Journal articles on the topic 'Indigenous early childhood educators'

Analysis of focus group and narrative data, together with a review of initial educator/teacher education programs designed for northern Indigenous educators/teachers, provide implications for culturally appropriate programs that address the unique needs of northern Canadian Indigenous educators and teachers. The professional trajectories and initial teacher/educator education experiences of five Indigenous early childhood educators and teachers provide insight into the challenges of becoming credentialed and the outcomes of accredited programs designed in collaboration with northern Indigenous leaders to respond to the challenges.

We draw on a focus group discussion amongst four Indigenous northern Ontario early childhood educators (ECEs) from an Indigenous postsecondary institution’s ECE diploma program, to show the important contributions of programs offered by Indigenous postsecondary education institutes to Indigenous cultural revitalization. We are the Indigenous Elder, two instructors, and senior administrator of the program, as well as a non-Indigenous university professor. We argue for Indigenous community-generated curricula that embody local Indigenous cultural knowledge, values, and practices, drawing on themes arising from analysis of focus group data: participants felt that they brought limited knowledge of their Indigenous language and culture to their program, and participants experienced an awakening of Indigenous knowledge through their participation in Indigenous practices outside the core curriculum.

The Sámi are indigenous people living in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. There are about 10,500 Sámi in Finland. The traditional settlement area of the Sámi is located in the Arctic. Endangered Inari, Skolt, and Northern Sámi languages are spoken in Finland, and efforts are made to implement the traditions, principles, and values of indigenous culture. The traditional settlement area of the indigenous Sámi people is in the Arctic. The Sámi culture and languages are in a vulnerable position due to their present climate change. Early childhood education (ECE) is of particular value to contribute to the preservation and strengthening of indigenous culture and, consequently, to sustainable development in the Arctic. The purpose of this article is to describe Arctic sustainable Sámi early childhood education based on the perceptions and experiences of Sámi early childhood educators in Finland. The research shows that cultural sustainability was approached by using Sámi language in activities, supporting children’s Sámi identity, using materials and items important in culture, and having a tight connection with Sámi community.

AbstractIn this paper, we discuss and analyse the development of a resource documenting an Indigenous early childhood playgroup programme. The resource, known as the “Best Start DVD” was developed through a partnership between community and government support agencies to support engagement of parents as educators of their children. Through analysis of the development process and the product, we provide commentary on our learning regarding working successfully in partnerships with Indigenous communities. Additionally, we discuss what we learned about influences on Indigenous parents’ engagement as educators of their children.

The New Zealand Draft Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education, ‘Te Whariki’, introduced in 1993, are discussed in relation to the historical and cultural contexts which underlie their development, and aspects of the bicultural focus of the document are highlighted. The document addresses the aspirations of the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, for their language and culture to be protected and sustained. Early childhood is the primary site for the transmission of language and culture, and this places the onus on all early childhood educators in New Zealand to address these issues in an integrated way within the early childhood curriculum.

In the past two decades, evidence has shown that quality early childhood education (ECE) has lasting positive impacts, enhances wellbeing in many domains, and contributes to reducing economic and health inequalities. In Canada, complex colonial history has affected Indigenous peoples’ child-rearing techniques, and there is a need to support community-owned programs and revitalize traditional values and practices. While several studies have described Indigenous approaches to childrearing, there is a lack of publications outlining the core content of preschool staff training and exploring Indigenous early childhood pedagogy. This article contributes to the literature by highlighting the features of a highly effective training model rooted in Inuit values that has been implemented in Nunavut. After describing how early childhood education is organized in Nunavut, we outline the challenges related to staff training and present the development and the pilot implementation of an evidence-based training program. We then discuss its successes and challenges and formulate suggestions for professionals and policymakers to enhance early childhood educators’ training in the territory.

In this article, we describe how the funds of knowledge in a community in rural Northern Canada were actualized or leveraged in an early childhood classroom. We draw on a video recording of a First Nations elder demonstrating to the children (and early childhood educators) how to skin a marten, a historical cultural practice of the community. We argue that elders are an untapped source of knowledge that preschools and schools can call on to legitimize and bring to the forefront, Indigenous knowledge that has been ignored or undervalued by assimilationist and colonialist policies. We also argue that the elder’s demonstration is culturally congruent with First Nations traditions of sharing or passing on knowledge and that it is imperative that educators are aware of and implement culturally appropriate pedagogical practices. We conclude by sharing some ideas of how early childhood educators might facilitate through play, children’s taking up and appropriating cultural knowledge such as the elder shared in this case.

