The Role of the Child in Interaction with the Social Environment in Terms of the Content of the Cores Curriculum for Preschool Education in Poland in the Years 1962–2018
The subject of the article is a voice in the discussion on the construction of the goals of preschool education in subsequent years of educational reforms in Poland. The topics discussed focus on the dilemma of curricular centralization in Polish education, which creates a context of prescriptive control in the teacher’s work. The verifiably of the learning outcomes expected by the education authorities reveals its weaknesses in the assumptions concerning the child’s social upbringing. The aim of the research presented in the article is to analyze the meanings assigned to the social role of a preschool child in the context of the assumptions of preschool education curricular in the years 1962–2018. The subject of the research are the content of documents concerning the assumed goals of the child’s social education contained in the preschool education programs of 1962, 1973 and 1992 and the core curriculum of preschool education in 1999, 2008 and 2018. It was applied the qualitative approach of searching secondary sources using of computer-aided analysis in the program MaxQda. The content analysis allowed for the emergence of three types of discourses of the child’s social role. The theoretical basis for the interpretation of the results were the theories of social development by H. Garner and R. H. Schafer, through which proved inadequacy in constructing the goals of social education of a preschool child.
