Open and Hidden Voices of Teachers: Lived Experiences of Making Updates to Preschool Curriculum Provoked by the National Guidelines

Abstract

This study analyses how early childhood teachers experience their local curricula-updating process provoked by the national policy changes. This is a relevant problem related to teachers’ agency, which is critical in supporting and developing curriculum policies or opposing them. The hermeneutic phenomenological approach (van Manen) was used to uncover the pre-reflective lived experiences of teachers through phenomenological interviews with 16 teachers. The lived experiences of local curriculum updates triggered by the national preschool curriculum guideline were a dualistic phenomenon manifesting as open and hidden voices of teachers. The open voices metaphor revealed the pre-reflective experiences increasing the openness of teachers to changes, while the hidden voices represented a pre-reflective experience of threat to established concepts and practices resulting in defensive reactions. These dualistic experiences appeared in five emergent categories: resonating body: vitality vs. freezing (Corporeality); teamwork during a critical moment: safe sustainability vs. uncertainty (Relationality); competing spatial perspectives: new possibilities vs. conflicting visions (Spatiality); altered perception of time: third wave vs. lost time (Temporality); and awakened existential questions: intentional self-reflection vs. conflict of roles (Existentiality). This paper highlights tensions between the national policies and the professional authenticity of teachers and the importance of teachers’ agency in the change context.

1. Introduction

Countries make changes to their curriculum policies in order to increase the quality of early childhood education and respond to societal changes (demographic trends, changing family structure, mobility of families), cultural characteristics (globalisation trends and their influence on education, focus on local cultures), and the objectives of their education system reforms (Haslip & Gullo, 2018; Yang & Li, 2019; Yang et al., 2022; Nian & Liu, 2025). According to early childhood researchers, the global trend in drafting and implementing mandatory national preschool curricula or their guidelines indicates the globalisation of early childhood education standards (Sofou & Tsafos, 2009; Clasquin-Johnson, 2016; Bautista et al., 2021). According to Sofou and Tsafos (2009), two opposite tendencies can be observed in the early childhood education field: the countries that have never had any national-level preschool curricula are now creating them, while others, who have had mandatory national preschool curricula for a long period, are trying to decentralise the process by formulating early childhood education guidelines and giving more leeway to local curricula makers.

A national-level preschool curriculum is an official document that is either mandatory or recommended to preschool institutions, defining the key educational principles together with setting educational values, goals, expected outcomes, areas, pedagogy, and achievement assessment policies. The purpose of the preschool curriculum is to ensure the same level of education quality for all children and to embody national preschool education priorities by turning them into a comprehensive guide for teachers. A national-level curriculum is usually created by governmental bodies (Zama & Mashiya, 2022; Abdul Razzak, 2016; Knaus, 2014; Engdahl, 2004). In an effort to decentralise the preparation and/or implementation of curricula, the developed national preschool education guidelines, national preschool education curriculum framework, or national curriculum criteria only include the key target achievements and main directions of preschool education and allow preschool education institutions to create their own local curricula. Such local curricula are understood as contextualised curricula customised for the context and teaching practices of the specific institution (Bradfield & Exley, 2020). The creation and implementation of local educational content gives autonomy to municipalities and schools when coordinating external and internal factors influencing the changes and ensuring that the implementation of curricula is consistent and sensitive to context, which ensures that the voices of children and parents can be heard (Pietarinen et al., 2017; Annala et al., 2020).

The decentralisation of the development of preschool curricula changes their very nature. Highly standardised and structured curricula with specific educational topics and materials, also known as ‘prescriptive curricula’, are abandoned (Nikolaidis et al., 2024). As a result, new preschool curriculum models have emerged. One example is ‘currere’, or ‘lived curriculum’, in which the curriculum is experienced, enacted, and reconstructed (Wood & Hedges, 2016; Ramjewan & Toukan, 2018). Another example is the ‘emergent curriculum’, which develops through practical interaction between children and teachers. In this model, the teacher’s role involves listening, observing, and documenting children’s theories, ideas, explorations, and interests. The teacher then responds to these observations to create meaningful, open, comprehensive, and long-term learning experiences together with the children (Edwards et al., 2012; Nxumalo et al., 2018; Ramjewan & Toukan, 2018). Furthermore, when the goal is to increase the standardisation of early childhood education, the developed curricula are more prescriptive and a thematic approach is used (Haslip & Gullo, 2018; Nikolaidis et al., 2024; Zama & Mashiya, 2022). These curriculum models are criticised for their negative impact on the availability of different learning opportunities for children, de-professionalisation of teachers and restrictions on their autonomy, and a high level of control over the education process (Haslip & Gullo, 2018; Jin et al., 2024; Nikolaidis et al., 2024).

It is impossible to imagine the implementation of curriculum policies without teachers’ agency. The more centralised curriculum making becomes, the more important role the teachers play. With a prescriptive curriculum, the teacher’s role is its direct implementation (Haslip & Gullo, 2018; Nikolaidis et al., 2024); additionally, lived curriculum and emergent curriculum require the teacher to be highly creative, flexible, sensitive, reflective, and able to hear and take into account the voices and perspectives of all participants in the process (Edwards et al., 2012; Nxumalo et al., 2018; Ramjewan & Toukan, 2018). Teacher-driven curriculum making (Bascia et al., 2014) and local curriculum making by preschool institutions (Pietarinen et al., 2019) is a multifaceted process involving multiple voices.

Teachers’ agency is particularly important during periods of educational reforms, i.e., when national curriculum changes are being developed (Pietarinen et al., 2019). These changes are driven by transformative educational visions, i.e., new alternatives that are not aligned with the educational realities (O’Sullivan, 1999, p. 6). The reformed national curricula usually create visions of how early childhood education should be transformed in the country based on global early childhood education trends, taking into account the aspects that need to be strengthened and modified nationally (Gregersen-Hermans, 2021; Heikka et al., 2022; Mashford-Scott et al., 2012). If the teachers’ perspective on the education of children (personal meanings, values, views, visions, and practices) differs from the visions embedded in the curriculum, the modifications to the national curriculum become an external power that drives teachers to rebuild their own framework of what they consider self-evident education aspects and critically reflect on their personal views and practices, so that they can accept and properly embody the curriculum policies when teaching children (Mezirow, 1994, 2000; Matis, 2021). Teachers experience the changing curricula as a disorienting dilemma that provokes the feelings of insecurity, uncertainty, intellectual anxiety, opposition, and even forces them to reconsider their professional identity (Mezirow, 1994, 2000; Briciu, 2024).

