This is a study of the contribution of Christian missionaries to kindergarten education in the Empire of Japan. The study concerns an American Missionary woman, Annie L. Howe and her kindergarten in Kobe, Japan. Annie L. Howe had a great impact on the history of early childhood education and is still remembered as the "Mother of Christian Kindergartens" in Japan. The study examines the practical difficulties and barriers to the dissemination of the ideas of kindergarten education and the development of a Christian kindergarten in the period 1887-1927. The themes highlighted include education and modernisation; Christian kindergartens and kindergarten education; Christianity and the Imperial Rescript on Education; and Froebelian theory and the education of young children in the Empire of Japan. Annie L. Howe's personal experience of 40 years of struggles and successes in her kindergarten yielded powerful messages regarding how teaching, learning and pedagogic discourse were developed in the Empire of Japan not just by the decisions of a Christian and kindergartner, but also by local and national pressures, education policy, the balance of political control, and culture and history.
Exposing pre-service teachers to international professional experiences through a short-term visiting programme serves to challenge their understandings of good quality practice through disturbing assumptions and expectations previously formed through experiences in their own country/culture. Much of the research in international study focuses on pre-service teachers preparing to teach in primary, secondary or language classes. In this study we present the perceptions of pre-service early childhood students who underwent a short-term international experience. In particular we explore the ways in which their experiences impacted on their understandings of quality early childhood service provision. In the increasingly neoliberal Australian early childhood sector externally imposed standards define quality and this is enacted in relatively homogenous ways in practice, opportunities to observe practice arising from different understandings serves to challenge thinking, potentially leading to different world views (Piaget's accommodation).
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