When Teachers Become Curriculum Deliverers: Reclaiming the Art and Science of Teaching
Why inquiry-based facilitation, reflective practice, and assessment literacy must be central to early childhood educator development.
We have become remarkably proficient at telling early childhood educators what to teach.
But have we become equally intentional about teaching them how to facilitate thinking, recognize learning, and reflect on their own instructional practices?
The more I examine how we prepare and support early childhood educators, the more I question whether our systems are developing thoughtful practitioners or simply training teachers to deliver instruction.
Too often, educators are expected to implement prescribed curricula, complete activities, document developmental outcomes, and demonstrate compliance with instructional expectations.
Yet the professional competencies required to facilitate inquiry, encourage critical thinking, interpret assessment evidence, and make responsive instructional decisions do not always receive the same attention.
This raises a question I believe deserves greater consideration across our profession:
Are we preparing educators to deliver instruction, or are we developing professionals who understand how children learn and how their own instructional decisions influence that learning?
The distinction matters, particularly during the formative years of childhood.
Consider the popularity of Ms. Rachel. Her appeal extends beyond what she teaches to how she engages young learners. Through expressive language, repetition, intentional pauses, modeling, and opportunities for participation, she illustrates the importance of purposeful communication.
While educational videos cannot replace responsive, face-to-face teacher-child interactions, they offer a recognizable example of how intentional presentation can invite children's engagement.
Classroom educators have an even greater opportunity: to observe children's responses, adapt their approach, and extend thinking in real time.
But are we equally intentional about teaching early childhood educators how to create these meaningful learning experiences in their own classrooms?
The Problem Is Not Curriculum. It Is How We Prepare Educators to Use It.
Let me be clear: curriculum is essential.
Intentional instruction, evidence-based teaching practices, and structured learning experiences all have important roles in early childhood education.
However, curriculum alone does not guarantee meaningful learning.
A completed lesson does not necessarily demonstrate understanding. A classroom filled with documentation does not automatically indicate that assessment is informing instruction.
And a teacher who consistently follows a curriculum guide may still need support in recognizing and extending children's thinking.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC, 2020) emphasizes that developmentally appropriate practice requires educators to integrate knowledge of child development, individual children, and the social and cultural contexts in which learning occurs.
That requires more than curriculum familiarity. It requires pedagogical expertise, professional judgment, and reflective practice.
In preparing new and incoming educators, I have become increasingly intentional about developing two foundational competencies that I believe should be central to educator preparation and ongoing professional development.
Pillar One: Developing the Teacher as Facilitator, Observer, Instructional Designer, and Reflective Practitioner
One of the most important lessons I emphasize with emerging educators is that teaching is not simply the presentation of information.
Effective teaching requires educators to understand what children communicate through their words, actions, interactions, and explorations.
It requires knowing when to provide direct instruction, when to scaffold, when to ask questions, and when to allow children to investigate independently.
These skills are not automatically acquired by entering the teaching profession. They must be intentionally taught, modeled, practiced, and refined.
Consider a preschool classroom where children are building a tower.
A teacher might ask:
"What color is that block?"
"How many blocks do you have?"
These questions have instructional value, particularly when supporting vocabulary, counting, and foundational knowledge.
However, an educator with stronger inquiry-facilitation skills might extend the interaction:
"What do you think will happen if we place this block on top?"
"Why do you think the tower keeps falling?"
"What could we try differently?"
"How did you figure that out?"
The interaction now creates additional opportunities for prediction, reasoning, experimentation, problem-solving, and reflection.
The distinction is not simply between open-ended and closed-ended questions. Both have instructional purposes.
The difference is the educator's ability to recognize the learning opportunity and respond with intentionality.
This is precisely why I believe critical thinking and inquiry-based facilitation must be explicitly taught during educator preparation.
We cannot expect teachers to consistently cultivate higher-order thinking in children if we have not intentionally developed the pedagogical competencies necessary to support it.
What Does the Research Tell Us?
Hamre et al. (2012) examined a professional learning course designed to improve early childhood teachers' knowledge and classroom interactions. Teachers who participated demonstrated improvements in their knowledge of effective interactions and aspects of their observed classroom practice.
Similarly, Perlman et al. (2016) examined associations between teacher-child interaction quality and children's developmental outcomes. Although findings varied across developmental domains and were generally modest, the review underscores the importance of examining the quality of interactions within early learning environments.
