Global Education Review (Mercy College, New York)
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Mapping the Contours of Caribbean Early Childhood Education
Full text linkRegional scholars in the Caribbean context have long advocated for quality early childhood education. The majority of their contributions however, focus primarily on curriculum, policy, and to a lesser extent, teaching practices. In this article, we broaden the scope of extant literature by conceptualizing a model for Caribbean early childhood education, one which draws on and supports an anti-colonial and decolonizing perspective. Specifically, we interrogate the enduring legacy of colonialism on teaching and learning practices—and illustrate how these manifest in contemporary schooling processes. Equally significant, we examine and critique underlying epistemologies that frame current regional approaches, and offer an alternative framework that accents cultural knowledges in curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education. In response, we foreground childhood decolonization as integral to the development of positive racial and cultural identity, and in such vein, offer curricula, pedagogical and institutional (i.e., teacher education) suggestions consonant with an anti-colonial and decolonizing approach to early childhood education in the English-speaking Caribbean
Capturing Children’s Mathematical Knowledge: An Assessment Framework
Full text linkThis paper explores an innovative assessment framework for measuring children’s formal and informal mathematical knowledge. Many existing standardized measures, such as the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment, measure children’s performance in early primary grade skills that have been identified by researchers and policy makers as foundational and predictive of later academic achievement (Platas, Ketterlin-Geller, & Sitabkhan, 2016; RTI International, 2014). However, these standardized assessments only provide information on children’s mathematical ability as it pertains to skills and concepts that are a focus of school instruction, referred to as formal mathematics. While valuable, they leave unmeasured the mathematics that children use and develop as part of their everyday life, such as the strategies they use to solve simple arithmetical problems that arise as they move through their day (Khan, 1999; Saxe, 1991; Taylor, 2009). In this article, we draw from mixed methods studies which focus on capturing the informal mathematical skills that children develop outside of school in various contexts (Guberman, 1996; Nasir, 2000; Sitabkhan, 2009; Sitabkhan, 2015). We describe how the use of observations of children’s mathematical activities in natural settings and subsequent cognitive interviews using mathematical tasks derived from those observations can illuminate mathematical knowledge and skills that may otherwise remain hidden. We found that an assessment framework that focuses on both standardized measures of formal mathematical learning and contextualized measures of children’s everyday mathematics can provide a more complete and nuanced picture of children’s knowledge, and taken together can inform the development of curricular materials and teacher training focused on early learning
Refugee Students Arrive at a School: What Happens Next?
Full text linkAs refugee children join classrooms across the world, schools have the opportunity to expand the global education of all students. Students, teachers, administrators, and families may partner together to form supportive environments. This article examines two and a half years in the life of a Maryland elementary school as 62 Burmese refugee students joined the population. Data is presented from both observations and student dialogue journals. The goal of the study was to consider how the interactions between refugee students, refugee families, teachers, and a principal defined a community. These findings may support the development of pedagogy
Teaching Refugee Students in Arizona: Examining the Implementation of Structured English Immersion
Full text linkWith an increase in refugee children entering schools around the world, it has grown increasingly important to examine educational policy formulation and implementation to understand how teachers are enacting policies to support this student population. This article focuses on the language policy that shapes educational experiences for refugee students in urban schools in Phoenix, Arizona. Through a review of the literature and data collected from teacher interviews and a survey, this article explores how teachers appropriate official educational policies to construct de facto policies in their classrooms. Innovative practices that teachers employ are also highlighted, and recommendations for further research, policy, and practice are provided
Global Education Reform Movement: Challenge to Nordic Childhood
Full text linkIn the Nordic countries there is a general concern for early years and the challenges facing early childhood education and care in an era of increasing globalization, with focus on accountability and academic competition (Ringsmose, Kragh-Müller, 2017).In Denmark, the social pedagogical tradition has been part of the culture of early childhood education for decades. In the social pedagogical tradition, relationships, play, and children’s influence are considered of key importance, and as the child’s natural way to learn about, and make sense of the world. It is considered that children learn and explore through play and participation embedded in the culture.Recently, the ministry of education has discussed more focused learning plans, and has tried out a program with more structured learning approaches. The gradual changes, together with the possible political action, are changes seriously threatening the social pedagogical tradition with more school-like, and more structured ways for children to interact. The purpose of this article is to present the Danish example as an alternative to the schoolification of early years that we see in many countries
Transparency in Early Childhood Education: What the West Can Learn from Australia’s Focus on Well-Being
Full text linkThe landscape of early childhood education and care has become unrecognizable in many countries, particularly in the West. There is an increasing pressure to focus on outcomes over process, prescribed curricula, standardized assessments, and unrealistic academic expectations for young learners and the adults who work on their behalf. This shift in educational practice has become a harsh reality for many young children, families and educators. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these mounting pressures through an in-depth examination of how early education and care in Australia places well-being as one of the top priorities for young children. Australia was deliberately identified for this analysis because of international acclaim received for its highly praised national early childhood framework as well as the steadfast and visible commitment to education and care for its youngest citizens. Using multiple contexts and narratives, three key features are described that demonstrate how early education practices in Australia counter Western beliefs about who children are and how they learn. These three features are: (a) a strong sense about holistic well-being, (b) truth about place, and (c) living in harmony with the natural world. Ideas for global education reform are proposed as one way of joining with other voices to protect young children across the world.