The aim of this paper is to reveal how preschool teachers experience updates to their local preschool curricula provoked by changes in the national curriculum. Lithuania provides unique opportunities for the researchers of this problem because the last three decades have seen early childhood teachers going through more than one transformation in curriculum policies, from centralised development and implementation of curricula to a radical decentralisation of curriculum making, eventually going back to a semi-centralised curriculum development process. When the curriculum-making process was decentralised, preschool institutions had to develop their own local curricula; then, after the adoption of a mandatory national-level Description of the Achievements of Preschool-Age Children (DAPAC, 2014) and, later, national-level Preschool Curriculum Guideline (PSCG, 2023), preschool institutions had to update their local curricula. This naturally created a context allowing an analysis of how teachers experience the externally driven updates to their local curricula.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Relevant Trends in Curriculum Reform and Related Tensions

Re-thinking childhood, learning, and play in various preschool curricula remains relevant globally (Pramling Samuelsson & Carlson, 2008; Fleer, 2021; Yang et al., 2022). The development of game-based curricula faces challenges such as teacher-perceived contradictions between play and learning, or a discrepancy between playful learning initiated by children and teachers’ attitude towards games and between a curriculum based on a philosophical approach towards play and its practical implementation through play-responsive teaching (O’Síoráin et al., 2023; Pramling Samuelsson & Björklund, 2023).

The countries that have developed a national curriculum based on a child-centred approach seek to develop game-based curricula (Jin et al., 2024). Their focus is on the aspect of a child’s welfare (Sandseter & Seland, 2016). These countries are looking for ways to develop inclusive education as part of early childhood education practices, including one of its latest approaches called the Universal Design for Learning. Research by Karlsudd (2021) shows that the quality of inclusion in preschool education fundamentally depends on how the educators model the curriculum. Research by Lowrey et al. (2019) confirms that the Universal Design for Learning encourages deep engagement of children with different needs in educational processes, but it emphasises the question of how the curricula should be modelled to better focus on predicting and overcoming potential learning barriers. In countries with reconceptualised preschool curricula that expressly describe the desired directions of inclusive education, teachers are under pressure to remove obstacles from the educational process that prevent the inclusion and participation of every child (Singh & Zhang, 2022). A study by Maharaj (2021) shows that all stakeholders, including parents, should be involved in the development and implementation of inclusive curricula. The sustainable development aspect of preschool curricula is also being widely reconsidered: curricula rely on the holistic approach towards sustainability that involves children in the active decision-making process (Borg & Samuelsson, 2022; Haslip & Gullo, 2018). Weldemariam et al. (2017) analyse curricula based on four aspects: the inclusion of sustainability ideas, attitude towards a child, relationship between humans and nature, and the theoretical–philosophical grounds of sustainability; they conclude that the anthropocentric approach currently prevailing in the curricula should be replaced with a bio-centric, or eco-centric approach. The bio-centric approach is based on the ethical position that all forms of life on Earth are equal, and human precedence over other life forms is not emphasised (Zilka, 2022). The eco-centric approach highlights not only the importance of knowledge about the environment but also the encouragement of a deep and close connection between children and the natural world within the curriculum (Ghosh, 2025).

Researchers talk about the relevance of reconsidering the aspects of civic, cultural, and multilingual education in preschool education curricula where the curricula are reinterpreted as multiple ecosystems (Fleer, 2021; Yang et al., 2022) that enrich early childhood education with global experiences (Yang & Li, 2019). According to Nian and Liu (2025), preschool curricula should integrate local culture with modern educational concepts. Scholars note tensions arising from the discrepancies between curriculum systems and talent development models caused by a lack of innovative solutions.

They raise questions about new or newly interpreted educational directions, such as computational thinking, STEAM, AI, etc. (Yang et al., 2020). Movahedazarhouligh et al. (2023) claim that the integration of STEAM into preschool curricula is one of the most relevant reformative curriculum directions, but teachers are feeling stressed and lack confidence in their skills and pedagogical abilities in STEAM subjects. The inclusion of digital technologies into the curriculum also requires rethinking pedagogical strategies and ensuring the technological empowerment of teachers (J. J. Chen, 2025; Meilasari et al., 2023; Nian & Liu, 2025). Masturoh et al. (2024) predict a breakthrough of artificial intelligence in the preschool curricula rethinking process that will increase the interactivity, flexibility, and customisation of the educational process, but they note the still-existing contraposition between the practical application of gamification pedagogy and AI use.

2.2. Teachers’ Agency During Curriculum Reforms

Teachers are the key agents in the curriculum-changing process (Burns et al., 2015; D. Chen et al., 2024). Teachers’ agency is defined as the ability and skill of teachers to intentionally produce certain educational effects in their social interactions with the education community (Kneen et al., 2023). Teachers’ agency is associated both with personal development and the impact on the professional community (Kneen et al., 2023; Marangio & Heyting, 2023). Preconditions for the manifestation of teachers’ agency are sociocultural and educational context and educational situations and circumstances, such as education reform or curriculum changes, in particular (Kneen et al., 2023; Marangio & Heyting, 2023). Teachers’ agency is bidirectional: teachers can support and advance the changes, but they can also oppose and block them (Sofou & Tsafos, 2009). According to Pyhältö (2014), after being exposed to changes, teachers can adapt, ignore, or accept them.

Teachers’ curriculum agency is defined as ‘the teacher’s capacity to recontextualise policies and translate them into their field of action’ (Mouraz et al., 2024, p. 140). During the national-level curriculum reforms, active participation of teachers is crucial for their implementation or the development of local-level curricula (Bradfield & Exley, 2020). Curriculum policies are never simply adopted and implemented; it is a process of sense-making, social interpretation, mediation, negotiation, recreation, and translation, because teachers have their own experiences, value systems, understanding of educational practices, and the local context of their educational institution (Burns et al., 2015; Sofou & Tsafos, 2009; Pietarinen et al., 2019; Priestley & Xenofontos, 2021; Movahedazarhouligh et al., 2023; Ross, 2024). In her analysis of curriculum making, Ross (2024) identifies the stages of its interpretation: intended, planned, and enacted curriculum that reveals its potential to teachers. According to Sofou and Tsafos (2009), the impact of curriculum changes can only be assessed through the interpretation of these ideas in practice, which demonstrates harmony, consistency, or tensions between the curriculum policies and the educational practices.

