Quality and curriculum: new trends of the national and local debate in Italy

ECEC-quality in terms of experiences and educational opportunities offered to children recently has been hardly discussed in Italy at national level. Access, costs, basic structural standards represent key issues of the current debate. The debate on ECEC-curriculum in connection to quality is relatively “silent”(Mantovani 2014) while it is widely debated at school level. What are ECEC general goals? What and how do/should children learn in ECEC contexts? How far traditional pedagogical views and established practices still represent a factor of quality to stakeholders? Sketching out the Italian cultural perspective on ECE-quality and curriculum, examples will be used from past and on-going researches (Children Crossing Borders,2005-2010; CARE, 2013-2016) to answer these questions and argue how the connection between quality and curriculum in the early years is recently gaining back attention, due to the increasing culturally varied and heterogeneous context, new concerns of parents for the future of children, new social and cultural constructs of childhood.