Together, these studies offer an important consideration for educator preparation:
How teachers facilitate learning matters, and important aspects of effective instructional practice can be strengthened through intentional professional learning.
This is particularly significant during early childhood, when children are developing foundational language, reasoning, self-regulation, social understanding, and problem-solving abilities.
Reflective Practice Is a Skill, Not Simply an Expectation
We frequently ask educators to reflect on their teaching.
But have we taught them how to reflect critically?
Reflection is more than identifying what went well or what could have gone better during a lesson.
Meaningful reflection requires educators to examine their assumptions, interpret evidence, consider alternative approaches, and make informed decisions about future practice.
Schön's (1983) foundational work on the reflective practitioner explores how professionals develop expertise by examining their actions and decisions, including reflection during practice.
In my instruction, I encourage emerging educators to consider:
What did I notice about the children's thinking?
How did my instructional decisions influence their participation?
Did I create opportunities for children to question, investigate, and problem-solve?
Whose cultural experiences and perspectives were represented?
What would I change based on what I observed?
These questions move reflection beyond personal impressions toward evidence-informed professional reasoning.
When educators become reflective practitioners, they begin to recognize that their own teaching practices are also subjects of inquiry.
Pillar Two: Moving Assessment From Documentation to
Instructional Intelligence
The second pillar I emphasize is assessment literacy.
Early childhood educators are expected to observe children, collect developmental data, maintain portfolios, and document learning experiences.
These responsibilities are important. However, collecting information and understanding how to use it are different professional competencies.
An observation is only as useful as the instructional reasoning that follows it.
For example, documenting that a child participated in a storytelling activity provides a record of participation.
But an educator with stronger assessment literacy asks deeper questions:
What did the child demonstrate about expressive language?
How did the child organize ideas?
What prior experiences influenced the child's storytelling?
Were there opportunities for the child to communicate through a home language?
What instructional decisions should follow?
And perhaps most importantly:
What should I do differently tomorrow because of what I learned about this child today?
This is the question I want emerging educators to become comfortable asking.
NAEYC (2020) identifies observation, documentation, and assessment as essential components of developmentally appropriate practice, emphasizing their role in informing curriculum and teaching decisions.
Assessment should not simply demonstrate that instruction occurred. It should help educators understand what children know, what they are developing, and how learning experiences can be strengthened.
In my approach to educator preparation, assessment becomes a continuous process:
Observe → Interpret → Respond → Reflect → Refine
This cycle moves assessment beyond documentation and toward informed instructional decision-making.
It also connects directly to the first pillar: teachers must understand how to facilitate learning and how to use evidence to determine whether their approaches are responsive to children's needs.
Connecting the Two Pillars Through My FoK-EWB™ Framework
These priorities connect directly to my developing Funds of Knowledge–Educator Well-Being (FoK-EWB™) framework.
My framework examines how educators' lived experiences, professional knowledge, organizational culture, leadership practices, and well-being intersect within educational environments.
Funds of Knowledge theory, advanced through the work of Moll et al. (1992), recognizes the historically and culturally developed knowledge embedded within households and communities.
I believe this perspective also encourages us to reconsider how educational organizations recognize and value the knowledge educators bring into professional practice.
Teachers enter classrooms with cultural histories, lived experiences, professional identities, and knowledge of the communities they serve.
Yet these resources may be underutilized when educational systems prioritize standardized implementation without creating meaningful opportunities for professional agency.
My FoK-EWB™ framework encourages us to examine not only what educators are expected to know and do, but also the organizational conditions that support their capacity to teach effectively.
Are educators given opportunities to exercise professional judgment?
Do leaders create environments where reflection is encouraged rather than perceived as criticism?
Are teachers' experiences and professional knowledge valued in curriculum and instructional decisions?
How do working conditions influence their ability to remain responsive, reflective, and engaged?
These questions matter because teacher development does not occur independently of organizational culture.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2015) emphasized the importance of developing a knowledgeable early childhood workforce while strengthening the systems and conditions that support effective professional practice.
For me, this reinforces a central principle:
We cannot expect educators to consistently facilitate curiosity, reflection, and independent thinking in children while working within systems that limit those same qualities in teachers.
My FoK-EWB™ framework offers a conceptual lens for exploring these relationships and identifying important questions for continued research.
What This Means for Educator Preparation
In my work with new and incoming educators, I intentionally connect developmental theory, authentic classroom observations, instructional decision-making, and reflective practice.