Intercultural education in Chile has focused on early childhood for more than a decade. Different measures have been implemented to strength an intercultural approach in preschools. The most outstanding has been the connection of intercultural preschools with Indigenous communities. However, these educational policies have not been accompanied by adequate resources and teacher preparation, resulting in significant shortcomings in the collaboration between Indigenous communities and preschools. To address the relevance of Mapuche (People of the Land; Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina; speakers of Mapudungun) communities in intercultural preschools, this study created and implemented a pilot initiative. Using a decolonial and critical pedagogy-of-place approach, the main findings show that educators began considering Mapuche communities beyond families, discussed the role of urban Mapuche communities, and improved ethical practices to work with Indigenous communities. These findings lead me to propose recommendations in reference to policies and teacher education.

This article brings to light the close relationship between culture, learning and the arts. It recounts the quest of a First Nations (Mohawk) early childhood center in their development of a culturally relevant curriculum whereby culture and Indigenous ways of learning would be seamlessly woven into daily practice. Step by Step Child and Family Center embraced the Reggio Emilia approach. The educators acknowledged how Reggio Emilia’s major tenets resonated with Indigenous values as well as seeing congruence in ways of teaching, learning and how relationships are intrinsically interwoven into practice. This research shows how the provocation of the Reggio Emilia approach, and a focus on the arts, provided meaning-making for this community. The study has implications for teacher development, early childhood pedagogy, and may be useful for other Indigenous communities who seek to maintain cultural traditions and identity in educational practices.

Five Aboriginal Head Start early childhood educators from a northern Canadian community participated in interviews for the purpose of informing non-Indigenous teachers’ classroom teaching. Their observations and experiences highlight the importance of learning from and on the land alongside family members, and of family stability and showing acceptance of all children. Additionally, participants talked of the impact of residential schools on their families in terms of loss of their Indigenous language, and their attempts to learn and to teach the children in their classrooms the Indigenous languages and teachings.

As examples from this issue show, early education practice around the world has long been intertwined and the care and education provided for young children in most places draws at least in part from non-indigenous sources. A review of the articles reveals numerous parallels and even direct linkages between U.S. early childhood advocates and educators and each of the countries highlighted. Similarities are to be found, for example, in their patterns of development and in the impediments faced by the advocates and founders of day nurseries, kindergartens, and nursery schools in each country. Collaboration between early childhood educators in the United States and their counterparts around the world, beginning in the 1800s with ocean voyages and postal mail, has grown today with the use of modern technology and the continuation of consultative visits by U.S. experts to many lands.

This article describes a unique approach to involving cultural communities in elaborating curricula for training early childhood educators. This ‘Generative Curriculum Model (GCM) has been demonstrated in partnership programs between the authors and seven Canadian aboriginal communities. Indigenous experiences and culturally-valued knowledge are articulated by tribal Elders and considered alongside mainstream research and theory about child development and care. Ongoing evaluation research has documented the success of this model in facilitating completion of post-secondary training and career development among aboriginal students. The training resonates with the students’ own culture, and community members are involved throughout the training in dialogue and planned actions for delivering services for children and their families based on their own cultural constructions of childhood and effective care. The process and impacts of this training model in seven aboriginal communities in Canada are discussed in postmodernist terms. The legitimacy and potential utility of indigenous knowledge are acknowledged and multiple perspectives are brought to bear in elaborating effective praxis in community-driven early childhood care and education.

<p>Learning How to Inherit in Colonized and Ecologically Challenged LifeWorlds in Early Childhood Education: An Introduction</p><p>The complex and intensifying ecological challenges of the 21st century call for new ways of thinking, being, and doing in all sectors of our society, including early childhood education, and the Aboriginal environmental humanities offer alternative ways of being present and acting in the world. Accordingly, in September 2014 we gathered for three days in Victoria, British Columbia, with leading Indigenous and environmental humanities scholars and a group of 40 early childhood scholars, educators, and students to mobilize these perspectives in the early education of young children. This special issue presents eight articles inspired by the conversations that took place at the “Learning How to Inherit in Colonized and Ecologically Challenged Life Worlds” symposium.1</p>

