Early learning curriculum framework policy documents narrate and traject the experiences of children in early care settings. While the province of Alberta, in Canada, has not legislated a provincial curricular framework for the early childhood education and care sector, a curricular policy document exists and is increasingly being promoted and utilized by early learning programs in the province as a hallmark of quality practices in the field. This study, therefore, sought to analyze the extent to which the early learning curriculum framework of Alberta, titled "Flight" (Makovichuk et al., 2014), through its stated principles, goals, values and exemplars, nurtures aesthetic dispositions in young children, and incorporates and promotes aesthetics formation processes and pedagogical practices beyond other educational returns. Structurally, this study utilizes critical policy analysis (Diem et al., 2014; Rata, 2014) as an overarching empirical paradigm to analyze, interrogate and engage with the curriculum framework documents. Directionally, an inductive grounded theory methodology is employed to examine the stated principles, values, goals and exemplars represented in the Flight documents through the lens of aesthetic education as a conceptual framework. The findings of this study highlight the Flight curriculum framework refracting the potential and possibility for an aesthetic disposition and arts-integrated pedagogical practice, as implicit and not explicit foci, and thus subject to the enactment and implementation by educators with expertise. The overarching factors that limit and constrain the nurturance of full potentiality of arts practice and children's aesthetic dispositions in the Flight framework are threefold: a) the priorities of the framework as a pedagogic device, b) the conceptual vacuum in the arts evident in the framework and c) the framework's lack of intentional mediation of epistemic knowledge and pedagogy in the arts. Early learning curriculum frameworks that seek to nurture aesthetic habitus must encapsulate, reflect and define the consciousness, dispositions and identities of young children through an intentional emphasis on arts and aesthetic education, a solid theoretical foundation and understanding of the specific requirements for authentic arts pedagogical practice with young children, in addition to mediation of arts content knowledge. This study's contribution to knowledge and the scholarly field lies in its attempt to clarify the necessary epistemological foundations of a curriculum framework in order to actualize equitable domain knowledge positioning inclusive of the arts and promotive of implementation and enactment of quality and authentic arts practice in the early years. This study also highlighted the need for grounding arts content knowledge in curriculum frameworks and foregrounding pedagogical practices that promote authentic arts-integrated practices. Finally, this study provides a new analytical lens of aesthetic habitus formation for interrogating curriculum frameworks and conceptualizing new horizons in ways of working and being with young children. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]