IMPLEMENTING A NATIONAL DATABASE ON YOUNG CHILDREN'S LEARNING: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF A LONGITUDINAL STUDY TO EVALUATE THE QUALITY OF PRESCHOOLS

Abstract

In recent years, many policies have been formulated and strongly promoted to improve the quality of early childhood education. In 2012, the Taiwanese government enacted a new national curriculum framework for early childhood education to enhance the quality of early childhood education programs. This new framework is key competence-oriented, meaning preschool educators must focus on children's learning and inquiry processes when designing the curriculum. A series of projects collecting information on the quality of the learning environment and learning outcomes of children aged 2 to 9, called the Early Childhood Learning Database, was built to understand the effectiveness of the curriculum reform. As a longitudinal study, young children's learning is long-term tracked and analyzed to understand the authentic situation and relevant factors to form a policy for optimizing education quality. The preliminary analysis confirmed the positive influence of the new curriculum. Keywords: early childhood education, curriculum reform, learning database, quality of preschools