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Developmentally appropriate practicesin Asian Indian early childhoodclassroomsSaigeetha Jambunathan a & Mathew Caulfield aa New Jersey City University , USAPublished online: 12 Mar 2008.
To cite this article: Saigeetha Jambunathan & Mathew Caulfield (2008) Developmentallyappropriate practices in Asian Indian early childhood classrooms, Early Child Development andCare, 178:3, 251-258, DOI: 10.1080/03004430600767916
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Early Child Development and CareVol. 178, No. 3, April 2008, pp. 251–258
ISSN 0300-4430 (print)/ISSN 1476-8275 (online)/08/030251–08© 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/03004430600767916
Developmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian early childhood classroomsSaigeetha Jambunathan* and Mathew CaulfieldNew Jersey City University, USATaylor and Francis LtdGECD_A_176748.sgm10.1080/03004430600767916Early Childhood Development and Care0300-4430 (print)/1476-8275 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & [email protected]
The goal of the present study is to explore the use of developmentally appropriate practices in AsianIndian early childhood classrooms. This information is critical for all early childhood educators andteacher educators because the society we live in is fast becoming extremely diverse and our class-rooms are becoming a cauldron of various cultures, languages, personalities and views on education.Twenty-one early childhood classrooms were observed in a southern metropolitan city in southIndia. The trained researchers filled out the Rating Scale to Assess the Use of DevelopmentallyAppropriate Practices in Early Childhood Classrooms to evaluate the use of developmentally appro-priate practices in the classrooms. The observations are in the categories of creating a caringcommunity of learners, teaching to enhance development and learning, constructing appropriatecurriculum, assessing children’s learning and development, and reciprocal relationships withparents and families. Preliminary descriptive analysis of the data showed that most of the classroomsscored between two and three in all of the five subscales. The mean scores for the classrooms are asfollows: creating a caring community of learners, mean = 2.09; teaching to enhance learning anddevelopment, mean = 2.66; constructing appropriate curriculum, mean = 1.96; assessing children’slearning and development, mean = 2.12; and reciprocal relationships with parents and families,mean = 2.31. The results of the study seemed to indicate that the Asian Indian classrooms did nothave an abundance of appropriate practices occurring in the classrooms. However, in light of thediverse nature of educational programs and practices in the various countries, we have to interpretthese results carefully. The results do give us information about what practices are given importanceand which ones are not considered that important in India.
Keywords: Developmentally appropriate practice; Indian early childhood classrooms
Introduction
Early childhood education is developing an increasingly global dimension in the earlytwenty-first century. Early childhood educators are moving in the direction of sharing
*Corresponding author. Room 329, Department of Early Childhood Education, 2039 KennedyBoulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305, USA. Email: [email protected]
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information about theory and practice across cultures and countries, preparing teach-ers to work with diverse populations, and constructing a global philosophy of educa-tion that will be reflected in their practices. However, there is not much literatureavailable about practices in early childhood classrooms in developing countries. Thisinformation is critical for early childhood educators and teacher educators becausethe society we live in is fast becoming extremely diverse and our classrooms arebecoming cauldrons of various cultures, languages, personalities and views on educa-tion. The goal of the present study is to explore the use of developmentally appropri-ate practices in Asian Indian early childhood classrooms.
Developmentally appropriate practices, as proposed by the National Associationfor the Education of Young Children, encompass three main paradigms to which theteachers must attend: human development and learning, individual characteristicsand experiences, and the social and cultural contexts of the child. Thus, teachersshould bear in mind that children come from different backgrounds, and learn anddevelop at different paces. This should be reflected in the different types of learningmaterials, strategies, and guidance techniques they use, for according to theNational Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) the childshould be the ‘focal point of the curriculum’ (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997).Research has demonstrated that classroom use of developmentally appropriate prac-tices has positive benefits for children (for example, Larsen & Robinson, 1989;Marcon, 1992; Burts et al., 1993; Charlesworth et al., 1993; Dunn & Kontos, 1997;Hart et al., 1997).