Teachers’ experiences related to preschool curriculum changes are influenced not only by personal professional factors, but also by external contextual factors (Marangio & Heyting, 2023), including empowering or failure to empower early childhood teachers to take part in the process of planning curricular goals, educational contents, or pedagogical programs (D. Chen et al., 2024). In Sweden, tensions have been noted between increasing requirements for teachers’ responsibility and educational competencies emphasised in the preschool curricula and the actual educational conditions, including the number of children in groups and available professional development opportunities for teachers to help them comply with the requirements (Nasiopoulou et al., 2022). The key contextual factors include specific educational conditions and leadership in the educational institution (Ngwenya et al., 2021).

A study by Sofou and Tsafos (2009) revealed that experienced early childhood teachers can flexibly adapt the national curriculum to their accumulated knowledge proven by their long-term practice. Meanwhile, teachers with less experience follow the curriculum more closely. Some teachers apply certain teaching aspects that do not meet the requirements of the national curriculum. Clasquin-Johnson (2016) identified two models of how early childhood teachers respond to the preschool curricula changes: some teachers refine and adapt the new ideas for their practical implementation, while others change their own practices to match more closely the curricular requirements.

Researchers (Liyanage et al., 2015) claim that curriculum changes result in stress for teachers, professional vulnerability, and decrease in their self-worth and professional welfare. Research shows that stress experienced by early childhood teachers when implementing or updating their local curricula is increased by time pressures, non-teaching tasks, and the conflict between the education quality requirements specified in the national curricula and the quality of educational practices (Kelly & Berthelsen, 1995). Negative emotions experienced by teachers during the curriculum reforms may weaken the teacher’s agency. Therefore, it is important to show how teachers experience the updates to local curricula provoked by the national curriculum guidelines.

2.3. Context of the Research

As mentioned above, there were several significant periods of change in preschool curricula policies in Lithuania in the last three decades (Figure 1). The policy of strictly centralised development of a national curriculum adopted in 1993 was replaced by a radical decentralisation in 2005, only to be followed by a shift to semi-centralised curriculum making in 2014 and 2023 (Monkevičienė et al., 2013).

To leave more space for teachers’ agency, two alternative preschool curricula were developed in 1993 and the teacher communities at preschool institutions were invited to discuss and choose one of them for implementation. In 2005, the curriculum development process was fully decentralised in order to contextualise the education of children, to take into account the specific needs of children and their parents in each institution, and to encourage the diversity of educational models and practices in preschool institutions. The institutions had to develop their local curricula without any state regulation: no national-level educational goals, expected learning outcomes, or prioritised educational directions were defined. Moreover, teachers had no experience in local curricula making. Despite the trainings organised and recommendations provided, teachers experienced this period as a ‘decentralisation shock’: a difficult, exhausting process (Monkevičienė et al., 2013). Local curricula developed during this period and their impact on the quality of teaching varied: some preschool institutions embodied progressive, efficient, and high-quality educational models in their local curricula and expanded them in practical ways, while others did not achieve the necessary quality. In addition, the country lacked unified preschool education outcomes and was short of new educational visions.

In 2014, with the objective of improving the quality of teaching in each preschool establishment, a national-level document, Description of the Achievements of Preschool-Age Children, was developed, which contained the expected learning outcomes, such as the goals, increasing empowerment of children, and areas and steps of expected achievements (DAPAC, 2014). All preschool establishments in the country were required to update their local curricula based on this descriptive document.

In 2023, there was a new development: the Preschool Curriculum Guideline was adopted, describing both the expected learning outcomes mandatory for preschool institutions and the key educational directions that had to be reflected in the local curricula (PSCG, 2023). With both the strategists of education and the teachers wanting to preserve the uniqueness of the local curricula, the national Guideline outlined only the mandatory basis for local curricula: structuring the curriculum accordingly, based on the unique features of the teaching model used in each institution, but making sure to include all learning outcomes; maintaining the existing direction of holistic education; making sure that the curriculum is based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach; and prioritising experiential learning and learning through play. Other aspects of curricula described in the Guideline were optional recommendations: outlines of the educational content; groups of pedagogical strategies and methods to be applied; principles of creating educational contexts as a relevant environmental factor; and the key components of achievement and progress monitoring. The communities of the educational institutions were free to consider, adopt, contextualise, or develop them at their own discretion. The Guideline created preconditions to maintain the fundamental preschool education directions in the local curricula, but, at the same time, created space for the contextualisation of teaching.

After the Guideline was adopted, the communities of all educational institutions were given two years to update their local curricula, while being under pressure to properly embody the mandatory basis of the curriculum calling for new stress-inducing aspects such as the UDL approach, play, experiential activities, and a curriculum based on the creation of educational contexts. We conducted our study during this reformative period, seeking to reveal the lived experiences of preschool teachers as they carry out updates to their local preschool curricula provoked by the changes in the national curriculum.

3. Methodology

Our study is based on the phenomenological philosophy (Heidegger, 1962) and seeks to show the existential, emotional, embodied, situational, and pre-reflective experiences of teachers involved in the local curriculum-updating process. The study is based on Max Van Manen’s (1990) hermeneutic interpretative phenomenological approach. This study follows a descriptive–interpretative design. It uses lived experiences and specific, pre-reflective emotions to help the researcher grasp the essence of the phenomenon under investigation. In this case, the focus is on preschool teachers’ lived experiences resulting from updates to their local preschool curricula following changes in the national curriculum (Van Manen, 2016).

Van Manen (1990, 2016) claims that the hermeneutic phenomenology practice is a method that helps grant meaning to the world as we experience it and reveals the basic structures of the lived experience of human existence and various meaning-giving methods.

The goal of this study was to reveal how teachers experience the updates to local preschool curricula provoked by an external influence (the national Guideline). The research process was based on van Manen’s lifeworld existentials: lived self–other (Relationality); lived body (Corporeality); lived space (Spatiality); lived time (Temporality); and lived things (Materiality), because they are universal existentials reflecting the experience of reality (Van Manen, 2016).