Resisting Westernization and School Reforms: Two Sides to the Struggle to “Communalize” Developmentally Appropriate Initial Education in Indigenous Oaxaca, Mexico
Full text linkIn 2011, Indigenous Initial Education teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, for the first time participated in an alternative teacher professional development effort (called a diplomado) to initiate communityappropriate bilingual programs for pregnant mothers and infants under 3 years old. Collaborating with parents and village authorities, the goals were Indigenous language revitalization/ maintenance and quality Initial Education, prioritizing communal values and Indigenous (non-Western) socialization practices. The teachers conducted various research tasks, one of which - the photographic and narrative documentation of young children’s spontaneous learning opportunities in their communities - is analyzed here. A finding of this study is that even very young infants in their spontaneous activities display early indications of responsible actions toward others that develop into caring for community. This effort to communalize Initial Education faces two intense oppositional pressures in Mexico today. For decades federal school policy has imposed on Indigenous teachers and communities Westerninfluenced views of developmentally appropriate ECEC, such as age grouping in care and school facilities and prioritizing teacher-organized and supervised activities. For Rogoff (2003), the imposition of Western views of ECEC denies the cultural nature of human development. In Oaxaca, only the Western view counts; the Indigenous perspective has been officially marginalized.Recently, another layer of imposed federal and state school reforms places Indigenous teachers at risk. Now teacher preparation, hiring, and retention will be assessed by national standardized tests of teacher professional knowledge, without consideration for rural life experience, knowledge of community practices, or Indigenous language competence.This article describes the status of communalized ECEC programs in Oaxaca given government repressions, and teacher resistance to these repressive school reforms
Differentiating Instruction Using a Virtual Environment: A Study of Mathematical Problem Posing Among Gifted and Talented Learners
Full text linkMeeting the needs of mathematically gifted and talented students is a challenge for educators. The lack of appropriate resources is an obstacle often mentioned by researchers and practitioners. To support teachers in searching for appropriate solutions, several innovative projects were conducted in schools using funds created for teachers by the New Brunswick Ministry of Education. We present one such initiative: a collaborative project initiated by two middle school teachers, and the authors, who are affiliated with the local university. This project aimed at offering enrichment to mathematically gifted students for the duration of one school year. We worked with 40 students from both schools to create problems using multimedia resources. These problems were posted on the CAMI virtual community so other community members could solve them online. The richness of the problems (Manuel, 2010) created by the participants, as well as the studentsΓÇÖ perceptions of their experiences collected by means of semi-structured interviews were analyzed. Students expressed an appreciation of the experience, and recommended that the project continued the following years. Most of the problems created by students were textual problems that included multiple steps, and were similar to those used in the classroom. Some students stated that they were more comfortable solving problems than creating new ones, which suggested that they found the task challenging. Results suggest that increased attention in choosing tasks for the gifted has positive benefits to students. Our research also suggests that problem posing in mathematics classrooms needs to be investigated in more depth.┬