India, a country with centuries of history behind it, is a pot pourri of culture,language, religions, economic strata and mores (Paranjothi, 1969; Jambunathan,2005). Education is highly valued by all in this cosmopolitan country (Paranjothi,1969; Jambunathan, 2005). The practice of early childhood education developed inthe twentieth century in India, with Gandhi and Maria Montessori being importantearly influences. Montessori’s writings and philosophy were integrated into theteacher education programs (Pattnaik, 1996). After India gained independence in1947, thanks to the efforts and vision of educational reformers and scholars such asLajpat Rai, Tagore, Goshal and Gandhi, the mission of the Indian educationalsystem incorporated a developmental viewpoint that included meeting the needs ofthe children and allowing them to be children as they traversed the educationalsystem. The ideas these visionaries proposed were very similar to what we now referto as developmentally appropriate practices. They wanted the main focus of educa-tion to be on the child and his or her various areas of development. They also saidthat teachers had to use hands-on methods of imparting knowledge in the areas oflanguage, mathematics, science, social studies and physical education. Anothersalient feature of this post-independence mission was to impart knowledge in thechild’s native language. These scholars did not criticize the British way of teaching;however, they wanted to review the Indian tradition in education and blend the twotogether so that learning would be a meaningful and enjoyable experience both forthe teachers and children (Paranjothi, 1969). In 1986 the government’s NationalPolicy on Education recognized the value of the education of the whole child. The
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Developmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian classrooms 253
policy highlighted the importance of play and meeting all areas of development of thechild versus focusing only on the academic instruction. Furthermore, this policydiscouraged academic instruction in early childhood. With the passing of the seventhFive Year Plan (1986–1990), more guidelines were put in place for teacher prepara-tion with some focus placed on meeting the needs of the child and using developmen-tally appropriate strategies. However, more emphasis was placed on teaching thecontent areas. More recently researchers have observed a combination of westernpractices and Indian philosophy and practices, more involvement of the community,more individual performance-based assessment, school readiness programs andhome-based programs to help parents care for and prepare their children for school(French, 1992; Pattnaik, 1996).
The above information indicates that the basic premises of developmentally appro-priate practice have been in place at the policy level in India for some time. However,there are reports of widespread use of narrowly academically based practice in Indianpreschools in the literature (for example, Bhavnagri, 1995; Roopnarine et al., 1994a).The present study explored the use of developmentally appropriate practices in earlychildhood classrooms in the Asian Indian context. Information from such an explor-atory research can be used to identify factors that promote or impede the use of devel-opmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian early childhood classrooms. Thisinformation can also be valuable for early childhood educators in trying to attain aglobal understanding about teaching young children and the role of developmentallyappropriate practices in this endeavor.
Method
Twenty-one early childhood classrooms were observed in a metropolitan city insouth India. Ten of the classrooms were lower kindergarten classes, whichnormally house three-year-old children. Eleven of the classrooms were upperkindergarten classes, which normally house four-year-old children. Four of theseclassrooms were housed in a separate private setting, which had only the three-year-old classes and four-year-old classes. The rest of the classrooms were housedin elementary and secondary schools. Each class had about 21–25 children. Eachclass had a full-time teacher and an aide. The teachers had bachelor degrees; theaides did not have degrees. The teachers were the ones who carried out instruc-tion. The aides primarily performed non-instructional tasks such as collectingwork, serving lunch, taking the children to the bathroom, and so on. The childrenwere taught in English; however, the teachers did use the local dialect (i.e. Tamil)when necessary.
Instruments
Two trained early childhood researchers, who were reliable towards each other, filledout the Rating Scale to Assess the Use of Developmentally Appropriate Practicesin Early Childhood Classrooms (Buchanan et al., 1997) to evaluate the functioning
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of the early childhood classrooms. The content validity of the scale was determinedby leading experts in the field and they concurred that the content of the scaleappropriately reflected the NAEYC standards for an appropriate classroom. This 20-item scale is rated on a Likert-type scale ranging from one to five, where one is mostlyinappropriate and five is mostly appropriate. The observations are in the categories ofcreating a caring community of learners, teaching to enhance learning and develop-ment, constructing appropriate curriculum, assessing children’s learning and devel-opment, and reciprocal relationships with parents and families. The creating a caringcommunity of learners subscale evaluated opportunities for child–child interaction,adult–child interaction and opportunities for overall development of the child. Theteaching to enhance learning and development subscale evaluated the teaching strat-egies used by teachers to promote learning. This subscale included items that exam-ined whether the teacher had appropriate knowledge of each child’s development andneeds, followed the curriculum, used a variety of strategies to promote learningamong the children, and provided opportunities for social–emotional growth anddevelopment of the children. The constructing appropriate curriculum subscale eval-uated the appropriateness of the curriculum for particular ages and its integrationacross the content areas. The items on this subscale also examined whether theteacher took each child’s culture and opportunities to learn at home into consider-ation while planning the lessons. The assessing children’s learning and developmentsubscale evaluated the various strategies employed by the teachers to assess the over-all development of the children. Finally, the reciprocal relationships with parents andfamilies subscale examined the opportunities for parent involvement and participa-tion in the early childhood classrooms. Average scores were calculated for each of thesubscale.
