Researching ECEC professional development: Using Kelly's repertory grid to examine changes in educators' constructs about curriculum design in early childhood settings

This paper reports on how educators from child care, community-based kindergarten, preschool and lower primary settings changed their tightly held constructs about curriculum design after undertaking an in-service professional development (PD) program. Kelly’s personal construct psychology (PCP) provided the framework for the PD and for identifying and analysing the educators’ constructs and the changes that occurred. Initially teachers from all settings mainly focused on children as objects of their curriculum decision making. After the PD program the focus on children’s input changed to a more negotiated approach to curriculum design—especially by teachers in childcare and kindergarten settings. Differences between cohorts were also found in changes to thinking about parents’ and administrators’ input into curriculum decisions which related to their ECEC contexts. Outcomes from the study can be used to demonstrate ways of analysing changes in thinking about curriculum design after engaging in PD, and the effects of educational context on these changes.