"Independence From Whom and for What?" Teachers' Conceptualizations of Independence as a School Readiness Competency

• In Event: 25.051 - Policy and Policing Children's Identities: Normalizing Frameworks and the Issues of Developmental Discourses

Abstract

This paper uses socio-cultural theories of learning, specifically Tobin (1989; 2011) and Rogoff's (2003) work to think about preschools as both sites for enculturation and sites that reflect the larger culture. Using Bhabha's (2004) work on hybridity, I would present how teachers in a private preschool program in Delhi, India think about independence as one of the competencies that young children need to acquire in early years. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how these teachers imbibed this competency to the cultural milieu and adapted their practice and pedagogy accordingly to suit the needs of the children and their larger community. I demonstrate how the larger discourses around school readiness get hybridized to suit the local needs.

Author

• Shubhi Sachdeva, San Francisco State University