There is the need for the training of Early Childhood Education Teachers to appreciate and exhibit the integration of indigenous knowledge in the teaching and learning process. This paper aims to create the awareness in policy makers that the time to encourage and support Early Childhood Educators to use indigenous knowledge in facilitating themes and concepts is ripe. This knowledge is common in our Traditional Ewe Play Games hereafter called TEPG. The integration of traditional play games in teaching and learning at the Early Grade Level is one sure means of arousing learning interest in children. Traditional play games, sustain their interest towards learning and opens up multi- sensory learning behavior in them. Educational benefits of traditional play games cannot be overemphasized. Indigenous plays allow a multisensory spectrum of scaffolding, assessment and responsive feedback for coaching. The paper suggests that when Pre-service Teachers are properly trained to acquire the knowledge and skills in the use of indigenous play games at their training levels, they would be well equipped to facilitate the Pre-tertiary Education Curriculum hence producing functional citizens for the nation. This qualitative research adopted exploratory design to collect data through observation, interview and available literary materials. Descriptive approach was used to analyze the data.

Research on physical interventions installed in outdoor environments and their impacts on children’s play and development is a growing area of study. This paper focuses on the design and installation of outdoor interventions at early childhood education centres in Vancouver, Canada and the impact that theses interventions had on play affordances. With the aim of intervening with inexpensive natural materials and loose parts, graduate students designed, built, and installed interventions and using the Seven Cs evaluation form they scored the play spaces pre- and post-installation. Design methods included the Seven Cs design guidelines and the Two-Eyed Seeing model. Students also sought the insights of Early Childhood Educators, maintenance staff, licensing officers, the British Columbia Cancer Agency, and an Indigenous herbalist/educator. They also examined and addressed solar modifications to create dappled light. To understand the impacts of the student interventions researchers compared the pre- and post-intervention Seven Cs scores, which increased by 20 to 30 points. Researchers seeking to replicate this type of project in their own institutions should carefully consider the impact of climate change on construction timing and material selection, and sensitivity to the diversity of socio-cultural values embedded in the community and within design decisions and the interventions themselves.

Oral literacy development is the basis for other language skills, lifelong learning, and acquisition of indigenous knowledge. The oral literacy skills of language lay a solid foundation for other skills. This paper aims at exploring the teacher role of oral literacy facilitation in the early grades. The paper is a qualitative type. Thematic explanatory and descriptive approach were used. Population for the study was all primary schools in a deprived district of Volta Region in Ghana. Fifty early grade classrooms were purposively selected in four circuits in the district for data collection. Observation, interview, and focus group discussion were the data collection instruments. It was found that teacher talk time in lesson delivery is high as compared to learner talk time. Low usage of Teaching and Learning Resources (TLRs) in lessons was evident. Inadequate professional capacity of the use of TLRs is a factor that requires attention. It was found that many strategies are available for oral literacy development in the classroom. The paper concludes that, teachers do not purposefully teach oral literacy at the early grade levels. Consequently, learners acquire less vocabulary and comprehension skills. Learners struggle along the levels of education to acquire lexical competency in many fields. The paper suggests a review of the content of the Colleges of Education curriculum to include courses in oral literacy development. It also recommends a purposeful use of the Professional Learning Community of the Standard Based Curriculum to continuously equip teachers with knowledge and skills of classroom practices to develop oral literacy skills. The supervision unit of Ghana Education Service should be resourced to monitor and coach teachers to facilitate oral literacy in early grade classrooms. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to involve children in oral interactive activities at home.

Child-centeredness is a pedagogical approach common in US early childhood education, one that advocates young children should direct their own learning and excercise individual choice in activitites. This approach is reflected in national US Head Start policy. Using multivocal, video-cued, and traditional ethnographic methods, this study presents an analysis of interview data collected from three focus groups with American Samoan teachers to argue that the child-centered approach in newly adopted performance standards may not actually be child-centered, particuarly when ignoring the knowledge base and cultural expectations for children in culturally diverse communities. Analyzed through post-colonial theory, which recognizes the erasure of indigenous approaches to educating young children, we focus on Samoan teachers’ understanding of child-centeredness. Results indicate Samoan teachers had drastically different understandings of child-centeredness, instead pointing to optimal pedagogy as collaborative, community-oriented, and structured, and stressing the value of learning from each other. In forgrounding the voice of Samoan educators, we complicate the existing and pervasive binary positioning of child-centered and teacher-directed instruction in early childhood curriculums, to offer another alternative, an expanded notion of child-centeredness that is contextually bound and locally determined.

