•
Preamble
• Executive Summary
• Project Goals
• Researchers
| Preamble |
The basic assumption that guides our project is that early childhood education and care programs need greater understanding of the cultural backgrounds and social worlds of the families of the children they serve. Too often, programmatic reforms for young children are initiated without input from parents, and this is particularly true when the parents are immigrants. For ECEC programs to reflect local concerns and to be responsive to the outcomes for children that are desired by parents, the perspectives and wishes of parents must be solicited, understood, and addressed. Parents and the staff of ECEC programs must engage in dialogue, an ongoing collaborative discussion about the means and ends of early childhood education and care.
The research project we propose in this document has the potential to serve as a catalyst for these discussions, a tool for initiating dialogue among parents, practitioners, scholars, and policy makers about the problems and possibilities of creating ECEC programs that reflect the values and beliefs of both immigrant communities and of the societies to which they have immigrated.
| Executive Summary |
This is a proposal for a study of how the early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems of five countries are serving the children of recent immigrants and of what parents who recently have migrated from another culture want for their children in ECEC settings. The five countries in this study (England, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States) have been chosen for their strikingly different approaches to serving children of immigrants. All five countries are democracies, but with significant differences in notions of citizenship, nation, federalism, public services, and civic responsibility and with very different systems of early childhood education.
For most young (3-5 years old) children of parents who have come from other countries and cultures, ECEC settings are the first context in which they come face to face with differences between the culture of home and the public culture of their new country. For parents who have recently immigrated to a new country, enrolling their child in an early childhood program is the paradigmatic moment where cultural values of their home and adopted culture come into contact and, often, conflict. For countries with high rates of immigration, ECEC programs are key sites for enacting national goals for social inclusion and the creation of new citizens.
There is perhaps no social issue more challenging for the countries of the European Union, collectively and individually, than immigration. It is a key political issue that connects domestic to international policies, that is closely linked with urban poverty and related social problems, and that reflects core concerns about what it means to be a nation, a people, and a union. The treatment of immigrants has become even more salient in the post-911 climate of heightened concerns about national security, high rates of employment, and rising xenophobia.
The issue of immigration is closely tied to the issue of diversity. For all five of the countries in our study, newly arriving immigrants are a major source of cultural, linguistic, racial, and religious diversity. Our study will speak to and draw on the literature on diversity, but keep as it’s focus the experiences of recently arrived immigrants. While there are some important similarities in the issues facing, for example, African-American and Mexican-immigrant parents as they place their children in preschool, there are also important differences.
This study is cross-cultural and cross-national in two important senses: it is concerned with five countries; and the research will be conducted by closely collaborating teams of researchers from these five countries. The core method of this study is straightforward, and follows the approach taken by Tobin, Wu, and Davidson in the seminal study, “Preschools in Three Cultures.” We will make videotapes of typical days in classrooms for four-year-olds in ECEC settings in each of the five countries, and then use these videotapes not (primarily) as data, but as tools to stimulate a multivocal, inter-cultural dialogue. The videotapes will be used as an interviewing cue to draw out the beliefs and concerns of parents and community leaders from immigrant communities, of teachers and administrators who work in programs that serve children of newly arriving immigrants, and of early childhood education experts and policy makers concerned with early childhood education and care. By showing the same set of videotapes to these key stakeholders in each of the five nations, we will highlight similarities and differences in how each nation approaches the promises and challenges of bringing immigrants into the fabric of society.
| Project Goals |
Our project has multiple goals, goals that match closely with the objectives of the BvLF diversity initiative. The first goal of our project is to give voice to the hopes, beliefs, and concerns of immigrant parents about the education and care of their young children. ECEC programs that serve children of immigrants, though generally well intended, are hampered by policy-makers’ and practitioners’ lack of knowledge of and consideration for parental perspectives. This first goal of our research is consistent with the Foundation’s objective of understanding diversity in ECD. In our study, the voices of immigrant parents will introduce perspectives on the social, emotional, cognitive, and academic dimensions of child development that we anticipate will broaden and in some cases challenge Western European and American theory and best practice. The notions of normative child development and of best practice that guide early childhood education in Europe and North America are insufficiently informed by culture difference and unaware of their implicit middle-class Western values and assumptions.
