Early Childhood Education for Marginalized Children in India: Deconstructing Quality


Book Description

Societal hierarchies in the form of caste, gender, religion and class continue to deprive a large percentage of young children in India of learning opportunities, leading to intergenerational poverty. Existing research indicates that this cycle can be broken by providing appropriate early childhood care and education. Early Childhood Education for Marginalized Children in India reviews India's achievements and challenges, and identifies the complex issues related to providing early childhood education to children from marginalized communities. The book presents evidence-based approaches to developing and scaling up good quality early childhood education programmes. It explores what 'quality' means in the Indian context and identifies core elements that must be integral to all initiatives that aim to promote holistic development, while addressing India's significant scale and sociocultural diversity. The available literature has mostly discussed information from Western nations and the book attempts to address this gap.




Teacher Development in India


Book Description

This volume shows how grassroots educational innovations and technology can be brought together in a fresh approach to human resource development in public social services. Based on a three-decade-long engagement with innovation in public education, this book provides an illustration of how teacher-driven innovations can be transformed into learning objects for technology-based professional development. It describes how innovations can be identified, screened and validated, and disseminated through two mechanisms—a clearinghouse-based approach and grassroots innovation “fairs.” It then demonstrates how these innovations can form the backbone of a “third space,” problem-based-learning curriculum, which can be delivered through a technology platform for large-scale professional development. The book offers guidance on practical ways of doing this, and on evaluating the curriculum’s impact, with case studies of programmes that covered thousands of teachers. This book will be of interest to teachers, students and professionals in education, teacher education, digital education, information technology, communication and media studies. It will also be useful to educationists, policymakers, teacher educators, educational institutions, online education centres, and practitioners involved in professional development, education and training in developing countries.




DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education


Book Description

This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.” Contributors: D.L. Adams, Susan Baglieri, Stephen J. Ball, Alicia Broderick, Kathleen M. Collins, Nirmala Erevelles, Edward Fergus, Zanita E. Fenton, David Gillborn, Kris Guitiérrez, Kathleen A. King Thorius, Elizabeth Kozleski, Zeus Leonardo, Claustina Mahon-Reynolds, Elizabeth Mendoza, Christina Paguyo, Laurence Parker, Nicola Rollock, Paolo Tan, Sally Tomlinson, and Carol Vincent “With a stunning set of authors, this book provokes outrage and possibility at the rich intersection of critical race, class, and disability studies, refracting back on educational policy and practices, inequities and exclusions but marking also spaces for solidarities. This volume is a must-read for preservice, and long-term educators, as the fault lines of race, (dis)ability, and class meet in the belly of educational reform movements and educational justice struggles.” —Michelle Fine, distinguished professor of Critical Psychology and Urban Education, The Graduate Center, CUNY “Offers those who sincerely seek to better understand the complexity of the intersection of race/ethnicity, dis/ability, social class, and gender a stimulating read that sheds new light on the root of some of our long-standing societal and educational inequities.” —Wanda J. Blanchett, distinguished professor and dean, Rutgers University, Graduate School of Education




Investing against evidence


Book Description




Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2016


Book Description

The Annual Review of Comparative and International Education (ARCIE) is a forum for stakeholders and scholars to examine current trends and identify future directions in comparative and international education.




Contemporary Issues and Challenge in Early Childhood Education in the Asia-Pacific Region


Book Description

This book investigates the unique and dynamic approaches to key issues of changing images of child and childhood, by different countries in the Asia-Pacific. Key concepts considered are re-conceptualizing early childhood education and care, re-eaxming early learning standards and redefining professionalism. The Asia Pacific region includes countries belonging to both the Majority and Minority worlds and which vary widely in terms of their cultural geography, social-cultural beliefs, and levels of development, demographic profiles, political systems and government commitments to early childhood services. An international team of experienced researchers from different countries guarantees diverse perspectives. By examining different countries’ policy choices and evidence-based practices, the authors show how best to provide for young children based on their countries’ strategies.




Rethinking Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education


Book Description

Bringing together a collection of chapters from international experts in the field of early childhood education, Rethinking Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education seeks to explore how play in the Early Years is valued as a means of learning. The book discusses how play is presented, transformed by institutional and pedagogical discourses and ultimately experienced by children. Adopting cultural, conceptual and contextual approaches to play and pedagogy across its chapters, this book addresses contemporary emerging issues surrounding play and pedagogy including: the application of critical and socio-cultural analyses to play in early childhood renewed interest in the aesthetic, creative and affective dimensions of play in early childhood education competing discourses of ‘performativity’, market forces, social reconstruction and child-centredness children’s voice and participation within educational settings globalization, migration and cultural pluralism the role of digital technology in early childhood education diversity, identity and social justice within early childhood settings. With international appeal and relevance, this book will be of interest to students taking undergraduate, Masters and doctoral courses in early childhood education, childhood and education studies as well as academic teachers and researchers, policy-makers and international agencies working with young children.




Pedagogy of the Oppressed


Book Description




Culturally Responsive School Leadership


Book Description

Culturally Responsive School Leadership focuses on how school leaders can effectively serve minoritized students—those who have been historically marginalized in school and society. The book demonstrates how leaders can engage students, parents, teachers, and communities in ways that positively impact learning by honoring indigenous heritages and local cultural practices. Muhammad Khalifa explores three basic premises. First, that a full-fledged and nuanced understanding of “cultural responsiveness” is essential to successful school leadership. Second, that cultural responsiveness will not flourish and succeed in schools without sustained efforts by school leaders to define and promote it. Finally, that culturally responsive school leadership comprises a number of crucial leadership behaviors, which include critical self-reflection; the development of culturally responsive teachers; the promotion of inclusive, anti-oppressive school environments; and engagement with students’ indigenous community contexts. Based on an ethnography of a school principal who exemplifies the practices and behaviors of culturally responsive school leadership, the book provides educators with pedagogy and strategies for immediate implementation.




Neoliberalism and Education


Book Description

Neoliberalism and Education: Rearticulating Social Justice and Inclusion offers a critical reflection on the establishment of neoliberalism as the new global orthodoxy in the field of education, and considers what this means for social justice and inclusion. It brings together writers from a number of countries, who explore notions of inclusion and social justice in educational settings ranging from elementary schools to higher education. Contributors examine policy, practice, and pedagogical considerations covering different dimensions of (in)equality, including disability, race, gender, and class. They raise questions about what social justice and inclusion mean in educational systems that are dominated by competition, benchmarking, and target-driven accountability, and about the new forms of imperialism and colonisation that both drive, and are a product of, market-driven reforms. While exposing the entrenchment, under current neoliberal systems of educational provision, of longstanding patterns of (racialised, classed, and gendered) privilege and disadvantage, the contributions presented in this book also consider the possibilities for hope and resistance, drawing attention to established and successful attempts at democratic education or community organisation across a number of countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.