IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/injoed/v45y2015icp161-168.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rethinking play: A postcolonial feminist critique of international early childhood education policy

Author

Listed:
  • Subramanian, Mathangi

Abstract

In India, policymakers in the arena of early childhood education are focused on improving the quality of services provided in government run early childhood education and care centers, known as anganwadis, run by India's Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS). One measurement of program quality is the presence of play, which experts construct as a valuable tool for individualized cognitive development. Drawing on ethnographic data from a 13 month study of anganwadis in three southern Indian states, the author uses a postcolonial feminist lens to argue that in India, unlike in Western nations, play often functions as a tool for the collective good rather than for individual social progress. Broadening the purpose of play leads to more accurate evaluations of the quality of services provision in contexts of anganwadis, where early childhood education programs may be falsely judged as poorly run because they do not conform to standards based on inappropriate, decontextualized notions of play's form and function.

Suggested Citation

  • Subramanian, Mathangi, 2015. "Rethinking play: A postcolonial feminist critique of international early childhood education policy," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 161-168.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:injoed:v:45:y:2015:i:c:p:161-168
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.10.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059315001236
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.10.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Government of India Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2012. "Draft National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy," Working Papers id:4940, eSocialSciences.
    2. Milagros Nores & Steven W. Barnett, 2012. "Benefits of Early Childhood Interventions Across the World: (Under) Investing in the Very Young," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 1, pages 200-228.
    3. Naila Kabeer, 2011. "Gendered Poverty Traps: Inequality and Care in a Globalised World," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 23(4), pages 527-530, September.
    4. Andrea Cornwall & Jenny Edwards, 2010. "Introduction: Negotiating Empowerment," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2), pages 1-9, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Józsa, Krisztián & Török, Balázs & Stevenson, Cerissa, 2018. "Preschool and kindergarten in Hungary and the United States: A comparison within transnational development policy," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 88-95.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen Clark & Nik Lomax & Mark Birkin, 2020. "A classification for English primary schools using open data," REGION, European Regional Science Association, vol. 7, pages 1-13.
    2. María Fernanda Rosales, 2014. "Impact of Early Life Shocks on Human Capital Formation: El Niño Floods in Ecuador," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 87693, Inter-American Development Bank.
    3. Robert Rogers & Doan Hai Ma & Tra Nguyen & Ngoc Anh Nguyen, 2019. "Early childhood education and cognitive outcomes in adolescence: a longitudinal study from Vietnam," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(6), pages 658-669, November.
    4. Holla,Alaka & Bendini,Maria Magdalena & Dinarte Diaz,Lelys Ileana & Trako,Iva, 2021. "Is Investment in Preprimary Education Too Low ? Lessons from (Quasi) ExperimentalEvidence across Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9723, The World Bank.
    5. Fujii, Tomoki & Shonchoy, Abu S. & Xu, Sijia, 2018. "Impact of Electrification on Children’s Nutritional Status in Rural Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 315-330.
    6. Natalia Danzer & Victor Lavy, 2018. "Paid Parental Leave and Children's Schooling Outcomes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 81-117, February.
    7. Chant, Sylvia, 2016. "Galvanising girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 66231, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Dip, Juan Antonio & Gamboa, Luis Fernando, 2019. "The heterogeneity of effects of preschool education on cognitive outcomes in Latin America," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    9. Nakajima, Nozomi & Hasan, Amer & Jung, Haeil & Brinkman, Sally & Pradhan, Menno & Kinnell, Angela, 2019. "Investing in school readiness: A comparison of different early childhood education pathways in rural Indonesia," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 22-38.
    10. Narea, Marigen, 2014. "Does early centre-based care have an impact on child cognitive and socio-emotional development? Evidence from Chile," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103992, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Gressel, Christie M. & Rashed, Tarek & Maciuika, Laura Aswati & Sheshadri, Srividya & Coley, Christopher & Kongeseri, Sreeram & Bhavani, Rao R, 2020. "Vulnerability mapping: A conceptual framework towards a context-based approach to women’s empowerment," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    12. Nick Drydakis, 2023. "Parental unemployment and adolescents' academic performance," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(7), pages 1362-1381, February.
    13. Dominic Richardson & UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, 2018. "Key Findings on Families, Family Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals: Synthesis Report," Papers inorer948, Innocenti Research Report.
    14. Barbara Bruns & David Evans & Javier Luque, 2012. "Achieving World-Class Education in Brazil : The Next Agenda," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2383.
    15. Aomar Ibourk & Karim El Aynaoui & Tayeb Ghazi, 2023. "Exploration multiniveaux des causes de la pauvreté des apprentissages au Maroc : une approche compréhensive," Research papers & Policy papers 1970, Policy Center for the New South.
    16. Espinoza-Delgado, José & Klasen, Stephan, 2018. "Gender and multidimensional poverty in Nicaragua: An individual based approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 466-491.
    17. Zhao, Qiran & Wang, Xiaobing & Rozelle, Scott, 2019. "Better cognition, better school performance? Evidence from primary schools in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 199-217.
    18. Victor Lavy & Giulia Lotti & Zizhong Yan, 2022. "Empowering Mothers and Enhancing Early Childhood Investment: Effect on Adults’ Outcomes and Children’s Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(3), pages 821-867.
    19. Karolin Andersson & Katarina Pettersson & Johanna Bergman Lodin, 2022. "Window dressing inequalities and constructing women farmers as problematic—gender in Rwanda’s agriculture policy," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(4), pages 1245-1261, December.
    20. Scott, Lucy, 2012. "Contested Relationships: Women's Economic and Social Empowerment, Insights from the Transfer of Material Assets in Bangladesh," WIDER Working Paper Series 002, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:injoed:v:45:y:2015:i:c:p:161-168. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-educational-development .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.