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

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: The Neoliberal State: The Global Implications of Early Childhood Policies

Abstract

This paper presents 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. This study draws on sociocultural theories of learning, particularly Rogoff and Tobin’s work as well as Bhabha’s and Gupta’s work on hybridity and third space 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. Data comes from a larger comparative multi-sited, multivocal, video-cued ethnographic study on school readiness in 2 preschool classrooms.

Author

• Shubhi Sachdeva, San Francisco State University