Raising a new generation in a postcolonial era through decolonised early childhood development and care services

Abstract

This article draws on the literature in development economics, psychology and sociology to explicate how decolonised early childhood education and care services can reverse the metacolonial cognition lingering in the postcolonial era. In particular, the author shows that colonial institutions persist even after formal colonisation has ended through the application of de facto power. Self-knowledge developed during early childhood impacts adult socio-economic life outcomes. Thus, decolonising early childhood development and care by ensuring positive representations of self will improve self-perceptions and self-awareness. The implications for practice and policy are discussed within the context of deploying decolonised early childhood development and care services to raise a new generation of confident Africans to accelerate the development of the continent and regions with similar histories of colonisation.

Promoting global ECD top‐down and bottom‐up

“…In the title of this article, I use top‐down and bottom‐up figuratively to refer to push and pull factors in this process. However, top‐down also reflects the unequal power distribution in global ECD where academics and practitioners from wealthy Western countries have more authority and visibility than those from elsewhere (Oppong and Strader, 2022).…”

Developing and Validating a Soft Skills Assessment Scale for Psychoeducational Assessment

“…There is a need for localized soft skill assessment scales since “people of different cultures differ not only in ability and process that the researcher test for, but also in those abilities the researcher test with” (Grigorenko et al, 2001, p. 368). Dependence on international assessment scales or scales developed in the Minority World has raised concern about how intelligence and other abilities are assessed within African context (Oppong, 2017, 2023b; Oppong et al, 2022, 2023; Oppong & Strader, 2022; Scheidecker et al, 2022). According to Oppong (2020), the Western model of cognitive abilities is valuable but limited in its capacity to account for the various conceptualizations of valued abilities in different human societies.…”

“…Samuel, 2008). According to Oppong (2020, p. 8), “Wisdom is the ability to combine both cognitive competencies and socio-emotional competencies to solve any problem successfully.” The African culture has rich heritage, skills, and metaphors which should be employed successfully in today’s education (Oppong & Strader, 2022). Unfortunately, Africa has and continues to yield to Western epistemic colonization to the extent that Western intelligence models dominates intellectual and practical concerns about cognitive abilities in Africa.…”

Indigenous psychology in Africa: Centrality of culture, misunderstandings, and global positioning

“…On the other hand, those living in monoracial communities are less likely to recognise the existence of inequalities in knowledge production, let alone attribute such inequalities to race. Beyond that, Africans tend to suffer from a crisis of self-perception and identity (Adams & van de Vijver, 2017; Bulhan, 2015; Oppong, 2020a), holding an outward orientation (Ake, 2012; Yankah, 2012) while also being in denial of metacolonialism in the postcolonial era (Bulhan, 2015; Oppong, 2019a).…”