A second goal of this project is to identify and explicate five models of working with children of immigrants in the hope that the countries participating in the study (as well as other countries) can learn from each other, not necessarily by directly borrowing so much as by being exposed to approaches that will expand the repertoire of the possible and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions. The countries participating in this study, including the United States, which self-consciously defines itself as a land of immigrants, have much to gain from being exposed to a range of approaches. There is a critical shortage of studies on the experiences of children of immigrants in ECEC settings and on what immigrants from different cultures want from their children’s ECES programs. Within each of the countries in our study, discussions of immigration policy and more specifically about how early childhood programs should serve children of immigrants tend to become stuck in acrimonious debates, debates in which there is little new to say and little chance for changes of opinion. By introducing an appreciation for the differences in how the five countries in our study are approaching this question, we hope to breakdown the overly binary, adversarial thinking that characterizes debate on this topic and in this way to contribute to the possibility of more imaginative, helpful practices and approaches to dealing with diversity. This goal matches well with the Foundation’s objective to diversify the mainstream. We hope that our study will influence institutions and mechanisms that are shaping current practices in the education and care of young children.
Our third goal is to model a process for the parents and staff of ECEC settings to engage in dialogue about what is best for young children. It is our hope that the videotapes we produce in this study will eventually be used as tools for stimulating discussion among practitioners and parents about the means and end of early childhood education and care. This goal of our project nicely complements the Foundation’s objective of fostering diversity within the multiple environments of children. By strengthening understanding between parents and teachers, our project will build greater articulation between the young child’s worlds of home and school, and thereby make it a bit easier for young children to negotiate the differences they encounter in these two contexts.
Our fourth goal is to produce videotapes and accompanying materials that will be used as training materials for pre-service and in-service practitioners.
As these multiple goals suggest, audiences for this study will include scholars in a range of fields including education, child development, sociology, anthropology, and policy studies, as well as policy makers, community leaders, and early childhood practitioners (staff and administrators). The findings of this study will have implications for several key areas of policy in both the European Union and the United States, areas including social exclusion, child poverty, educational underachievement, and parental employment. These are all problems that are especially acute in immigrant communities, problems that studies have shown can be ameliorated by high quality, culturally responsive early childhood education and care programs.
The products of this study will include a series of research articles; a major book, intended not just for scholars but also for teachers, policy makers, and lay readers; a DVD; a website; and training materials.
| Researchers |
Joseph
Tobin, PR Director, Joseph.Tobin@asu.edu
Fikriye Kurban Coordinator, Fikriye.Kurban@asu.edu
Germany
.....Henrietta Heimgaertner, heimgaertner@ina-fu.org
.....Christa Pressing, preiss2@zedat.fu-berlin.de
.....Annika Sulzer, Annika.Sulzer@asu.edu
.....
France
.....Gilles Brougere, brougere@noos.fr
.....Nacira Guenif, ngs39@hotmail.fr
.....Sylvie Rayna, srayna@wanadoo.fr
Italy
.....Susanna Mantavoni, susanna.mantovani@unimib.it
.....Chiara Bove, chiara.bove@unimib.it
.....Giulia Pastori, giulia.pastori@unimib.it
.....Francesca Zaninelli, francesca.zaninelli@unimib.it
UK
.....Chris
Pascal, 113525.3215@compuserve.com
.....Tony Bertram,
DrTonyBertram@compuserve.com
.....Dalvir Gill,
d.gill@crec2.org.uk
USA
.....Joseph Tobin, Joseph.Tobin@asu.edu
.....Angela Arzubiaga, Angela.Arzubiaga@asu.edu
.....Jennifer Adair, Jennifer.Adair@asu.edu
.....Gaby Santiago, Ana.Moralessantiago@asu.edu
©2006
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Yucel
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