play
participation
possibilities

Alberta's
Early Learning and Care Framework

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Introducing Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Curriculum Framework

Flight is a curriculum framework intended to guide the significant work of early learning and child care educators with young children (ages 0 – before 6 years) and their families in centre-based child care and family day home settings. This is a flexible framework for thinking about how children learn and experience their worlds, as well as a guide that fosters strong early childhood communities.

Children’s play is central to this curriculum framework as an active, exploratory, creative, expressive process, deeply embedded in children’s everyday experiences and through which children participate in, learn about, and actively make sense of the world.

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Alberta's Curriculum Framework

Framework Contents

Flight is written for early childhood educators, as a guide for critical and reflective thinking, and an interpretive tool for imagining possibilities. The idea that young children are always co-constructing curriculum, and that educators are always making curriculum decisions is at the heart of curriculum meaning making.

The framework can help educators see, think about, and reflect on their practices in ways that may shift them toward intentional curriculum decision-making. The goal is to help educators see each and every child as a mighty learner and a citizen in the here and now.

The curriculum framework document is organized in the following way.

Section 1: Introduction

Section 1

Introduction

Section 2: Core Concepts

Section 2

Core Concepts

Section 3: Goals and Dispositions

Section 3

Goals and Dispositions

Section 4: Glossary and Endnotes

Section 4

Glossary and Endnotes

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Framework Purpose

The purpose of this curriculum framework is to:

  1. Articulate a set of holistic play-based goals for children’s learning and care.
  2. Nurture children’s dispositions to learn.
  3. Work with families, building and strengthening early childhood communities, in the care and learning of their children.
  4. Engage educators as co-learners, co-researchers, and co-imaginers of possibilities with high regard for children’s potential.
  • Green bolded words and phrases indicate a glossary term.
  • Blue bolded words and phrases indicate an internal section of the framework itself.
  • Black bolded words and phrases are used for emphasis.
  • Orange bolded words and phrases indicate active links.