Study participants were selected using a purposive sampling method based on the following criteria: the participant is currently working in a preschool, is directly involved in the curriculum-updating process at their school, and has voluntarily consented to participate.

Forty-two female teachers participated in the study, and the paper presents anecdotal data from sixteen participants (

Table 1. Study participants.

Teacher	Age of the Participant	Years of Professional Experience	Teacher	Age of the Participant	Years of Professional Experience
A	36	9	J	32	4.5
B	26	2	K	58	38
C	56	28	L	35	11
D	37	16	M	48	25
E	48	28	N	56	33
F	27	1.5	O	48	22
G	55	30	P	37	9
H	48	22	R	51	31

). The final number of participants was decided by the achieved saturation of study data, i.e., after the fundamental aspects of the phenomenon were uncovered (Van Manen, 1990, 2016).

3.1. Data Collection

The phenomenological interviews were conducted either in person or remotely, according to the participant’s preference. Their duration was 40 to 60 min. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. In addition to the verbal statements of the participants, their body language, facial expressions, gestures, etc., were also recorded. All study participants were asked the main question: What does it mean to you to experience the updates to your preschool’s curriculum provoked by an external influence? It was followed by clarifying queries, such as these questions: How did you feel at the time? What did it mean to you? Where did it happen? If you could use a metaphor to describe your experience, what metaphor would illustrate it best? These questions were based on the course of each interview.

3.2. Data Analysis

Phenomenological data were analysed using Epoché-Reduction method, when the pre-existing views, preconceptions, and theories of the researcher are suspended to allow the phenomenon to emerge (Van Manen, 2016). We employed the following methods: The Heuristic Epoché-Reduction—wonder approach aiming to break the self-evidences and awaken a deep sense of wonder in response to the emergent phenomenon (Van Manen, 2016). The Hermeneutic Epoché-Reduction—openness, when the researcher, aware of their constant tendency to rely on pre-conceptions, limited understanding, and theories, aims to overcome their subjective feelings, expectations, and assumptions so as not to be tempted to jump to premature and one-sided understanding and description of lived experiences (Van Manen, 2016). The Experiential Epoché-Reduction—concreteness, when the researcher suspends all their previous knowledge to notice the concrete, non-conceptualised, and non-generalised appearances of the experienced phenomenon that are described in a simple expressive language (Van Manen, 2016).

To reveal and describe the phenomenon, we applied methods grounded in the reflective phenomenological attitude. This approach aims to address the uniqueness of a phenomenon as it presents itself in its singularity (Van Manen, 2016, p. 228). The methods included the following: Eidetic Reduction, which seeks the essence of the phenomenon; Ontological Reduction, which examines the ways the phenomenon exists; Ethical Reduction, which involves opening up to another person’s otherness; Radical Reduction, which requires suppressing oneself as a meaning-giver to allow the phenomenon to emerge on its own; and Originary Reduction, which suspends usual meanings in order to return to existential meanings.

3.3. Formulation of Anecdotes and Themes

We transcribed the obtained interviews and read them multiple times aiming to understand the experiences of the participants and immerse ourselves deeper into them. We were searching for answers to the following question: What does it mean to experience updates to one’s local curriculum provoked by an external influence? Using the interview transcripts, we extracted anecdotes, i.e., the transformed essential statements about the lived experiences. In the next stage, the data were coded in order to identify the prevailing themes. Themes are a form that allows for capturing the lived experience of the investigated phenomenon. They describe the structural aspects of lived experiences (Van Manen, 1990, p. 87). As required by Van Manen’s (1990, 2016) thematic analysis method, we looked at the data both at a holistic level and at a level of individual paragraph, sentence, or phrase. At a holistic level, we treated the text as an entirety. We applied selective and detailed reading approaches to uncover significant meanings. (What statement(s) or phrase(s) seem(s) particularly essential or revealing about the phenomenon or experience being described?) (Van Manen, 2016, p. 319).

3.4. Ethics

All participants were informed about the purpose of data collection and the possibility to withdraw from the study at any time. All personal information of the participants has been changed to prevent identification. The study followed the ethical requirements of the University.

3.5. Rigour

The quality and reliability of the study was ensured by following essential criteria defined by Van Manen (2016, pp. 340–353). The Reliability criterion was ensured by selecting participants who could best reveal the lived experiences of the studied phenomenon and by the achieved saturation of data. The Evidence criterion was achieved by revealing the meanings of the experienced phenomenon based on empirical findings. The Generalisation criterion was ensured by our efforts to avoid generalisations and focus on the uniqueness of the phenomenon. The Sampling criterion was implemented by choosing participants who could offer examples of rich experiences. Lastly, the Validation criterion was achieved by questioning whether the study reveals the pre-reflective lived experience of the phenomenon (Van Manen, 2016).

4. Study Findings

The lived experience of the updates to the local preschool curriculum in one’s own preschool, provoked by the national curriculum guidelines, has emerged as a dualistic phenomenon: open and hidden voices of teachers. The authors of this paper were involved in the development of the national curriculum guidelines and conducted trainings to teachers and principals about the new early childhood education vision embedded in the Guidelines and how to reflect it in the local curriculum updates. This phenomenon began to emerge from the very first interviews. When a teacher’s experience of the idea and process of local preschool curriculum updates was positive, they spoke openly about it. Conversely, when the experiences were negative or challenging, the teachers tended to suppress them and avoid sharing, expressing them only anonymously. Whenever a teacher described controversial experiences during the phenomenological interview, they would quickly begin to explain themselves, claiming that they no longer thought that way and that they approved of the national Guidelines. Alternatively, they would downplay their own ability to update the local curriculum, as if hiding behind the notion that they were good practitioners who successfully educated children. The prominence of this phenomenon provided direction for the subsequent data analysis.

The dualistic structure of the lived experiences of teachers revealed through the universal existentials: lived body, lived human relations, lived space, lived time, and lived existence, is revealed by five themes:

• Theme 1. Resonating body: vitality vs. freezing (Corporeality);
• Theme 2. Teamwork during a critical moment: safe sustainability vs. uncertainty (Relationality);
• Theme 3. Competing spatial perspectives: new possibilities vs. conflicting visions (Spatiality);
• Theme 4. Altered perception of time: third wave vs. lost time (Temporality);
• Theme 5. Awakened existential questions: intentional self-reflection vs. conflict of roles (Existentiality).