Abstract This study examines the use of PowerPoint as a teaching tool in a workplace- embedded program aimed at bridging immigrant/refugee early childhood educators into post-secondary studies, and how, in the process, it shapes students’ “habits of mind” (Turkle, 2004). The premise of the study is that it is not only the bodies of knowledge shaping teacher education programs which must be interrogated, but also the ways in which instructors and programs choose to represent and impart these understandings to students. The use of PowerPoint to advance an authoritative western, linear, rule-governed form of logic is analyzed based on McLuhan and McLuhan’s (1988) and Adams’ (2006) tetrads. The findings demonstrate that Power- Point enhances western authoritative ways of being through its modes of communication and representation, means of organizing information, forms of representing content and pedagogical approaches, thus obsolescing or displacing immigrant/refugee students’ own indigenous ways of knowing. Since learning always involves the development, integration, and reorganization of tools, and the medium is an extension of the self (McLuhan, 2003), the students should have multimodal opportunities to engage with and represent knowledge. When such opportunities are not provided, the life experiences and cultural knowledges of immigrant/refugee students are silenced. Expanding communicative and representative forms in early childhood teacher education programs is necessary to promote a more inclusive environment.

Public art is placed in relation to its surroundings, conveying messages that are open to interpretation and thus proposing conversations between art/aesthetics, geography, histories and the subjectivity of the viewer. As such, it can engender possibilities to ‘politicize our relations with place’. Embracing the vision of a multidisciplinary assignment for an introductory course on place relations for first-year students in a Canadian teaching university, the authors designed an assignment of living inquiry with public art. The students placed themselves in relation to the art piece by studying the surrounding area of the artwork, embracing the propositions of the piece, and responding to those propositions artistically and through writing. What does it mean to live on Indigenous land? It was imperative to introduce conversations about the different but interconnected concepts of place and land that house public art pieces. The authors envisioned teacher education beyond the limits of a positivist dominant developmental lens that constrains holistic and critical possibilities to embrace decolonial acts. They asked: How might pre-service education disrupt the colonial inheritance and practices rooted in early childhood education? The students critically reflected on their geopolitical position, the contemporary issues of our time and the implications for their journey of becoming educators.

A considerable body of research suggests that knowledgeable and skilled educators are key to the quality of early childhood services. However, the skills and knowledge of educators is subject to being underestimated and contested. In response, the Exemplary Early Childhood Educators at Work Study has been designed to bring to light the distinctive nature of the work of early childhood educators and its complexity. The study draws its sample from centre based early childhood services that are rated as high quality by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).

Abstract The study identified the scientific play-learn activities practiced in early childhood education centres in Delta state and investigated the academic qualifications of the early childhood educators. It also assessed the scientific play-learn skills of the early childhood educators and examined the relationship between early childhood educators’ qualifications and scientific play-learn activities facilitation skills in the study area. These were with a view to providing succinct information about early childhood educators’ competence in facilitating scientific play-learn activities in early childhood centres in the State. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprised all early childhood educators in the State. The sample for the study consisted of 360 early childhood educators drawn from the three senatorial districts in the state using multistage sampling procedure. One self-designed instrument titled ‘‘Early Childhood Educators’ Competence in Science Play-learn Activities Questionnaire’’ (ECECSPAQ) was used for data collection. The data collected were analysed using frequency count, percentage, and regression analysis. The results of the study showed that 29.5% of early childhood educators in all the centres practised gravity, 22.3% practised motion, 16.4% practised electricity, 46.4% practised sound, and 24.2% practised air and wind. The results further showed that 16.1 % of the early childhood educators had senior school certificate, 11.4% had ND certificate, 20.6% had TC11 and NCE, 14.4% had HND, 4.7% had certificate in Nursery and Primary education while 10.5% also had certificate in science areas. The results also showed that early childhood educators possessed very low level of scientific play-learn skills (21.90%). The results finally showed a significant relationship of early childhood educators’ qualifications on scientific play-learn activities facilitation skills (F = 2.547, p < 0.05). The study concluded that early childhood educators possessed low competence in embarking on rich scientific play-learn activities necessary to promote science learning in children.

DEMONSTRATING PERSISTENCE and resilience, increasing numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early childhood teachers are gaining university qualifications. This paper explores factors that support and constrain these students on the path to their degrees. Investigated through a cycle of interviews and focus groups, otherwise perceived as taking time to chat and yarn, the data speaks through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices. Graduates from a cohort-specific three-year degree program, and several of their colleagues from an earlier program, share their reflections. The importance of family, community and infrastructure support is apparent, as well as recognition of complexities of ‘both ways’ learning (Hughes, Fleet & Nicholls, 2003) and cultural boundary crossing (Giroux, 2005). Highlighting salient factors is critical in efforts to create and maintain conditions in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders can gain university qualiflcations and extend their professional contributions.

