing this knowledge with others to contribute to the wider educational research conversation, thus contributing to the teacher research community( Perry et al. 2012; Escamilla & Meier 2018; Henderson 2025).
We are also committed to an anti-bias education stance( Derman-Sparks & Edwards, with Goins 2020) and to equity as well as elevating the voices of marginalized populations. This means actively examining and challenging the systems, materials, and practices within early childhood settings that may perpetuate inequality or exclude the lived experiences of educators, children, and families from underrepresented communities.
Finally, we believe that playful learning is a powerful vehicle for education at all levels, for young children and older learners alike( Liu et al. 2017; Mardell et al. 2023). We draw on the definition of playful learning offered by Mardell and colleagues( 2023), which involves learners leading their own learning, exploring the unknown, and finding joy in the process. In the context of curriculum development, the“ unknown” is the development of a novel curriculum; leading learning could happen when collaborators generate ideas together; and joy might be evoked by taking pleasure in the process, feeling connected, and having one’ s ideas valued. We aimed for this inclusive and iterative process to sustain a focus on the presence of educators’ voices and address real expressed needs of the community.
Limitations of Available Curricula for Toddlers
Our literature review found a paucity of curriculum resources that included the voices of educators and families. In addition, there was limited research on best practices for infants and toddlers in the areas of anti-bias and culturally responsive teaching( Bauer et al. 2006; Horm et al. 2012; Horm et al. 2019). Existing resources also tended to be rigid, with little room for educators to co-create learning experiences or enjoy flexibility adapted to the unique needs of their classroom communities( Ebbeck et al. 2018; Harmon & Viruru 2018).
Methods of Inquiry
This practitioner inquiry, conducted over the course of the 2022 – 2023 school year, investigated what happens when early childhood practitioners engage in sustained, in-depth collaboration to develop a toddler curriculum. Our goal was to write
64 Young Children
Summer 2026