The themes were revealed through sub-themes (Figure 2), which allowed identifying the experiences of teachers during a critical period (after they found out about the need to update their local curriculum and during the updating process), as evidenced by anecdotes and the meanings of their experiences they revealed.

Theme 1. Resonating body: vitality vs. freezing (Corporeality). Situations of critical educational transformations induce a response in the body, including all its senses, emotions, and modes of action, bodily experience being not only the reflection of the changes experienced, but also an active corporeal interaction with the environment through the senses and their influence on thinking and creative impulses (Barboza, 2024).

The metaphor of a resonating body reflects the lived experience of teachers when their bodies respond, through their senses and emotions, to an external pressure to update the local preschool curricula, as well as the lived experience of bodily impulses to act. Teachers’ bodies respond to this critical situation in a dual manner: either by vitality or by freezing.

The body of Teacher A responds with vitality. A desire to move and stir is the sign of bodily vitality, the experience of one’s readiness to be involved in the local curriculum-updating process and the mental experience of the perspective of doing this activity and its promises for the future. Important preconditions for the bodily involvement in this activity are the absence of an ‘emotional and physical noise’, i.e., maintaining the inner calm without any unnecessary emotional triggers, physical distance from the never-ending daily tasks, and the absence of stress caused by ‘urgency’.

Desire to move: without any emotional or physical noise

I have the most vivid memories from the training. Quiet atmosphere, no urgency, distancing myself from the routine of daily work. New experiences that motivate me to move. Group tasks helped me to break out of stagnation, motivated me to get involved in the work and see the perspective. It’s just—movement without any emotional and physical ‘noise’.

(Teacher A)

The body of Teacher B also responds with vitality. It reacts with thrills of excitement to the curriculum updates, which represent something new, interesting, and meaningful in her life. The body experiences a surge of energy and readiness to grow, which encourages the teacher to fully engage in the curriculum-updating process and self-improve at the same time.

Thrills of newness: energy for growth

A bit of excitement, in the best sense, and thrills before a new but interesting thing. Also, a joy of a new discovery, a joy of getting to know new things, a possibility to improve and grow. Overall, I was flooded by good emotions. I felt a lot of new energy.

(Teacher B)

The bodily experience of Teacher C is opposite to vitality: it is suffering and freezing. Her body still remembers the previous decentralisation shock, when the preschool curriculum of her institution had to be developed without any national-level guidance. The anticipation of additional exhausting workload causes suffering. It is experienced as uncertainty during the drafting and redrafting of the curriculum and as a fear of failure. The suffering provokes freezing of the body such as general immobilisation, restrained activity (‘my arms were hanging at my sides, and there was heaviness in my legs’), and loss of thought clarity (‘somebody had put a bag over my head’) but, at the same time, signals an internal conflict stemming from her view on the curriculum updates that needs to be resolved.

Suffering: anticipation of exhausting workload

My whole body was frozen. Chills of fear, … because I realised that hard work awaited me. As if somebody had put a bag over my head, and my arms were hanging at my sides, and there was heaviness in my legs. We have suffered it [curriculum development and updates] for so many years.

(Teacher C)

The body of Teacher D responds with emotional numbness. Suppressed feelings are experienced as feeling nothing at all and not being conscious of emotional signals (‘I didn’t even think if I felt good or bad at the time’), as a mental ignorance of the emotional symptoms of the body and intellectualisation, i.e., focus on work (‘It’s just work’). The mind–body link is lost, so the teacher experiences the local curriculum-updating process as a technical work, without any positive or negative emotions that awaken the creative energy.

Suppressed feelings: it’s just work

We did not focus on any feelings. For me, it was more about work than about some kind of feelings. You know, I didn’t even think if I felt good or bad at the time … I just dived directly into doing the work … About my feelings… Well, we accept and put up with it. It’s just work, and has to be done.

(Teacher D)

Theme 2. Teamwork during a critical moment: safe sustainability vs. uncertainty (Relationality). The development of curricula is a co-creative, teamwork-based process, and its result depends on joint effort and dialogue among all ‘voices’ (Sai et al., 2024; Meixi et al., 2022).

The metaphor of Teamwork reflects how teachers experience relationships with other team members during a critical period for them: making externally driven updates to the local preschool curricula. Teachers experience Teamwork in a dual manner, either as safe sustainability or uncertainty.

Teacher E experiences the relationships between team members in her preschool as safe sustainability, owing to the professional leadership of her principal. The teacher experiences it as joint work (‘we will analyse it together’), having a proper direction for the updates and not being exposed to unexpected activities (‘with her, you won’t get lost’), as access to support (‘will help us, will explain and clarify things’), and proper awareness of the situation (‘takes part in all processes’, hence, knows everything). The teacher experiences the sustainable leadership of her principal (‘leads in all areas’) as a precondition for stable teamwork, resilience against external influences, and successful curriculum-updating process.

Safety: sustainable leadership of the principal

I felt safe because we have a strong principal in our establishment who leads in all areas and takes part in all processes. Such a safe feeling. She will help us with everything, will explain and clarify things, everything will be fine, we will analyse it together. My mind reassured me that everything will be OK. With her [the principal], you won’t get lost, she knows that sector very well, when discussions are taking place, or have taken place, it is much safer [with her].

(Teacher E)

Safe sustainability of team relationships during the critical curriculum-updating period was also experienced as trust in the strengths of the team members. Teacher F experienced the trust of her preschool team as her delegation to represent the team during the presentation of completed tasks during the training (‘I was delegated everywhere’), as recognition by others due to her strengths, i.e., skills acquired during her university studies (‘we studied curriculum drafting at a university’), and as courage to become involved, together with the other team members, in the local curriculum-updating work and overcome difficulties.

Experience of trust: I was delegated everywhere

I had no idea that they would also sign me up for this training [on curriculum updating]. But they did. At first, I thought it would be difficult but I wasn’t scared. Because we studied curriculum drafting at a university, so I had some knowledge. In the beginning, it was difficult, but later I really enjoyed it, especially when we started practical tasks. Others [colleagues] found it more difficult: what’s it all about? … I was delegated everywhere [laughs]. I was proud of myself for performing the best at the training.