Many studies have shown a link between being competent in early mathematics and achievement in school. Early math skills have the potential to be the best predictors of later performance in reading and mathematics. Movement and songs are activities that children like, making it easier for teachers to apply mathematical concepts through this method. This study aims to develop audio-visual learning media in the form of songs with a mixture of western and traditional musical idioms, accompanied by movements that represent some of the teaching of early mathematics concepts. The stages of developing the ADDIE model are the basis for launching new learning media products related to math and art, and also planting the nation's cultural arts from an early age. These instructional media products were analyzed by experts and tested for their effectiveness through experiments on five children aged 3-4 years. The qualitative data were analyzed using transcripts of field notes and observations and interpreted in a descriptive narrative. The quantitative data were analyzed using gain score statistics. The results showed that there was a significant increase in value for early mathematical understanding of the concepts of geometry, numbers and measurement through this learning medium. The results of the effectiveness test become the final basis of reference for revision and complement the shortcomings of this learning medium. Further research can be carried out to develop other mathematical concepts through motion and song learning media, and to create experiments with a wider sample. Keywords: Early Mathematical Skills, Movement and Song Idiom Traditional, Audio-visual Learning Media References An, S. A., & Tillman, D. A. (2015). Music activities as a meaningful context for teaching elementary students mathematics: a quasi-experiment time series design with random assigned control group. 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<p>This purpose of this study was to understand the experiences and needs of beginning early childhood educators in British Columbia. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the research involved 114 beginning educators who took part in an online questionnaire, 11 of whom also participated in semistructured interviews. The key findings were that the work is both overwhelming and deeply satisfying; the induction support that beginning early childhood educators receive is haphazard; and beginning early childhood educators would like induction support in the form of mentoring or peer support, observations, feedback, and professional development. A model for induction support is presented.</p>

There is a need to understand better the role that early childhood educators’ perspectives on children’s rights play in informing pedagogical practice. In the Australian context there is unease regarding the place of children’s rights in current curriculum policy. This article examines how educators’ perspectives on children’s rights inform and influence their pedagogical practice. The ethnographic study reported here involved the participation of three early childhood teachers located in one Western Australian metropolitan primary school, and generated data through the combination of walking tours, photographs of the school environment, and a focus-group interview. Themes of “Access” and “Power-fullness” emerged from the data as local values illustrating the relationship between images of childhood held by teachers and pedagogical practice. The theoretical propositions of “Pedagogy of Place and Space” and “Pedagogy of Possibilities” are offered as provocations for educators of young children wishing to enhance their practice with a children’s rights-based discourse.

Educators can drive educational change and enable children’s learning for sustainable development. Early childhood education is an important component of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and analyzing early childhood educators’ ESD practices can help advance the implementation and realization of ESD. However, the existing overseas studies’ survey instruments do not systematically reflect the basic ideas of ESD. Furthermore, few studies have explored early childhood educators’ ESD practices in China. Therefore, this study established a newly developed and validated instrument, the Early Childhood Educators’ Education for Sustainable Development Practices Scale (ECEESDPS), to assess early childhood educators’ ESD practices. We randomly surveyed 7287 early childhood educators from Shandong Province. The psychometric properties show that the ECEESDPS is a reliable and valid scale that contains four constructs: Values, Content, Competency, and Implementation. The descriptive statistics revealed that educators scored relatively higher for the Values and Implementation constructs, and lower for the Content and Competency constructs. These results suggest that early childhood educators’ ESD practices are generally positive, which correlates with the theoretical background and policies of early childhood education in China. We provide implications for policy development and practical improvement.

Autism is a developmental condition that can be detected in early childhood. Early intervention can improve outcomes, though many children are not identified until they reach primary school. Early childhood educators are well placed to monitor children’s development and identify those who may benefit from additional supports, though implementation of standardised tools and processes is limited. The National Disability Insurance Scheme in Australia has increased the onus on educators to support families to access funded services. A workshop on evidence-informed practice in early detection for autism was provided for early childhood professionals. The theory of practice architectures informed development and analysis of pre- and post-workshop surveys to explore changes in early childhood educators’ perspectives on factors influencing universal developmental monitoring and referrals to early intervention supports using an evidence-based tool, the Social Attention and Communication Surveillance-Revised (SACS-R). Post-workshop increases in early childhood educators’ perceived knowledge and confidence are evident, though recent policy reforms present challenges. Population surveillance using SACS-R in early childhood education is effective for identification and referral for children who have autism, and capacity building for professionals to use SACS-R is recommended.