Deconstructing the 2022 National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Standards: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Australia, Kenya and Nepal

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Global Implications and Lived Experiences of Neoliberal and Neocolonial-Based Euro-Western Early Childhood Policies and Practice (Table 1)

Abstract

Globalization is not a new concept and has been occurring for centuries in forms of industrialization and the age of colonization. For example, education policies and practices have not been exempted from the impact of global structures that range from informal to formal institutions at the local, national, and global levels. At the global level, such organizations include but are not limited to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the United Nations, the World trade reorganization, Multinational -corporations, United Nations Children’s Fund, and UNESCO. As such, this research uses a three-phase collaborative cross-cultural approach to compare the NAEYC 2022 updated standards with government and national guidelines/standards from Nepal, Kenya, and Australia. The three countries were chosen to represent both the majority and minority world as interpretations of standards, and the teaching practices they construct, are often determined by economic affluence and power within the global arena (Grosfoguel, 2015). According to Nelson et al.( 2012) collaborative research acknowledges the significance of personal and experiential qualitative knowledge to challenge taken-for-granted social and cultural assumptions. To ensure cultural relevance and privilege local knowledge, the research team consists of two researchers originally from Kenya, one researcher originally from Nepal, one researcher from the United States, and one researcher based in South Australia. Phase One used critical document analysis Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011) to determine if and how the NAEYC 2022 standards “promote more ethical and equitable early care and education in the US and globally.” Previous NAEYC guidelines have been criticized for being ethnocentric and based on White and Western notions of child development, offering a skewed and biased view of normative development in global context (Grosfoguel, 2015; Authors, 2020, Skerrett, 2017). Despite this criticism, many Majority-World countries have continued to adopt and adapt standards from the Euro-Western counties. In the second phase of the project, we consider contextual relevance and issues of colonization and neo-colonialism as related to governmental policies and standards. Thus, we not only critically analyze the NAEYC document but also systematically analyze how dominant discourses of “quality” ECE standards have infiltrated pedagogies and frameworks in Kenya, Nepal, and Australia. As such, we ask “How are Euro-Western standards accepted, rejected, and/or appropriated by each country.” Grounded in local and national knowledge, we interrogate the NAEYC early childhood guidelines while extrapolating the implications to the policies in the 3 countries as well as to global organizations such as World Bank, UNESCO, and other leading global ECE organizations and NGOs. Lastly, the third phase of the project examines how ECE policies in the two Majority-world nations, Kenya & Nepal, and the one Minority-World nation (i.e., Australia) varied when analyzing the specific components of the NAEYC standards. Implications will center on how these concepts are grounded in cultural conceptions of teaching and learning as well as how they are interpreted by local communities.

Authors

• Lydiah Nganga, University of Wyoming

• Jamie Huff Sisson, University of South Australia

• Sapna Thapa, Metro State University

• John Kambutu, University of Wyoming

• Samara Madrid Akpovo, University of Tennessee