What If Inclusion Was Built In?

Guest post by Deniece Doh

For many educators, supporting children with diverse learning needs is not a question of commitment but of capacity. Inclusive practice can easily become another expectation layered onto an already demanding role. Yet inclusion need not be experienced as additional workload. When it is intentionally embedded into curriculum design, responsive teaching can become part of the rhythm of everyday classroom practice.

This idea sits at the heart of our recent evaluation of an enhanced early literacy curriculum at NTUC First Campus in Singapore, designed to support educators in meeting the needs of children with diverse literacy abilities. Instead of relying solely on additional intervention or specialist support outside of the curriculum, the curriculum incorporated differentiated instruction, embedded reinforcement opportunities, educator question prompts and curated literacy resources into everyday teaching.

Looking beyond implementation

A well-designed curriculum is only as effective as the educators’ ability to use it confidently in everyday practice. We were therefore interested not only in how educators experienced these curriculum enhancements, but also whether their implementation translated into meaningful outcomes for children. By bringing together educator perspectives and children’s literacy outcomes, we sought to better understand how curriculum design can support both educator practice and children’s participation.

To explore this, our mixed-methods study combined educator surveys (316 educators across 125 of our preschools), focus group discussions (16 educators) and literacy outcomes from more than 29,000 children aged four to six across two cohorts.

How educators experienced the curriculum

One of the clearest messages from educators was that thoughtful curriculum design can itself become a form of professional support.

For novice educators, the embedded instructional guidance reduced uncertainty and provided greater clarity about how to respond to children with differing literacy needs. Educators described feeling more confident because differentiated instruction, question prompts and reinforcement opportunities were already integrated into the lesson design. This allowed them to focus less on planning adaptations and more on understanding the needs and interests of their children.

Experienced educators valued these same features differently. They drew on these provided resources to extend children’s thinking, deepen classroom discussions and make more intentional instructional decisions based on their knowledge of the children under their care.

Together, these findings suggest that educators across different stages of professional experience found value in the same curriculum, albeit in different ways. For novice educators, it offered confidence and clarity; for experienced educators, it deepened their engagement with the children. The curriculum provided a shared foundation, but it was educators’ understanding of children’s needs, interests and responses that ultimately brought it to life.

When educators are supported, children benefit

The educators’ experiences were reflected in children’s outcomes. Children with higher literacy needs who remained in whole-class learning without additional literacy intervention beyond the curriculum demonstrated literacy outcomes comparable to peers receiving targeted intervention. Among four-year-olds who did not receive additional intervention, grapheme-phoneme correspondence also improved compared with the previous cohort.

These findings do not suggest that curriculum replaces targeted intervention. Rather, they indicate that an intentionally designed curriculum can strengthen everyday classroom practice, enabling more children to participate meaningfully in shared learning experiences while ensuring that additional support remains available for those who need it most.

Continuing the conversation at EECERA

The child outcomes tell only part of the story. Equally important were educators’ reflections on what enabled successful implementation, and the challenges for curriculum designers to consider.

At EECERA, I look forward to sharing these implementation insights in greater depth and discussing the practical conditions that enabled educators to adopt these curriculum enhancements with confidence, as well as the challenges that remained. While every educational context is different, one idea has stayed with me throughout this work: educator empowerment can also begin with thoughtful curriculum design. When inclusive practices are intentionally embedded into everyday teaching, educators are better supported to exercise their professional judgement, respond to children’s diverse needs and interests, and create meaningful opportunities for participation. In this way, curriculum design has the potential to make inclusive teaching not only more feasible, but also more sustainable.

If you’re interested in this, you may also like:

Norling, M. (2025). The social language environment – domain: ECEC teachers’ self-reported ratings of strategies in teaching literacy. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 33(3), 466–482. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2024.2389191

Keary, A., Zheng, H., & Garvis, S. (2025). Australian multilingual early childhood educators’ use of languages in early childhood education settings: findings of a qualitative (pilot) study. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 33(6), 981–995. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2025.2453866

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About the Author

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This contribution is one of a series of short blog posts by presenters who will be sharing their work at the upcoming annual conference in Funchal, Madeira. Any views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their affiliated institution or EECERA.