“Independence From Whom and For What?”: Teachers’ Conceptualizations of Independence as a School Readiness Competency in an Indian Preschool

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Sustainable education as humanities education

Proposal

School readiness is most often referred to a set of skills and competencies that relate to a child’s preparedness for kindergarten. These generally include aspects such as physical well-being, emotional maturity, social confidence, cognitive skills, language richness, and general knowledge (Boethel, 2004; Pianta, 2002). In addition to academic skills, research shows that teachers recognize self- care as a critical component of school readiness and children’s ability to learn in the classroom (Duncan et al., 2007; Blair & Raver, 2015; McClelland & Cameron, 2012). This comprises of skills such as taking care of toileting needs, washing hands unassisted, and eating with minimal assistance, amongst others (Haines et al, 1989). These competencies are often described by teachers as ‘being independent’. However, school readiness is a complex and multifaceted construct and needs to be examined from multiple perspectives to understand how its meaning exists in material and non-material ways in children’s lives. Conceptualizations of how and what young children should learn, in order to be successful can be deeply embedded, and culturally influenced (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2006).

This paper draws on the data from a larger comparative multi-sited, multivocal, video-cued ethnographic study (e.g. Tobin, Wu & Davidson, 1989; 1991) on school readiness located in 2 preschool classrooms in Delhi, India. This paper draws on ethnographic data including field notes, interviews with teachers, and films of young children from one of those classrooms, located in a private preschool, and examines how teachers 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 these larger discourses around school readiness get hybridized to suit the local needs.

I use sociocultural theories of learning, particularly Rogoff and Tobin’s work. I am operating with a premise that preschools are sites for socialization and enculturation of young children (Tobin, Wu & Davidson, 1989; Tobin & Hayashi, 2011). Preschools are not just places where children develop physically, emotionally, and intellectually but also where they learn to be appropriate members of their culture (Rogoff, 2003; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). Preschools are also cultural in another sense because they are sites that reflect cultural beliefs and practices of the community about children (Tobin et al, 1991).

I am also using Bhabha’s (2004) and Gupta’s (2006; 2014) work on hybridity and third space to understand how new possibilities are being created for these children as they, their families, and the teachers navigate these global discourses that exist simultaneously with the cultural beliefs about children and their learning.

Author

• Shubhi Sachdeva, University of Texas at Austin