Analysis of the Conceptual Differences Between Educating, Teaching, and Forming in Contemporary Early Childhood Teaching Practice

Abstract

The everyday use of the verbs educating, teaching, and forming as interchangeable terms weakens pedagogical reasoning and may reduce early childhood practice either to content transmission or to a generic notion of accompaniment lacking didactic intentionality. This integrative review analyzed their conceptual differences, relationships, and practical implications, and developed an operational framework for contemporary early childhood education. Academic publications and international policy documents issued from January 2021 through May 2026 were located through multidisciplinary and education-focused searches using Spanish and English terms related to education, teaching, formation, pedagogy, professional identity, and early childhood. The final synthesis comprised 23 relevant and verifiable sources. Findings indicate that educating names the ethical, relational, cultural, and inclusive horizon of holistic development; teaching refers to intentional intervention that organizes content, environments, interactions, and mediation to promote learning; and forming describes the sustained process through which dispositions, identity, judgment, autonomy, and modes of participation are configured in both children and teachers. Although analytically distinct, the three actions are interdependent: teaching without an educational horizon becomes instrumental; education without teaching decisions loses its capacity to produce systematic learning; and formation detached from both risks becoming normalization. The EEF framework—Educating, Teaching, and Forming—is proposed as a tool for planning, observation, and reflective practice. Its contribution is to translate a philosophical-pedagogical distinction into observable criteria for experience design, pedagogical documentation, and teacher education.