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Reports

Professor Amita Verma Reports from Baroda:

REPORTS

The OMEP Asian Region seminar onTraining Early Childhood Care andEducation Personnel was held at theUniversity of Baroda on November25-30, 1985.

The major objective of the seminarwas to discuss issues related to the educa­tion and training of professionals andparaprofessionals for integrated EarlyChildhood Care and EducationProgrammes (ECCE).

Forty delegates from Bangladesh,China, Japan, Nepal, Philippines, SriLanka, Thailand, the U.S.A., and allmajor regions of India summarized theexisting status of pre-school education intheir respective countries. Deliberationsafterwards focused on three levels ofECCE: administrators and trainers, su­pervisors, and front-line workers. Someviable models of training ECCE person­nel were considered and it was recom­mended that an Asian network of in­stitutes of child development and UN­Esco and UNICEF supported ECCEprogrammes be established. It was alsosuggested that a concrete action plan bephased in over a period of five years,facilitated by an Asian forum of expertsin the field of child development andECCE. The plan of action would involvethe sharing of resources and information,

the convening of regular workshops, fieldtesting and evaluation of pooled resourcematerials, mass production of successfulresource materials and research with theobjective of providing sound conceptualframeworks for ECCE trainingprogrammes.

Publications and newslettersspecific to the Asian region should beissued and a directory of humanresources of the region should beprepared and made available to all mem­ber countries.

It was also recommended that exten­sive use be made of modern educationaltechnology in order for a large number ofpersonnel to become acquainted with thevarious ECCE projects. To make thispossible, the necessary hardware shouldbe made available, instruction should beprovided, and adequate software drawingfrom Asian folklore, folksongs, andfolkplay material, infant games andother cultural resources, should beprepared.

It was noted that although it was im­portant to keep pace with 20th centurytechnology, training programmes shouldnot lose sight of the rich tradition ofhuman values that form the core of theculture in the Asian region. A special

VERMA

mention was made of the significance ofplay in the growing and learningprocesses of children, and that playshould be stressed at all levels of ECCEtraining programmes.

Finally, the participants of the semi­nar expressed the opinion that the basicapproach of all ECCE programmesshould shift from information accumula­tion to information processing.

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