Normative development in rural India: ‘school readiness’ and early childhood care and education

Play in Asian preschools? Mapping a landscape of hindering factors

“…Mirroring internationally accepted discourses (e.g. LEGO Foundation and UNICEF, 2018), learning environments that promote playful experiences are understood to be core to effective ECE programmes, and Asian ECE teachers are expected to provide children with play opportunities that are child-centred, process-oriented, engaging, meaningful and joyful.…”

“…Similarly, in a study with 35 teachers from three diverse kindergartens, Chan (2016) observed that the participants were not able to offer free-choice activities daily, as they felt an obligation to assign large amounts of homework to satisfy parental demands. Finally, drawing on two prototypical Hong Kong local kindergartens, Wu (2014) found that most teachers scheduled less than 30 minutes per day for playtime on average (some had no specific time assigned for play in their schedules). The children in this study did not engage in authentic free play, but rather in structured child-led activities/games with rules and goals pre-established by the teachers.…”

“…This situation leads to tremendous pressures for ECE teachers, who, beyond pleasing parents, must follow the established guidelines to fulfil regulatory requirements and ensure financial subsidies. In practice, what teachers typically do is shorten playtime considerably and/or implement group-oriented, tightly structured game-like activities with pre-established learning objectives (Chan, 2016; Wu, 2014; Wu et al, 2018), as teachers do in India and Mainland China. Note that neither of these solutions is aligned with the Hong Kong guide's vision of free play (Curriculum Development Council, 2017).…”

Preschooling in India: Readying Children for a Race?

“…Normatively, many intrinsic and instrumental reasons are put forward in favour of early childhood education that find wide acceptance across a fairly divergent ideological and theoretical spectrum (FOCUS, 2006; Kaul et al, 2014; Kumar, 2006; M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation [MSSRF], 2000; Nielsen, 2017; Sriprakash et al, 2020). Of these manifold reasons and values that often converge but, at times, compete, this study seeks to focus on, and takes as its entry point, the idea of equal consideration for all children, irrespective of their social positions.…”

“…Kaul et al (2014), for example, reiterate that parents of both AWC children and private preschool children primarily want them to learn to ‘read and write’ at this early stage so that they are ready for ‘formal’ schooling. Sriprakash et al (2020) interestingly argue that anxious strategies, negotiations and practices that families, even marginalised households, undertake to prepare their children for an early readiness for school are partly activated by the approaching and looming demands of the highly competitive, hierarchical and increasingly marketised system of elementary and post-elementary education that their children will eventually encounter. So, the downward extension of developmentally inappropriate pedagogic and instructional practices to the preschool level reflects a downward and premature intrusion, into the classroom life of a preschool, of the logic of excessive competitiveness and examination orientation that besets the educational journey that lies ahead.…”