Story approach to integrated learning (SAIL): a postmodernism curriculum for Hong Kong kindergartens

Changing times and postmodern perspectives have changed the traditional beliefs about child development knowledge, early childhood learning and curriculum and their relationships. Despite ongoing exchanges about how best to respond to the critique of the developmental knowledge base, few descriptions of how particular educators have reconceptualized their curriculum exist. Employing postmodern views of knowledge, learning, and curriculum, this chapter describes a new narrative curriculum developed by the authors to enact a postmodern early years learning in a typical Chinese context: Story Approach to Integrated Learning (SAIL). It first reflects on the existing early childhood curricula in Hong Kong and the associated problems and challenges. Second, it reviews the literature about the reconceptualization of early years learning and curriculum to seek possible solutions to Hong Kong problems. Third, a brief introduction of SAIL is presented and an example is given to illustrate how SAIL can put postmodernism curriculum into practice. Last, this chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges and future directions relating to the shift from developmental to postmodern practices in the development of early childhood curriculum.