(Teacher F)

Meanwhile, Teacher G experiences uncertainty in her relationships with her preschool team during this critical period. Uncertainty is experienced as lack of information, which leads to inability to predict the specific directions that the curriculum updates should take or the consequences of her actions (‘What will we be doing? What exactly and how?’), as insecurity and fear to voice her doubts diverging from the official opinion because of the uncertainty and lack of clarity regarding the potential reaction of other team members (‘There was this kind of general anxiety and whispering among everybody’), and as trapping inside herself the emotions triggered by the news about the local curriculum updates (‘You open your mouth, and close it again. And you shut up.’). The experienced uncertain relationships with other team members inhibit the joint effort to update the local preschool curricula.

Anxious whispering: unvoiced resistance

There was this kind of general anxiety and whispering among everybody. What will we be doing? What exactly and how? Everybody whispering. … There was this rejection response. At first, you withdraw—fear of talking. You open your mouth, and close it again. And you shut up.

(Teacher G)

Teacher H experiences the uncertainty of teamwork as an unbearable burden of personal responsibility and work stress without sharing it with others (‘Chaos in my head, hundreds of thoughts, how can I find the time for everything?’). The experience of personal overload triggers a defensive reaction: rejection of responsibility (‘I don’t give a damn … It will work out one way or another.’) by transferring it to the team as a whole (‘I am not alone in this’). Under the circumstances of uncertain relationships among team members it may mean complete absence of any responsibility for the local curriculum updates.

I don’t give a damn: I am not alone in this

Chaos in my head, hundreds of thoughts, how can I find the time for everything? First there was a commotion, and then silence. I don’t give a damn, I thought. It will work out one way or another. And, honestly, I am not alone in this.

(Teacher H)

Theme 3. Competing spatial perspectives: new possibilities vs. conflicting visions (Spatiality). The emergent theme reveals that, in critical situations of educational transformations, the existing boundaries of educational realities can be crossed after the emergence of new visions of other realities, re-imaginations, intersections of the visions, and creation of new conceptual framework (Chappell et al., 2023).

The metaphor of competing spatial perspectives reflects how, under the influence of new visions, teachers experience distancing from the existing preschool curricula of their school (that they adhered to for a while) as something self-evident. The experience of competing spatial perspectives is also of a dual nature, manifesting either as a forceful vision of opening new possibilities or as conflicting visions.

Teacher J experiences the local curriculum updates as something that opens new opportunities: ‘new panorama will unfold’, ‘interesting discoveries’, and ‘possibilities’. She experiences them as a road that widens as you continue along it until a whole majestic panorama (‘Oh wow’) unfolds before you: once you start improving the curriculum, the changes are becoming clearer with time, until their entirety and unique value are revealed. The updates to the local curriculum are experienced as updated knowledge, interesting discoveries, valuable changes in the education of children, and new opportunities. The vision of opening new possibilities helps the teacher to immerse herself in the creative process of local curriculum updating.

An unfolding panorama: interesting discoveries and possibilities

One needs to start going, and the road will widen and a new panorama will unfold. This is truly interesting, finding out about new things, and, in general, I want to improve. To me, the curriculum updates are new, interesting discoveries. New possibilities to change the curriculum. I remember well that the reaction was ‘Oh’, or like ‘Oh wow’.

(Teacher J)

Conflicting visions provoke an internal conflict in some teachers that needs to be resolved in order for the local curriculum updates to be a meaningful process. Teacher K, having heard about the upcoming updates, experiences a defensive vision of escape, instantaneous withdrawal and distancing, removal of herself from the situation while staying in place (‘I wanted to stand up and leave, but then I thought: ‘Stay put, where are you going to go?’). The experience of controlled escape gives her strength. The vision of a possible reality that flashes through one’s mind and the knowledge that there is always another choice usually helps one to stay in place, in the here and now, and to experience and accept the reality as is.

Vision of escape: stay put, where are you going to go?

These education people, again, came up with something new. I wanted to stand up and leave, but then I thought: ‘Stay put, where are you going to go?’ … You control yourself and remain sitting. Waiting to see what happens next. There is no choice here, whether you want it or not, everything just follows its course and that’s it.

(Teacher K)

Teacher L experiences parallel, non-communicating realities when she tries to connect her daily practices (‘our reality’) with the text of the curriculum (‘theory again, and new terminology’). She experiences an obvious contradiction between her embodied actual practice with children and the concepts defining educational phenomena (‘How is it related to practice?’). The definitions of educational practices are experienced as a potential connection between the parallel realities (‘we will learn to apply proper words to things that we already do in practice’), but also as involuntary contribution to the curriculum updates imposed upon teachers because the teachers themselves do not think it necessary at all.

Parallel worlds: contradiction between definitions and practice

During the training I had this strong feeling: here’s theory again, and new terminology. How is it related to practice? It is radically different from our reality. We were joking with the colleagues that we will learn to apply proper words to things that we already do in practice.

(Teacher L)

Theme 4. Altered perception of time: third wave vs. lost time (Temporality). The experiences of teachers that gave rise to this theme were related to the events of creating or updating their local curricula and the experience of temporality during the period between the two events (Sadeghi et al., 2025), and to a subjective sense of time, when the time filled with new experiences requiring cognitive efforts seemed to take longer than the time full of familiar, routine activities that seemed to pass faster.

The metaphor of the altered perception of time describes time periods between the creation of local curricula and their updates as subjectively experienced by the teachers. The experiences of intervals between the local curriculum-updating events were very vivid, but we did not capture any experiences of the updating process itself as something that has a certain duration. The experience of altered time emerged as time waves: the third wave and lost time.

Teacher M experiences time periods between one update to the local preschool curriculum and the next update as time waves that are provoked by the national-level documents transforming early childhood education practices. The reforms are experienced as a tsunami that disrupts the established practices, but the third wave seems less intimidating: the teachers had already experienced the radical curriculum decentralisation phase when they had to create their own local curricula; then, after the national Description of the Achievements of Preschool-Age Children was adopted, they had updated their curricula and, during the period of this study, they were updating their curricula once more to comply with the newly adopted national Preschool Curriculum Guideline. With the necessary experience already acquired, this phase is experienced as less intimidating: ‘I saw that our establishment … is already doing a lot of work in this direction’, ‘not that complicated’.

