Construction of early childhood and ECCD service provisioning in India

There has been a growing recognition among scholars in childhood studies that childhood is a social construction. Several historical and cross-cultural studies conducted across the world validate this argument, and whereby explains the variability that exist in the descriptions of childhood. These constructions not only differ at the cultural or temporal level, they also differ at the individual or institutional level. In a contemporary society, individuals, professionals, service institutions and policy communities – all construct their own version of childhood based on their subjective understandings, experiences and theoretical perspectives. At the policy level, therefore, these constructions have a significant role to play in the designing of services, institutions and pedagogy for early childhood intervention. This paper critically examines the model of early childhood constructed in the policy provisioning of early childhood care and development (ECCD) in India. Drawing on literatures mostly from the Euro-American context, at the outset, the paper elaborates the shift that took place in the ontology of children. The distinctions between child development theories, which chiefly inform the policy community, and the social constructionist approach, which is considered as an alternative, are then analyzed as central to early childhood service provisioning. The paper problematizes the policy documents, while doing so, it picks up few key issues and (re)open up the debates on ‘developmentally appropriate practices’ and ‘play-based education’. The paper concludes by suggesting that oversubscription of child development theories or total obscurity of social constructionist perspectives not augurs well for policy formulation. Further it stresses that there is a need to understand what children’s lived experiences are in the early childhood institutions, what parental constructions are on early childhood service provisioning and, how that can be incorporated to establish clear policy goals

Children’s rights and early years provision in India

The term ‘participation’ is vague, and it’s meaning has been increasingly contested in early years education. This chapter analyses children’s everyday experiences in a formal preschool setting in India, and offers a series of reflections on what such experiences mean for the concept of children’s rights. Considering pedagogy as a contested terrain where different world-views, perspectives and power positions intersect, this chapter examines the power inherent in everyday interactions between children and teachers, and suggests that participation is an ongoing negotiated process. Whether children’s rights to participate in early years provision are realised, depends on how they are positioned in everyday contexts. My research demonstrates the active agency of young children, suggests that young children have the ability to contribute to everyday pedagogy and practice, and that their participation is meaningful if it is rooted in their everyday lives. Children should be recognised as active players who can learn things in many ways and acquire knowledge through their embodied experiences

Bi-amalgamated algebra with (n; p)-weakly clean like properties

Let f : A −→ B and g : A −→ C be two ring homomorphisms and let K and K′ be two ideals of B and C, respectively such that f −1(K) = g−1(K′). In this paper, we give a characterization for the bi-amalgamation of A with (B, C) along (K, K′) with respect to (f, g) (denoted by A ▷◁f,g (K, K′)) to be a (n, p)-weakly clean ring

A Wavelet Collocation Method for some Fractional Models

This article presents an effective numerical approach based on the operational matrix of fractional order integration of Haar wavelets for dealing with the fractional models of the mixing and the Newton law of cooling problems. A general procedure of obtaining the fractional integration operational matrix of Haar wavelets which converts the fractional models into a system of algebraic equations is derived so that the computation is very simple and it is much effective than the conventional numerical methods. The reliability and the applicability of the current numerical technique for fractional models are examined by comparing the achieved results with the precise solutions

Prime Coloring of Crossing Number Zero Graphs

In this paper, prime coloring and its chromatic number of some crossing number zero graphs are depicted and its results are vali-dated with few theorems. Prime Coloring is defined as G be a loop less and Without multiple edges with n distinct Vertices on Color class C={c1,c2,c3,…..cn} a bijection ψ:V {c1,c2,c3,…..cn} if for each edge e = cicj ,i≠j , gcd{ ψ (ci), ψ (cj)}=1, ψ (ci) and ψ (cj) receive distinct Colors. The Chromatic number of Prime coloring is minimum cardinality taken by all the Prime colors. It is denoted by η (G)

Tracing Indian Girls’ Embodied Orientations Towards Public Life

Contemporary figurations of the ‘the Indian Woman’ over recent years have been heavily influenced by national and international media coverage focused on high profile, gruesome and brutal cases of rape and sexual assault of women in public. The suffering involved in such cases notwithstanding, we argue that investment in such representations runs the risk of limiting our understanding of the varied experiences of female bodies in public life. Most significantly, the bodies of younger girls and how they relate to public life is mostly assumed rather than studied. Drawing on a sub-sample of ethnographies of younger children aged 6-8 living in the city of Hyderabad, India and employing the phenomenological concept of ‘orientation’ (Ahmed 2006a), the article explores young girls’ everyday embodied orientation towards public life, with an intersectional framework. The paper considers three case studies from different spatial/cultural contexts and the empirical material is organised around the themes of the male gaze in a public space, orienting bodies in a schooled space, and the lived body in a domestic space