I do not want students simply to memorize the contributions of Piaget, Vygotsky, or other developmental theorists.
I want them to understand how developmental knowledge informs real interactions with children.
I want them to recognize how questioning strategies can extend learning, distinguish objective observations from assumptions, and understand how family knowledge, culture, and language influence children's learning experiences.
Most importantly, I want them to become comfortable examining their own instructional decisions.
This requires professional learning experiences that move beyond passive participation.
The Education Endowment Foundation (2021) identifies important mechanisms of effective professional development, including feedback, goal-setting, revisiting prior learning, and action planning.
Although this guidance addresses school-based professional development more broadly, its principles offer useful considerations for early childhood educator preparation.
If we want educators to facilitate inquiry, we must create opportunities for them to experience inquiry as learners.
If we want educators to become reflective practitioners, we must teach and model meaningful reflection.
And if we want educators to use assessment effectively, we must provide opportunities to interpret authentic evidence of children's learning and make informed instructional decisions.
Teacher development should reflect the same principles of meaningful learning that we expect educators to facilitate with children.
The Leadership Responsibility: Building Systems That Support Professional Growth
This conversation must extend beyond individual educators.
Educational leaders, teacher preparation programs, curriculum developers, and professional learning organizations share responsibility for creating conditions that support effective teaching.
Professional development should not be treated as an isolated training requirement. It should be a sustained process that includes coaching, collaboration, reflective inquiry, feedback, and opportunities to apply new learning.
Equally important, educational organizations must examine whether their expectations, schedules, staffing structures, and evaluation practices support the professional competencies they claim to value.
When teachers are evaluated primarily on completing activities or maintaining documentation, we risk overlooking the quality of instructional interactions and the professional reasoning that informs them.
I believe educational quality must be understood through a broader lens—one that values curriculum integrity alongside professional judgment, recognizes assessment as a tool for learning, and acknowledges educator well-being and agency as important conditions for sustainable practice.
Final Thoughts: We Must Develop Teachers Who Know How to Think About Teaching
As we continue to discuss curriculum innovation, school readiness, educational accountability, and student achievement, we must give greater attention to the professional competencies required to make meaningful learning possible.
The evolving role of the teacher and the strengthening of assessment literacy are not secondary considerations.
They are foundational to instructional quality.
My work as an educator, teacher educator, organizational leader, and researcher continues to reinforce one central conviction:
We cannot expect children to become curious, reflective, and independent thinkers if we do not intentionally prepare and support educators to cultivate those qualities.
Curriculum provides direction.
Educator development builds capacity.
Organizational culture sustains effective practice.
And children benefit when all three work together.
The future of early childhood education depends not only on what we teach children, but on how intentionally we develop the educators who teach them.
Real Talk Reflection
For educators:
How often do you reflect on the ways your questions, interactions, and instructional decisions influence children's learning?
For teacher educators:
Are we explicitly teaching future educators how to facilitate inquiry and critical thinking, or are we assuming those competencies will develop through experience?
For educational leaders:
Do our professional development systems cultivate instructional judgment, or primarily reinforce curriculum delivery and compliance?
I welcome your perspectives. What changes would you like to see in how we prepare and support early childhood educators?
References and Further Reading
Education Endowment Foundation. (2021). Effective professional development: Guidance report.
Hamre, B. K., Pianta, R. C., Burchinal, M., Field, S., LoCasale-Crouch, J., Downer, J. T., Howes, C., LaParo, K., & Scott-Little, C. (2012). A course on effective teacher-child interactions: Effects on teacher beliefs, knowledge, and observed practice. American Educational Research Journal, 49(1), 88–123.
Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132–141.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2015). Transforming the workforce for children birth through age 8: A unifying foundation. The National Academies Press.
National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2020). Developmentally appropriate practice: A position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Perlman, M., Falenchuk, O., Fletcher, B., McMullen, E., Beyene, J., & Shah, P. S. (2016). A systematic review and meta-analysis of a measure of staff/child interaction quality (the Classroom Assessment Scoring System) in early childhood education and care settings and child outcomes. PLOS ONE, 11(12), e0167660.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
Dr. Neffitina Thompson, widely known as Dr. T the PreK Guru, has a career that bridges the worlds of early childhood education, leadership development, and workforce transformation, making it her mission to improve the systems that shape the educators who shape young lives. This piece was originally posted October 28, 2026 and is crossposted here with her permission. You can reach out to Neffitina by contacting her via email here.
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