Third wave: it is less complicated now than it has been before

Dear God, this thing again. Because it feels like you go on working, everything’s fine, and then it just comes suddenly again; dear God, all over again. Third wave. It feels like we have just recently updated the curriculum, and it’s all over again. So yeah, a bit of a mild shock, then you laugh, and then you calm down. It’s not the first time. … When we started studying the Guideline, I saw that our establishment—which made me so happy—is already doing a lot of work in this direction. I saw that it’s fine and not that complicated.

(Teacher M)

Teacher N experiences the frequent unwanted changes to the curriculum provoked by the external reforms as time between the changes that just flies imperceptibly. Every change at the national level disturbs the comfort zone of teachers, requires cognitive effort, and means much active work, and is therefore subjectively experienced as extended and expanded time; meanwhile, the time in between the curriculum updates when the teachers can work comfortably at their usual rhythm without any stress is experienced as a time vacuum, as an imperceptible or shortened time.

Unregistered passage of time: Oops, not again

I thought to myself: not again, as soon as we got accustomed to that one [curriculum], new things again. I was like ‘Oops!’ I didn’t even feel how all this time had passed. What are we expected to do this time round? Everything that’s new is worrying.

(Teacher N)

Teacher O experiences the desire to put off the difficult, intellectually straining work (updating the local curriculum) that she is less accustomed to: ‘I kept putting this task off again and again’. She experiences procrastination as lost time. It is a rather paradoxical experience: her desire to gain some stress-free time by postponing the start of work on the updates triggers feelings of guilt and a heavy conscience. Putting off work that causes intellectual stress leads to emotional stress (anxiety and discontent), robbing her of peaceful time until the work is done.

Lost time: mañana (tomorrow)

It felt like my mind refused to work. That it was ‘lazy’. Mañana—I kept putting this task off again and again, avoiding thinking about it or letting any thoughts about it into my head. I kept finding some usual work to do, such as preparing for activities with children or rearranging some corner of the classroom. Because I had this gut feeling that once I start, that’s it, I will have to rack my brain for a long time.

(Teacher O)

Theme 5. Awakened existential questions: intentional self-reflection vs. conflict of roles (Existentiality). Every critical period of one’s personal or professional life triggers questions of existential nature about the essence of one’s existence and work. The period of local preschool curricula updates triggered these questions in some teachers. The existential questions were experienced in a dual manner: as purposeful self-reflection and as a conflict between the professional roles performed.

Teacher P experienced the updates as something that triggered existential thoughts and questions about her role as a teacher and educator, and about her traits as a person who can grow and change and cause changes in the educational process.

Awakened questions: Am I a good teacher for the children

I was glad that, finally, something was changing in early childhood education, too. I felt mild anxiety; I immediately starting reading the Guideline, and questions started spinning round and round in my head. Does my work comply with the Guideline? Am I a good teacher for the children? Will I be able make the changes and change myself? Will I–? My thoughts were racing, breaking off and intertwining. But I had this gut feeling deep inside that both I and the children will benefit from the changes.

(Teacher P)

Meanwhile, Teacher R, being provoked to become involved in the local curriculum-updating process, experiences the conflict of her internal professional roles. She experiences the updating process as a thief of time reserved for the children: ‘We spend more time writing than working with children’. She identifies more with the role of educator rather than that of curriculum developer, which is difficult: ‘You have to spend a lot of time sitting … until you come up with something’. Her fatigue caused by reforms is obvious: ‘no other sector goes through as many changes as the education system does’.

We spend more time writing than working with children

A novelty again, new things over and over again, no other sector goes through as many changes as the education system does. We keep coming up with new things all the time. We spend more time writing than [working] with children. Because it steals a lot of time that I could spend with children. Because you have to spend a lot of time sitting with these working groups until you come up with something. Then you spend very little time in contact with children. It’s annoying.

(Teacher R)

5. Summary and Discussion

During our analysis of the lived experiences of teachers in response to the updates to their local curricula provoked by the national PCG, a dualistic phenomenon emerged, open and hidden voices of teachers, revealing that some of the teachers were willing to accept, support, and further develop the national curriculum policies, while others experienced edge emotions, stress, conflicting visions of education quality, and defensive reactions that inhibited their active participation. The observed phenomenon of how teachers experience curriculum updates is consistent with the two directions of the teachers’ agency, i.e., supporting the changes or resisting them, identified by Sofou and Tsafos (2009), Pyhältö (2014), Burns et al. (2015), and other researchers. However, in our case, early childhood teachers did not experience any open opposition to the strategic educational directions established in the national PCG; instead, they experienced edge emotions, internal tensions, conflicts, and defensive reactions that required more time, training, and support to be resolved. According to Briciu (2024), defensive mechanisms show that the person seeks to defend their values and beliefs or to distance themselves from difficult past experiences. A conscious reflection on the reasons behind edge emotions can provide more opportunities for transformative learning and establish the way for change.

The dualistic structure of how teachers experienced their local curriculum updates manifested in all existentials: Corporeality, Relationality, Spatiality, Temporality, and Existentiality.

They experienced the dualism of Corporeality as the resonance of curriculum changes in their body: either as a vitality of senses and energy to act when they could see the positive promise of these updates and professional development opportunities, or as a frozen body when they anticipated additional exhausting workload and had a defensive intellectualisation reaction manifesting as mental ignorance of the bodily signs of emotion and focusing exclusively on work. One of these aspects was demonstrated by Marangio and Heyting (2023) in a different field of education: psychology curriculum making. Focus group discussion revealed that the teachers experienced the curriculum development as a heavy investment of their time and an extremely exhausting process. The factor that could motivate the teachers to engage in curriculum making was the professional development opportunity they recognised as increasing their self-worth. According to Briciu (2024), reflection on one’s improvement, ability to transform one’s educational practices, and the reasons behind the edge emotions helps to understand that these emotions appear as defensive mechanisms of the established and comfortable educational approach. Such reflection helps to overcome edge emotions by discovering new meanings and educational opportunities.

