The Integration of Intangible Cultural Heritage into Preschool Education Curriculum: Strategies and Practical Approaches

Abstract

Intangible cultural heritage can enter preschool as living knowledge rather than a decorative theme. The challenge is to keep cultural meaning, community authority and children’s agency intact while linking heritage with ordinary curriculum goals. This paper develops an evidence-informed framework for that task. It combines a structured narrative synthesis of UNESCO guidance, early childhood curriculum research and developmental evidence with a secondary analysis of an open preschool dataset from Fujian Province, China. The dataset does not measure intangible cultural heritage directly. Its family cultural capital, concentration-empathy, peer interaction and executive-function scores are used only as a developmental anchor for processes that heritage-based learning may activate. A record audit found 177 unique child profiles in files presented as 354 rows because the full set had been duplicated once. In models based on the unique profiles, family cultural capital was associated with stronger concentration-empathy (β = 0.296, p < .001), stronger peer interaction ability (β = 0.287, p < .001) and fewer executive-function problems in the total-effect model (β = -0.304, p = .002). Concentration-empathy and peer interaction carried parallel and sequential indirect paths. Drawing on the combined evidence, the paper proposes four modes of integration—content, context, pedagogy and partnership—and a six-stage cycle that begins with community consultation and ends with reflection and return. Practical guidance is provided for stories, music, movement, craft, local ecological knowledge, family participation, assessment and safeguarding. The central argument is simple: heritage becomes educationally meaningful when children use it with people, materials, language and place. It should not be reduced to costumes, isolated festival days or copied products.