ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two traditions of curriculum design in early childhood education (ECE): the Anglo-Saxon tradition and the Nordic tradition. It focuses on the Nordic ECE curricula and how they guide and regulate documentation. Since the curriculum composes the official frame for assessment and documentation in ECE, this chapter also depicts the Nordic ECE system at a general level. In ECE, the curriculum points out the key goals of early education and refers principally to the contents and to the methods or the pedagogy to be used to support the children's development and learning. All the Nordic curricula for ECE are built into decentralized management systems, which mean management by objectives. In addition to the national curriculum, municipalities and ECE settings have their own policy documents, plans or curricula that broaden and specify the ideas of the national curriculum. The differences of national curricula are related to different factors, such as economy, education system and tradition.