In our study, the teachers experienced the dualism of Relationality as safe and sustainable teamwork during a critical moment, or as teamwork based on uncertain relationships and unpredictability. For the teachers who experienced teamwork as a safe sustainability of relationships among the curriculum-updating team, it was the result of professional leadership, joint activities, relying on the individual strengths of the team members, having a proper direction, being well informed and able to predict upcoming tasks, and the availability of support. Other teachers experienced teamwork as uncertainty in relationships due to lack of information, unpredictable reactions of other team members to their ideas and actions, and lack of workload sharing. Defensive reactions included trapping negative emotions and doubts inside oneself and rejecting personal responsibility by mentally reframing it as collective responsibility. To summarise, our study revealed both positive teamworking experiences of the early childhood teachers as well as defensive reactions and interpersonal tensions provoked by the curriculum updates. Briciu (2024) states that the teachers who are going through changes need safe interactions, openness, and trust to be able to analyse the threats to them as a person and to their professional life that are caused by the uncertainty brought by the change. Actions that can help are open discussions, insight sharing, joint activities, etc. The importance of collaboration and joint activities between teachers during curriculum development in secondary schools has been analysed by several researchers. Pietarinen et al. (2019) found that, during the curriculum reform in Finland, teachers recognised the value of collaboration and shared local curriculum sense-making for interpreting the national-level approach. This process helped bridge the old and the new, strengthen existing practices, and develop new ones. Marangio and Heyting (2023) reported that teachers emphasised the need for dedicated training time and opportunities for collaboration, highlighting the importance of trust, collegiality, openness, and sharing. Mouraz et al. (2024) showed that collaborating school communities assumed responsibility for creating and expanding the curriculum.

In our study, teachers experienced the dualism of Spatiality as competing spatial perspectives: either as a solid vision of new opportunities provoked by the national Guideline when the changes were becoming increasingly clear until their entirety and unique value was revealed, or as conflicting visions when teachers experienced contradiction between their embodied actual practice and the definitions of educational practices added to the text of their local curriculum. A dualistic link between defensive reaction and its suppression emerged: some teachers experienced a defensive vision of escaping the situation of curriculum updates and, at the same time, a vision of overcoming their fears, i.e., staying within the reality of the updates. Briciu (2024) notes that the metaphors of opening new opportunities emerge as visions of ‘a road’ or ‘a door’; in our study it emerged as ‘an unfolding panorama’. According to Chappell et al. (2023), curriculum change situations usually transform the confines of ‘self-evidences’ of teachers and the intersections of the competing visions help create new concepts. A study by Clasquin-Johnson (2016) reveals that teachers’ response to the preschool curricula changes is shaped by their personal understanding of early childhood education and professional beliefs and, therefore, any significant mismatch triggers higher internal tensions. Teachers’ experiences revealed by us showed that, during the period of national-level curriculum changes, teachers did not feel that they have any other choice than to accept them, and this caused severe internal stress. However, according to Hökkä and Vähäsantanen (2014), teachers have great freedom of action because they can choose how to interpret, adapt, and contextualise the changes when educating children in their groups.

In our study, teachers experienced Temporality as an altered perception of time: either as time waves, i.e., as subjectively experienced periods with their boundaries marked by the events of local curriculum making and updating provoked by the national-level policies, or as a subjective experience of shortened time when the periods in between the curriculum-updating processes passed without any cognitive stress. We observed a defensive reaction when putting off the updates to the local curriculum was experienced as lost time. Subjective experiences of shortened time can be explained by the insights of Clasquin-Johnson (2016), noting that the educational priorities in the national curriculum change faster than it is possible to implement them, and, as a result, teachers are forced to change the educational goals in response to the new educational policies before the previous policy has been fully understood and implemented. For that reason, teachers may experience the intervals between the curriculum updates as subjectively short periods and the curriculum-updating processes as a painfully long time. The study by Marangio and Heyting (2023) demonstrated that teachers needed more time, space, and dialogue for curriculum making.

Our study also revealed a completely new aspect of the curriculum-making experience that had not yet been extensively studied. The national preschool curriculum guideline encouraged teachers to reflect on questions related to their professional existence: teachers experienced it as either an intentional self-reflection about their role as educator and their ability to change their educational practices and improve, or as an internal conflict of professional roles, i.e., between the role of educator and the role of curriculum maker, with these roles perceived as competing for the time and investment of personal effort.

The limitation of our study is the circumstance that the phenomenological interviews with teachers were conducted during the early stages of the local curriculum-updating process. This process is still ongoing. After it ends, the experiences of teachers might be different. Another limitation is that we did not look into which ideas of the Guideline were acceptable to the teachers, and which caused the greatest stress. We followed the methodical requirements and only analysed the pre-reflective experiences of the local curriculum updates that the teachers revealed themselves.

6. Conclusions

The lived experiences of local curriculum updates triggered by the national Preschool Curriculum Guideline were characterised by a dualistic phenomenon, open and hidden voices of teachers.

Open voices is a metaphor revealing positive emotions of early childhood teachers such as new knowledge, discoveries, or taking a break from routine; their openness to new opportunities for improving the quality of early childhood education and personal growth; safe and sustainable teamwork during a critical moment that encourages open discussions and joint activities; the importance of the acquired curriculum-updating experience; and intentional self-reflection on their professional identity. These teachers are willing to accept, support, develop, and implement the curriculum policies in their early childhood education practices.

Hidden voices of teachers is a metaphor referring to their pre-reflective experience of a threat to their established understanding of early childhood education concepts and practices (‘as soon as we got accustomed to that one [curriculum]’) and the resulting defensive reaction. Edge emotions (anxiety, fear, and shock), frozen body, tensions, conflicting educational visions, and other visions are pre-reflective signals of such threats, while defensive reactions, such as trapping emotions and doubts inside oneself, intellectualisation (‘it’s just work’), visions of escape, putting off, mental transfer of responsibility to others, etc., are mechanisms meant to protect the established early childhood education concepts and practices from transformation. The teachers who go through these lived experiences have more difficulty accepting and implementing the national curriculum policies in their early childhood education practices.

The teachers who experience edge emotions, tensions, internal conflicts, and defensive reactions in response to the local curriculum changes need more time to transform their understanding of education and their practices. They should be offered training where they could open up to their own feelings, understand the true reasons behind edge emotions, consciously discuss them, and become open to changes. They also need training where they could gain competences required for curriculum making and adapting to changes in the early childhood education process. Another relevant aspect needed to strengthen teachers’ agency is constant reflection on successes, i.e., on improved curriculum-developing competences, higher quality of the educational process, and the dynamically growing professional identity.