| dc.description.abstract | Early years provision, which combines childcare and preschool education, has been
considered vital for child development by theorists and practitioners. Within early
years provision pedagogy is assumed to be both an enabling and constraining factor
which can shape a particular experience of childhood and, possibly, prepare children
for a particular adulthood. This thesis explores pedagogical processes and practices
vis-à-vis children’s experiences in three different pedagogical contexts: a corporation
nursery, a private nursery and an ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services)
Anganwadi centre in Chennai in Tamil Nadu (India). It explores the findings of a one
year ethnographic study that involved observation/informal conversation with
children and semi-structured interviews with teachers, care worker(s) and parents.
The ethnographic study used methodological approaches from childhood research,
adopted ethical positions from childhood studies and valued children as competent
individuals that should be treated with respect throughout the research processes.
The analysis of the empirical data uses the intersections of three concepts in the
works of Foucault (subject), Butler (identity), Bourdieu (cultural capital) to
illuminate and analyse the pedagogical processes and practices. The thesis
characterises the different pedagogical contexts encountered in the study as: ‘activity
centred’, ‘task centred’, and ‘care centred’. It explains that this context emerged in an
on-going active process of negotiation, deliberation, reflection through ‘subjection’
and ‘resistance’. It demonstrates that children construct their embodied self-identity
through everyday pedagogical/curriculum performativity and the teacher-children
identities work within as well as outside pedagogical contexts. The empirical
analysis identifies shame and distinction as key factors for pedagogical/curriculum
performativity and argues that the embodied identities of children are fluid and
contextual and that they are formed through the interaction of learning materials,
academic ability/mastery, and bodily differences in the pedagogical contexts. It is
argued that children employ cultural capital when (re)establishing home-nursery
connections in different pedagogical contexts and that parents similarly use their
cultural capital with a sense of ‘practical logic’ for decision making on matters
related to early years provision, e.g. when recognising the transformative potential of
children.
The thesis findings suggest that there is an element of fluidity in pedagogical
contexts and that the local cultural practices of teachers/care worker are reflectively
integrated with minority world ideas when normative pedagogies are constructed.
The thesis contributes to the development of childhood theory, by demonstrating that
childhood is a complex phenomenon. At the policy level, the thesis makes
recommendations for practitioners and administrators on how they can value local
cultural knowledge, acknowledge reflexive practices of teachers/care workers, and
equity issues in early years provision. | en |
