 Rethinking play: A postcolonial feminist critique of international early childhood education policyMathangi Subramanian International Journal of Educational Development, 2015, vol. 45, issue C, 161-168 Abstract: In India, policymakers in the arena of early childhood education are focused on improving the quality of services provided in government run early childhood education and care centers, known as anganwadis, run by India's Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS). One measurement of program quality is the presence of play, which experts construct as a valuable tool for individualized cognitive development. Drawing on ethnographic data from a 13 month study of anganwadis in three southern Indian states, the author uses a postcolonial feminist lens to argue that in India, unlike in Western nations, play often functions as a tool for the collective good rather than for individual social progress. Broadening the purpose of play leads to more accurate evaluations of the quality of services provision in contexts of anganwadis, where early childhood education programs may be falsely judged as poorly run because they do not conform to standards based on inappropriate, decontextualized notions of play's form and function. Keywords: Early childhood education; Play; Quality; Workforce; India (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:45:y:2015:i:c:p:161-168 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.10.001 Access Statistics for this article International Journal of Educational Development is currently edited by Stephen P Heyneman More articles in International Journal of Educational Development from Elsevier |
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