Rethinking Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education by Rogers Sue;

Author:Rogers, Sue;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Play and pedagogy framed within India’s historical, socio-cultural, pedagogical and postcolonial context

Amita Gupta

In Western discourses of early childhood education, play has occupied a central and defining position. However, more recently it is recognized that cultural differences across nations and communities make it difficult to construct a single definition of play that can be universally applied. For example, Genishi and Goodwin (2007) present a strong argument against the mono-cultural specificity of the guidelines for developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) promoted widely in the USA, since they cannot be applied to the complex lives of children in diverse cultural contexts. A growing international body of work critically examines dominant ways of explaining play in early childhood arguing that there are different manifestations of play within different socio-cultural groups (Rogoff, 2003; Haight et al., 1999; Brooker; 2003; Long et al., 2007); and preferred forms of play look different in diverse cultural contexts (Roopnarine et al., 1998, Haight et al., 1999).

The purpose of this chapter is to examine how play and pedagogy is conceptualized within the Indian cultural context. Drawing on postcolonial theory, I will consider ideas which appear to have shaped the relationship between play and pedagogy within the Indian context. I also draw examples from a study of early childhood teachers’ perceptions of play in India. Critically, I will consider the extent to which it is possible or desirable to import a child-centred, play-based pedagogy to the Indian context, without causing other rifts, inequities, and impediments to social justice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.