The Role of Innovation in Early Childhood Education: Linking School with Family

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present innovation as a fundamental factor in the development of young children. After reading several authors, we realized that there are two contradictory realities regarding the concept of innovation in early childhood education. One supports the importance of using well-established and historically tested educational methods when working with young children. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the rapid advancement of new technologies in the 21st century, which has brought such significant developments that their influence and innovation in the educational field cannot be overlooked. We will argue the importance of this innovation in the teaching and learning process of young children. From this perspective, we consider the participation and involvement of the family to be crucial, as they are the ones who best understand the needs of the little ones. To conclude, we propose a new conception of innovation in early childhood education that implicitly involves the shared responsibility and interaction of parents and teachers. Finally, four basic ideas about the importance of innovation in education were recently published: education cannot remain anchored in the past, but must always aspire to be innovative; the intuition, motivation, and creativity of the teacher are vital, as simply applying pre-designed programs without considering the realities of the classroom causes them to fail. In fact, it is mentioned that education must create autonomous citizens, starting from a plan developed by teachers based on the needs of the students.