Procedure
The researcher contacted the principals of schools and directors of the daycarecenters to conduct this study. Appointments were made with each of the teachers tovisit their classrooms. The observation lasted between three and five hours. If therewere certain items on the scale that the researcher did not observe, they questionedthe teacher about it at the end of the observation.
Results
Preliminary descriptive analysis of the data showed that most of the classrooms scoredbetween two and three in all of the five subscales. The mean scores for the classroomsare as follows: creating a caring community of learners, mean = 2.09, range = 1–3;teaching to enhance learning and development, mean = 2.66, range = 1–4; construct-ing appropriate curriculum, mean = 1.96, range = 1–3; assessing children’s learningand development, mean = 2.12, range = 1–3; and reciprocal relationships withparents and families, mean = 2.31, range = 1–3. (See Table 1 for the means, rangesand standard deviations of each item of the instrument.)
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Developmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian classrooms 255
Discussion
The results of the study seemed to indicate that the Asian Indian classrooms did nothave an abundance of appropriate practices occurring in the classrooms. However, inlight of the diverse nature of educational programs and practices in the various coun-tries, we have to interpret these results carefully. The score on the creating a caringcommunity of learners seemed to indicate that the teachers did not create an envi-ronment in the classroom that facilitated a sense of community, opportunities for
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of individual items on the checklist for rating the use of developmentally appropriate practices
Items in rating scale Mean Minimum MaximumStandard deviation
Creating a caring community of learners 2.09 1 3 0.54Promoting a positive climate for learning 1.73 1 3 0.63Fostering a cohesive, democratic group 2.9 1 3 0.61Meeting individual needs 1.64 1 3 0.71
Teaching to enhance development and learning 2.66 1 4 0.55Environment and schedule 2.61 1 3 0.48Teaching strategies 2.36 1 3 0.51Learning experiences 2.71 1 4 0.55Language and communication 2.91 1 4 0.62Guidance 2.93 1 4 0.57Motivation 2.54 1 4 0.51
Constructing appropriate curriculum 1.96 1 3 0.47Integrated curriculum 1.23 1 3 0.46The continuum of development and learning 1.67 1 3 0.39Coherent, effective curriculum 2.32 1 3 0.49Curriculum content and approaches 2.12 1 3 0.42Language and literacy 2.24 1 3 0.58Mathematics 2.19 1 3 0.56Social studies 2.21 1 3 0.53Science 2.24 1 3 0.55Health and safety 1.7 1 3 0.45Aesthetic education 1.6 1 3 0.46Physical education 2.1 1 3 0.49Transitions between programs or groups and between activities
1.9 1 3 0.34
Assessing children’s learning and development 2.12 1 3 0.61Performance based assessments 2.0 1 3 0.67Multiple methods of assessment 2.24 1 3 0.68
Reciprocal relationships with parents and families
2.31 1 3 0.61
Parents have opportunities to be involved in the classroom
2.6 1 3 0.72
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children to interact with one another and the teacher. The teaching to enhancedevelopment and learning subscale score seemed to imply that the teachers were notadapting their teaching practices to best meet the needs of children, keeping in mindeach child has a different set of needs and might be at a different developmentallevel. Almost all of the classrooms the researchers visited seemed to be filled withchildren and there was only one teacher for about 20 children. The teacher had nohelp with instruction or even with supplementing the teaching that he/she did. Mostof the classrooms that the researchers visited had rows of desks and chairs. Therewere learning centers only in four of the classrooms. Also, the classrooms wereuniformly scarce in the materials they had available for the children. Lack of books,art supplies, manipulatives and stimulating props in the classroom was very evident.Other reasons for the low scores as described in the Jambunathan (2005) study arethe lack of child development knowledge and pressure from administrators to teachto the test, as scores from the tests are very critical in determining whether the childmoves up to the next grade or not. The score on constructing appropriate curriculumwas the lowest of all the subscales, the reason being that all the classrooms except forthe four in the private early childhood setting followed one of the four prescribedcurriculum in the country: Central Board of Secondary Examination, IndianCertified School Examination, Matriculation Board of Examination, and StateBoard of Examination. The teachers had to adhere to the prescribed curriculum andthey have very little freedom to alter it.
