School Readiness Practices in India: Creating Personhood and Subpersonhood Through English Language

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 8
  In Poster Session: Centering Child, Individual Voice (San Diego)

Abstract

This draws on data collected for a larger video-cued ethnographic study in school readiness in India. The study was comparative and located in two classrooms- a private preschool catering to privileged families, and a nonprofit preschool catering to children from marginalized families. This paper described the differential English language experiences that the children in these two programs were offered and how those differences were perceived by those in the children's communities. Findings indicate that the teachers, parents, and administrators carried deficit beliefs about children from marginalized communities due to their and their parents' inability to speak English. I juxtapose these findings with the current educational policy framework in India to understand entanglements of decolonization with social justice.

Author

• Shubhi Sachdeva, University of Virginia