18 research outputs found
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 â 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 âdevelopmentally appropriate practicesâ and âplay-based educationâ. 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 childrenâs 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
Childrenâs rights and early years provision in India
The term âparticipationâ is vague, and itâs meaning has been increasingly contested in early years education. This chapter analyses childrenâs everyday experiences in a formal preschool setting in India, and offers a series of reflections on what such experiences mean for the concept of childrenâs 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 childrenâs 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
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-Ă -vis childrenâs 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: âactivity
centredâ, âtask centredâ, and âcare centredâ. It explains that this context emerged in an
on-going active process of negotiation, deliberation, reflection through âsubjectionâ
and âresistanceâ. 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 âpractical logicâ 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
Tracing Indian Girlsâ Embodied Orientations Towards Public Life
Contemporary figurations of the âthe Indian Womanâ 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 âorientationâ (Ahmed 2006a), the article explores young girlsâ 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
Thinking with Feeling: Childrenâs Emotional Orientations to Public Life
The article explores how the concept of âemotional orientationâ helps us to reimagine the relationship between childhood and public life. By comparing a subset of two ethnographic biographies of underprivileged children, aged 6-8 years from contrasting neighbourhoods in Hyderabad, India, we illustrate the ways in which âemotional orientationâ could mediate and signify childrenâs experiences of public life. The analysis builds on the girlsâ common experience of âscoldingâ to map out the visceral aspects of poverty, local belonging, place sensitivity, power, and social inequality in their lives; the implications for their engagement with public life is noted throughout. Thinking with feeling, we argue, offers crucial insights for (re)imagining the relationship between childhood and public life, and childrenâs participation therein. In particular, the affective analysis provides the opportunity to tap into childrenâs political knowingness: a knowingness that eludes normative discourses of public life, but which nevertheless is a vital source of childrenâs everyday participation
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 childrenâs 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
Enabling creativity in learning environments: lessons from the CREANOVA project
The paper employs data from a European Union funded project to outline the dif- ferent contexts and factors that enable creativity and innovation. It suggests that creativity and innovation are supported by flexible work settings, adaptable learning environments, collaborative design processes, determined effort, and liberating in- novative relationships. It concludes that learning environments that seek to enable creativity and innovation should encourage collaborative working, offer flexibility for both learners and educators, enable learner-led innovative processes, and recognize that creativity occurs in curriculum areas beyond the creative arts
(Im)possible conversations? activism, childhood and everyday life
The paper offers an analytical exploration and points of connection between the categories of activism, childhood and everyday life. We are concerned with the lived experiences of activism and childhood broadly defined and especially with the ways in which people become aware, access, orient themselves to, and act on issues of common concern; in other words what connects people to activism. The paper engages with childhood in particular because childhood remains resolutely excluded from practices of public life and because engaging with activism from the marginalized position of childrenâs everyday lives provides an opportunity to think about the everyday, lived experiences of activism. Occupying a space âbefore methodâ, the paper engages with autobiographical narratives of growing up in the Communist left in the USA and the historical events of occupying Greek schools in the 1990s. These recounted experiences offer an opportunity to disrupt powerful categories currently in circulation for thinking about activism and childhood. Based on the analysis it is argued that future research on the intersections of activism, childhood and everyday life would benefit from exploring the spatial and temporal dimension of activism, to make visible the unfolding biographical projects of activists and movements alike, while also engaging with the emotional configurations of activistsâ lives and what matters to activists, children and adults alike
Learning to listen: exploring the idioms of childhood
How do we recognise childrenâs participation and their relationships 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 the ways in which children communicate their encounters with public life. Τhe contemporary phenomenon of listening without hearing is discussed as this relates to the call for listening to children and the simultaneous failure to hear what they say. Idioms are introduced as an âinstrumentâ for thinking through what it means and feels like to encounter and make sense of childhood and childrenâs practices of relating to public life. The analysis focuses on three emblematic encounters with six- to eight-year-old children living in Athens, Hyderabad, London. We argue that dominant understandings of listening to children rely heavily on cognitive, conceptual and rational models of idealised and largely verbal forms of communication that ignore the affective, embodied and lived dimensions of making meaning. Through ethnographic thick description we trouble what it means to tune into childrenâs worlds and to âproperly hearâ, and in so doing demonstrate the ways in which idioms support an understanding of what matters to children
Children of the financial crisis
What does the recent financial crisis look like through the eyes of children in the intimate spaces of everyday life? Over the last three years we have been carrying out a comparative ethnography, the Connectors Study, funded by the European Research Council (ERC-StG-33551), to understand how children in Athens, Hyderabad, and London encounter, experience, and engage with the civil and the political in their everyday lives, and might become oriented towards social action.
One of our points of departure were the classic cohort studies of children growing up in the Great Depression (Elder, 1999; Elder, Modell, and Parke, 1993). Elder and his colleagues understood that âchildrenâs lives and [the] ever-changing worldâ around them were connected. Children do not grow up in vacuum and one motivation behind the original US cohort studies was to find ways of creating knowledge about childrenâs lives that was not divorced from the historical, economic, and political events of their times