Teaching in a play-based curriculum: Theory, practice and evidence of developmental education for young children BERT VAN OERS and DEBBIE DUIJKERS This article focuses on the possibilities of teaching in a play-based curriculum, which has become an issue of international relevance. As a domain of study, the Developmental Edu- cation approach was taken in the early grades of Dutch primary schools (grades 1–4, ages 4–8). The article describes the theoretical basis of the approach and how it is elaborated in a play-based curriculum for early years classrooms. Particularly the teachers’ strategies for the promotion of development will be discussed in more detail. Finally, the article presents a piece of the evidence base of this approach by reporting a research on vocabulary acquisi- tion. Despite methodological limitations of the empirical study, the evidence suggests that teaching in a play-based curriculum is not only theoretically plausible and practically feasi- ble, but also seems to be effectively useful for the attainment of positive outcomes (on vocabulary learning) as compared to a strictly teacher-driven approach. Keywords: Play; curriculum; teaching; developmental education Early years education in pre-school and primary school has been domi- nated for a long time by strongly child-centred approaches, for example based on the ideas of Montessori, or Froebel (see Morgan 1999). Over the past decades, however, societal pressure on schools has been growing, due to increasing demands on schools for economically valuable outcomes and accountability. In the mean time theories of cognitive learning also developed considerably, which reinforced the trust in goal-directed man- agement of learning processes in schools. In this turmoil of events since the 1960s, the dominating concept of education changed into a teacher- driven approach that conceived of education as a process of transmission of culture through unequivocally defined goals, deterministic methods, direct instruction, and empirically validated theory (see for example Slavin 1996, Muijs and Reynolds 2001). Accordingly, early childhood education also entered a period in which young children were to be prepared for the Bert van Oers is Professor of Cultural-Historical Theory of Education at the Department of Theory and Research in Education, Faculty Psychology and Education, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands; email: hjm.van.oers@psy.vu.nl Debbie Duijkers (MSc in Education) is a teacher at the Teacher Training Department, University of Applied Sciences, Hogeschool Zuyd Pabo, Brusselseweg 150, 6217 HB Maastricht, The Netherlands; email: debbie.schreuders@zuyd.nl J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2013 Vol. 45, No. 4, 511–534, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2011.637182 Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis