Abstract
Planning is one of the professional tasks teachers have to carry out before their direct action in the classrooms. This planning is closely interrelated to the way teachers teach. The question about how and why teachers reach their decisions in their pre-class planning is a classical one in the research into curricular design and development. The aim of this paper will therefore be to establish whether there is a relationship between curricular planning and curricular practices, studying how nine early childhood education teachers using an ICT resource plan their actions and execute them. For the research, we obtained video recordings of classroom practices and interviewed the teachers just before they went into class. By applying qualitative data analysis, we have been able to identify the elements taken into consideration when the teachers make decisions in lesson, their conceptions about ICT, and the types of activity that are held in all the classes. The results confirm the conclusions reached by previous studies on the relationships between planning and doing, in the sense that the activities, understood to be teaching strategies, are the ones that link the design of what is to be done and direct action. Likewise, the results ratify prior research on the role of materials and resources as aspects that teachers can rely on for support in the management and presentation of classroom tasks and content. The introduction of ICT does not modify the teachers’ curricular planning and development.
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Notes
Early Childhood, or Pre-School, Education in Spain caters for the ages of 0–6 and is divided into two cycles: the first runs from the ages of 0–3, and the second from 3 to 6. It is a non-compulsory period of schooling with its own educational identity. This research involves the second cycle. In spite of its voluntary nature, this second cycle (ages 3–6) is attended by almost all eligible children. The staff teaching in this second cycle are required to have the specialist training provided by a university degree.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by R&D project EDU2009-11295 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. This work acknowledges the support received from the International Centre for Advanced Technologies (http://www.citafgsr.org/cita/) of the German Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation.
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Ramírez, E., Clemente, M., Recamán, A. et al. Planning and Doing in Professional Teaching Practice. A Study with Early Childhood Education Teachers Working with ICT (3–6 years). Early Childhood Educ J 45, 713–725 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-016-0806-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-016-0806-x