Intellectual Imperialism in Early Childhood Education: The Commodified and Commercialized Aspects of High-Stakes Testing in Nepal and Kenya

• 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

The projects described here systematically examine data from two long-term studies, including observations, interviews, and focus groups to analyze the trajectory of datafication over time and across two Majority-World cultural contexts (Kenya and Nepal) as well as the implications of these changes on indigenous practices and culturally relevant teaching and learning (Bradbury, 2019; Bradbury & Robert-Holmes, 2017). The research team consists of Kenyan, US, and Nepali scholars that gathered these data in multiple phases between 2014 and 2022 (Authors 2023; 2020; 2018; & 2009). Data gathered over time is analyzed to document how the normalization of Euro-Western colonial policies and practices led to a valuing of standardized testing and metric-based decision making (Ball, 2016; Gupta, 2016; 2018). The long-term view offers a nuanced and micro-level examination about how norms change, and how standardized assessments infiltrated local discourses of ECE communities that participated in each phase of the project (Bloome & Power-Carter, 2013). Infiltration was not explicit. Document analysis from national and government sources and existing literature was also included in the data collection (Bowen, 2009). A fine-grained analysis and iterative coding sessions of the data were indexed to illuminate where, when, and how practices shifted overtime (Chilisa, 2022). Findings showed how the inclusion of standardized and metric language testing was implicitly woven into professional development workshops offered by Euro-Western scholars and NGO officials. These groups of people, often visiting the countries for service-learning opportunities, would offer professional development sessions about creating “quality” and "evidence-based" curricula. Professional development opportunities were heavily promoted by ECE school administrators because local practices were often viewed as substandard or not meeting idealized versions of quality or child readiness. These ideals undergird the ideologies of the curriculum being imported from foreign ECE experts (Ma et al, 2022). In turn, these new teaching models and methods became part of the educational policies and practices implemented by the teachers and administrators during the following months and years after the professional development (Maupeu, 2012). Moreover, data showed that an overreliance on high stakes standardized tests increased competition for ‘good grades or examination scores,’ thus, creating unhealthy competition. For example, children were being prepared to take standard tests at age 4 and 5 and spent hours each day taking practice tests. Similarly, teachers measured “quality of instruction” based on the test scores of children in their classrooms, often silencing other markers of child success and quality teaching. Lastly, we found that many for-profit private schools, where the high-income families take their children in hope of their children performing better than those in government public schools, promote existing social divisions and inequalities. The implications of these findings will explore the impacts of metric-based decisions for children’s educational lives in Nepal and Kenya (Authors, 2020; Sharma, & Phyak, 2017), where teaching and learning has been increasingly commodified and commercialized through neoliberal and neocolonial policies.

Authors

• Samara Madrid Akpovo, University of Tennessee

• Lydiah Nganga, University of Wyoming

• John Kambutu, University of Wyoming

• Sapna Thapa, Metro State University