Week Ahead Electricity Price Forecasting Using Artificial Bee Colony Optimized Extreme Learning Machine with Wavelet Decomposition

Electricity price forecasting is one of the more complex processes, due to its non-linearity and highly varying nature. However, in today\u27s deregulated market and smart grid environment, the forecasted price is one of the important data sources used by producers in the bidding process. It also helps the consumer know the hourly price in order to manage the monthly electricity price. In this paper, a novel electricity price forecasting method is presented, based on the Artificial Bee Colony optimized Extreme Learning Machine (ABC-ELM) with wavelet decomposition technique. This has been attempted with two different input data formats. Each data format is decomposed using wavelet decomposition, Daubechies Db4 at level 6; all the decomposed data are forecasted using the proposed method and aggregate is formed for the final prediction. This prediction has been attempted in three different electricity markets, in Finland, Switzerland and India. The forecasted values of the three different countries, using the proposed method are compared with various other methods, using graph plots and error metrics and the proposed method is found to provide better accuracy

Differential Evolution Algorithm with Diversified Vicinity Operator for Optimal Routing and Clustering of Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to large dimension of clusters and increasing size of sensor nodes, finding the optimal route and cluster for large wireless sensor networks (WSN) seems to be highly complex and cumbersome. This paper proposes a new method to determine a reasonably better solution of the clustering and routing problem with the highest concern of efficient energy consumption of the sensor nodes for extending network life time. The proposed method is based on the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm with an improvised search operator called Diversified Vicinity Procedure (DVP), which models a trade-off between energy consumption of the cluster heads and delay in forwarding the data packets. The obtained route using the proposed method from all the gateways to the base station is comparatively lesser in overall distance with less number of data forwards. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in managing energy consumption of the WSN and the results are compared with the other algorithms reported in the literature

Talking politics in everyday family life

How do children encounter and relate to public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014-2016 for the ERC funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this paper explores how children encounter public life in their everyday family environments. Using the instance of political talk as a practice through which public life is encountered in the home, the data presented fills important gaps in knowledge about the lived experience of political talk of younger children. Working with three family histories where political talk was reported by parents to be a practice encountered in their own childhoods and one which they continued in the present amongst themselves as a couple/parents, we make two arguments: that children’s political talk, where it occurs, is idiomatic and performative; and that what is transmitted across generations is the practice of talking politics. Drawing on theories of everyday life developed by Michel de Certeau and others we explore the implications of these findings for the dominant social imaginaries of conversation, and for how political talk is researched

Complexity, complicity and fluidity: early years provision in Tamil Nadu (India)

Early years provision, which combines childcare and preschool education, has been considered vital for child development by theorists and practitioners. Within early years provision pedagogy is assumed to be both an enabling and constraining factor which can shape a particular experience of childhood and, possibly, prepare children for a particular adulthood. This thesis explores pedagogical processes and practices vis-à-vis children’s experiences in three different pedagogical contexts: a corporation nursery, a private nursery and an ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) Anganwadi centre in Chennai in Tamil Nadu (India). It explores the findings of a one year ethnographic study that involved observation/informal conversation with children and semi-structured interviews with teachers, care worker(s) and parents. The ethnographic study used methodological approaches from childhood research, adopted ethical positions from childhood studies and valued children as competent individuals that should be treated with respect throughout the research processes. The analysis of the empirical data uses the intersections of three concepts in the works of Foucault (subject), Butler (identity), Bourdieu (cultural capital) to illuminate and analyse the pedagogical processes and practices. The thesis characterises the different pedagogical contexts encountered in the study as: ‘activity centred’, ‘task centred’, and ‘care centred’. It explains that this context emerged in an on-going active process of negotiation, deliberation, reflection through ‘subjection’ and ‘resistance’. It demonstrates that children construct their embodied self-identity through everyday pedagogical/curriculum performativity and the teacher-children identities work within as well as outside pedagogical contexts. The empirical analysis identifies shame and distinction as key factors for pedagogical/curriculum performativity and argues that the embodied identities of children are fluid and contextual and that they are formed through the interaction of learning materials, academic ability/mastery, and bodily differences in the pedagogical contexts. It is argued that children employ cultural capital when (re)establishing home-nursery connections in different pedagogical contexts and that parents similarly use their cultural capital with a sense of ‘practical logic’ for decision making on matters related to early years provision, e.g. when recognising the transformative potential of children. The thesis findings suggest that there is an element of fluidity in pedagogical contexts and that the local cultural practices of teachers/care worker are reflectively integrated with minority world ideas when normative pedagogies are constructed. The thesis contributes to the development of childhood theory, by demonstrating that childhood is a complex phenomenon. At the policy level, the thesis makes recommendations for practitioners and administrators on how they can value local cultural knowledge, acknowledge reflexive practices of teachers/care workers, and equity issues in early years provision