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Early Learning Environments: Embracing and Valuing Home Languages
Abstract
The literature establishes that a child's language development begins before birth and precedes to the beginning of formal education. For this reason, the first place of learning is the home, under the guidance of parents and family. Therefore, on entering a school system, a young child already has a base of knowledge and can communicate competently in many ways. However, often the child's communicative competence in some aspects contrasts with the standards of school culture. This chapter sets out to highlight the importance of incorporating children's home languages into their formal learning environment during the first eight years of life. Further the chapter underscores the need to maximize the learning process, while respecting learners' cultural and personal identities, learners and their parents and guardians must be able to understand the significance of language for communication. Accordingly, providing a quality early learning experience must include accepting, embracing, and valuing each learner's home language.
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The vast majority of the islands in the Anglophone Caribbean ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child shortly after its adoption by the United Nations in 1989. In this piece, we examine how the articulation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in the Caribbean has shaped early childhood care and education. We note that though significant strides have been made, approximately 30 years after the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, many Anglo-Caribbean islands continue to struggle to fulsomely ensure children’s access to all their fundamental rights. This conceptual article presents a historical overview of the implementation of specific Articles of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in the Caribbean. How these Articles have shaped the policies and practices guiding early education across the region is also explored. We conclude that though much has been achieved, as a region, more progress is needed to ensure that all children have equal opportunities to fulfil their rights.
Teachers’ knowledge and use of developmentally appropriate strategies are vital for creating the enabling early learning environments that foster the development of the ideal Caribbean Community (CARICOM) citizen who is ready to face the challenges of living in the twenty-first century. Early childhood education in the Eastern Caribbean refers to pre-primary education [EDMU – OECS. (2012 EDMU – OECS. (2012). OECS education sector strategy 2012–2021. Retrieved July 5, 2015, from http://www.oecs.org/edmu-resources/oecs-education-strategy ). The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Education Sector Strategy 2012–2021, Retrieved July 5, 2015, from http://www.oecs.org/edmu-resources/oecs-education-strategy; EDMU – OECS. (2014 EDMU – OECS. (2014). OECS education statistical digest 2012/2013 Castries, St Lucia: EDMU-OECS. ). OECS education statistical digest 2012/2013]. Thus five to seven year old children, during the first three years at the primary education level, are being denied their rights to developmentally appropriate learning since their teachers are seldom trained in early childhood philosophy. Teacher competence is needed to ‘get things to happen on the ground level’ [Fullan, M. (1996). Professional culture and educational change. School Psychology Review, 25(4), 496–500, p. 496]. Thus, Quality Early Childhood Education in the Eastern Caribbean can be achieved if teachers of young children have knowledge of early childhood pedagogy.
Defining sense of community as a feeling of belongingness within a group, this article reviews research about students' sense of acceptance within the school community to address three questions: Is this experience of belongingness important in an educational setting? Do students currently experience school as a community? And how do schools influence students' sense of community? Conceptually, the review reflects a social cognitive perspective on motivation. This theoretical framework maintains that individuals have psychological needs, that satisfaction of these needs affects perception and behavior, and that characteristics of the social context influence how well these needs are met. The concern here is how schools, as social organizations, address what is defined as a basic psychological need, the need to experience belongingness. The findings suggest that students' experience of acceptance influences multiple dimensions of their behavior but that schools adopt organizational practices that neglect and may actually undermine students' experience of membership in a supportive community.
In 1966, the Singapore Government implemented the English-knowing bilingual policy which made it mandatory for all Chinese students to study English as a ‘First Language’ and the Chinese language (CL) as a ‘Mother Tongue Language’ in Singapore schools. Using key literature relevant to Singapore's bilingual educational policy and adopting a wider sociohistorical, sociocultural and sociopolitical analysis [May, S. (2006). Language policy and minority rights. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy (pp. 255–272). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing], this paper critically evaluates mother tongue education in Singapore. It argues that maintaining additive bilingualism in multilingual Singapore is problematic because English, a majority language with greater political power, privilege and social prestige in the local linguistic landscape, has come to replace the range and functions of Chinese, a minority language within the linguistic ecology of Singapore. The inevitable result is that speakers of Chinese experience a ‘shift’ to speaking the majority language and there is a fear that Chinese will erode further as an increasing number of younger Chinese Singaporeans display a lack of interest in learning their mother tongue due to a dominant English education and the overwhelming presence of English in Singapore's society. This paper draws attention to the need to accord protection to the CL in order to maintain additive bilingualism in Singapore.
This paper examines the challenges facing researchers working on projects with
industry. There has been considerable previous investigation into the need for academic
research to have more impact, particularly for industry. Community action research (CAR)
examines how practitioners, consultants, and researchers can work together to create new
knowledge. However, research has shown that CAR is difficult due to fragmentation within
the knowledge creating system. This paper examines how fragmentation can occur from the
experience of a researcher working on a large-scale longitudinal change project over three
and a half years. The results identify ten lessons learned and five recommendations for
improving the capacity of researchers to have impact as change agents within a CAR group
Several identifiable approaches to the integration of ethnic content into the curriculum have evolved since the 1960s, The Contributions Approach to in tegration is one of the most frequently used and is often used extensively during the first phase of an ethnic revival movement. This approach is characterized by the addition of ethnic heroes into the curriculum that are selected using criteria similar to those used to select mainstream heroes for inclusion into the curriculum. The mainstream curriculum remains unchanged in terms of its basic structure, goals, and salient characteristics.
Many ‘alternative primary education' programmes operating in the developing parts of the world use children's first language as the medium of instruction. Programme sponsors often base their vernacular language policy on literature that highlights the cognitive and other benefits that accrue from using children's first languages as the medium of instruction during their early stages in school. Working within a postcolonial discursive framework the paper examines the attitudes of community members, parents, school authorities and schoolchildren toward the use of the vernacular as a medium of instruction in the Shepherd School Programme, an alternative primary education programme, that has been implemented to provide improved educational access for schoolchildren in seven rural northern Ghanaian agri-pastoral communities.
Efforts are needed in teacher and school development to reshape the professional culture of teaching. Knowledge of the change process is critical for both creating and sustaining radical reform. When teachers become moral-change agents, they can cultivate powerful cultures required to work with communities in making a difference in learning for students. (Author/JDM)
The buzz word in education today is accountability. But the federal mandate of "no child left behind" has come to mean curriculums driven by preparation for standardized tests and quantifiable learning results. Even for very young children, unstructured creative time in the classroom is waning as teachers and administrators are under growing pressures to measure school readiness through rote learning and increased homework. In her new book, Vivian Gussin Paley decries this rapid disappearance of creative time and makes the case for the critical role of fantasy play in the psychological, intellectual, and social development of young children. A Child's Work goes inside classrooms around the globe to explore the stunningly original language of children in their role-playing and storytelling. Drawing from their own words, Paley examines how this natural mode of learning allows children to construct meaning in their worlds, meaning that carries through into their adult lives. Proof that play is the work of children, this compelling and enchanting book will inspire and instruct teachers and parents as well as point to a fundamental misdirection in today's educational programs and strategies.
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