The scores on assessing children’s learning and development seemed to imply thatthe teachers did not frequently use appropriate measures of assessing children’sgrowth and learning. The reason for this is once again the restrictions teachers haveto face when it is time to evaluate the children. Teachers have guidelines for assessingchildren and most of these tests are content area based and do not take into consid-eration the individual strengths of each child. Performance-based assessments are notpredominant in the early childhood classrooms in India. Parents and administratorsseem to prefer paper, pencil and time-bound tests that will result in one score for eachcontent area. The scores on reciprocal relationships with parents and families seemedto indicate that parent involvement was not very prevalent in the early childhoodclassrooms in India. In the private early childhood setting parents were invited to beinvolved in the classrooms, but in the early childhood classes in the elementary andsecondary schools parent presence in the classroom was not favorably viewed.However, parents were welcome to participate in the cultural events in the school.
The results do give us information about what practices are given importance andwhich ones are not considered that important. Traditionally in the Indian culture,didactic instruction and learning are considered to be very important. Creative think-ing and independent work are not ranked very high on academic performance. As aresult teachers tend to teach to the test and frequently resort to top-down instructionalstrategies. The curriculum is set by state organizations and central organizations, theteachers have no control over them. In most cases teachers are given no or minimalmaterial to work with in terms of setting up the classroom environment. The abovepractices viewed in the Indian context are not necessarily culturally inappropriate.
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Developmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian classrooms 257
The Indian Government, educators and administrators are fast becoming aware ofthe negative effects of teaching to the tests and having a curriculum based on narrowcontent areas and the limited range of testing. The Indian Government has startedtaking steps in reducing the stress in early childhood education for children. One suchmeasure is doing away with entrance tests and interviews for admission into the earlychildhood classes (Prochner, 2002). More recently, the government of Tamilnaduhas issued an ordinance that will abolish any type of tests or examinations in classesup to grade three. Early childhood researchers are calling for changes in the curricu-lum, teaching practices, assessment and environment in the early childhood class-room, and also in teacher training, to better enable them to teach the children withtheir developmental skills in mind rather than the test (Gupta, 2003; Roopnarineet al., 1994b). These researchers are calling for a fusion of the western developmentaltheories, societal needs and the cultural heritage in creating an environment thatwould enable the children to progress and learn at their own level and value the joyof learning.
This brings up the issue of what developmentally appropriate practices means inone culture might not be the same in another. Information from the above studyand information about practices in other countries are very valuable for all earlychildhood educators. Such information not only enables us to appreciate what goeson in other countries, but also provides opportunities for us to learn from suchinformation (Hoot et al., 1996; Gupta, 2003; Sanagavarapu & Wong, 2004; Jambu-nathan, 2005). Also, with the rising immigrant population in the United States,such information can be incorporated within the teacher education programs toenable our teachers to develop a universal and culturally responsive philosophy ofeducation and practice and also to be aware of educational practices and expecta-tions in different countries, so that they can better meet the needs of the familiesthey work with. Finally, in this study the researchers used an instrument that wasdeveloped in the United States with criteria deemed important in a developmentallyappropriate class in the United States as determined by the NAEYC. On examiningthese standards and based on previous research findings (for example, Larsen &Robinson, 1989; Burts et al., 1993; Charlesworth et al., 1993; Marcon, 1992; Dunn& Kontos, 1997; Hart et al., 1997), one can concur that these standards do promoteopportunities for appropriate growth and development of children. Hence, based onthe above rationale, the researchers used the five standards deemed appropriate byNAEYC to evaluate early childhood classrooms in India. Moreover, there was noinstrument developed in the Indian context appropriate for use in this study. Thisfurther raises the issue of what else needs to be done to increase our knowledge basein creating a baseline for developmentally appropriate practices globally. Research-ers could research this notion further and determine whether this is feasible or not.Also the impact of developmentally appropriate practices on children has been stud-ied only in the western countries; research needs to be done to study the impact onchildren of current educational practices in developing countries. This will help usunderstand whether the practices in these countries benefit or negatively impact thechildren in these countries.
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