Importance of empirical knowledge in the construction of active learning among contemporary Early Childhood Education students

Abstract

Empirical knowledge is the understanding that young children construct by observing, manipulating, comparing, testing, making mistakes, conversing, and assigning meaning to everyday situations. Although this mode of knowing is sometimes portrayed as opposed to scientific knowledge, it has a decisive epistemological and pedagogical role in early childhood education: it provides the prior experiences from which questions, predictions, and revised explanations emerge. This article analyzes, through an integrative literature review, the importance of empirical knowledge in the construction of active learning in contemporary early childhood education. Classical contributions from pragmatism, constructivism, and sociocultural theory were examined alongside reviews, meta-analyses, empirical studies, and international guidance on learning through play, inquiry, experience, and teacher mediation. Findings were synthesized into five themes: prior experience as cognitive anchoring; bodily action and manipulation; guided play and agency; social interaction and language; and teacher-supported reflection that transforms experience into transferable learning. The evidence indicates that direct experience supports participation, motivation, self-regulation, conceptual understanding, and problem solving when combined with pedagogical intentionality, responsive scaffolding, and opportunities for representation. Empirical knowledge should therefore be understood neither as mere spontaneity nor as an accumulation of events; it becomes active learning when curriculum recognizes children’s voices, provokes inquiry, supports reflection, and connects family, cultural, scientific, and digital knowledge.