In this article we report on the development and implementation of a professional development programme for teachers of the kindergarten curriculum (4-5 year olds) in Ghana. Kindergarten teachers in Ghana have little experience and meagre training in implementing a play-based pedagogy as recommended in the national curriculum. An indigenous…

The purpose of this study was to investigate impediments to effective enactment of early childhood education curriculum and pedagogy in Tanzania, issues and experiences encountered by teachers in the enactment of the preschool education curriculum and their pedagogy in a Tanzanian context. This study was informed by sociocultural persectives which…

This article examines the partnership between a teacher and teacher educator disrupting a colonized early childhood curriculum that fosters a dominance of whiteness by replacing it with the beauty and brilliance of Blackness. We explore the following research question: "What are the affordances of teaching from an Afrocentric stance in a…

Four teacher educators describe their work to establish Afrocentric foundations through integrating literacy and linguistic pluralism courses. We build on realities that teachers and children "do not learn, systematically and deeply, about Black genius and worth" (Baines, Tisdale, & Long, 2018, p. 20) in schools or universities nor…

This research utilised a "stimulated recall" methodology [Calderhead, J. 1981. "Stimulated Recall: A Method for Research on Teaching." "British Journal of Educational Psychology" 51: 211-217] to explore the potential of African folklore, specifically Ghanaian folk stories in the development of children's reflective…

In many cultures, early child care and education has been considered the purview of women, who were thought to be more nurturing and better suited to the role. Hand-in-hand with this notion is the historical misconception that early child care and education is unimportant, and that the most valued members of society should focus on other, more…

The purpose of the study is to describe the teacher's personal connection with parents as an intermediary factor between cultures and to examine the implications for the future of the migrant group in the receiving society. The study is a qualitative study based on the phenomenological approach and involved five teachers working with African…

The indigenous communities in Africa, specifically Kenya, which is the focus of this article, had their own well-developed motivational systems that positively enhanced teaching and learning programmes in the community. These motivational systems were manifested in behaviours that were presented as sequential cultural tasks that demanded active…

As modern Early Childhood Development begins to gain prominence in African communities, questions are beginning to emerge as to what sort of Early Childhood Development is being promoted as 'best practices'. Thus, the discourse for and against western Early Childhood Development as opposed to indigenous Early Childhood Development, and the scope…

Policy for young children in South Africa is now receiving high-level government support through the ANC's renewed commitment to redress poverty and inequity and creating "a better life for all" as promised before the 1994 election. In this article, I explore the power relations, knowledge hierarchies and discourses of childhood, family…

Despite setting high hopes on education, very few pastoral nomad children in Kenya transition from primary education to secondary education. This article argues that the national Kenyan compulsory formal curriculum fails to accommodate the needs of pastoralist communities. Literacy rates are particularly low among the Turkana people, pastoralist…

This study offers an in-depth examination of the experiences of early childhood educators, focusing on their work with Ethiopian immigrant children and their families. We aim to describe and analyze the teachers' insider views vis-à-vis the challenges faced by these children and their parents in the Israeli preschool system. Using narrative…

Art is a good place to learn about our multicultural planet, and African masks are prized throughout the world as powerfully expressive artistic images. Unfortunately, multicultural education, especially for young children, can perpetuate stereotypes. Masks taken out of context lose their meaning and the term "African masks" suggests that there is…

Drawing on translanguaging and raciolinguistics frameworks in an ethnographic case study, this article contextualizes how young Black American children engage in rich literacy practices to validate their cultural and linguistic identities in an elementary, two-way immersion bilingual program. Findings demonstrated that despite teachers' perceived…

Western conceptions of child development and the models of early education they engender predominantly shape services for young children in the first eight years of life all over Africa. This chapter brings a reconceptualist perspective to the critique of Kenya's continuing failure to ground early childhood programs and services in local cultural…