The Space-In-Between: Ontology and the Place of Curriculum in the Culturally Diverse Post-Secondary Early Childhood Education Classroom
Date
2015-04-22
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Abstract
This doctoral dissertation explores the topic of teaching and learning and the intersections between the Self and the curriculum in the culturally diverse Early Childhood Education (ECE) post-secondary classroom. I seek to understand more fully the “zone of between” (Aoki, 2005) ―a metaphoric inner landscape―which serves to situate students and educators ontologically through the process of interpretation and meaning-making. In dialogue with a group of immigrant educators, I studied this pedagogical relationship within the context of a western ECE curriculum. The research is shaped by a set of critical questions around curriculum, social justice, the voices of power and the marginal in the culturally diverse adult classroom: How does culture and one’s life experiences impact immigrants’ knowing and understanding of a post-secondary ECE curriculum? How are cultural differences in child-rearing and early learning acknowledged in early childhood education and curriculum? How do educators interpret and teach the curriculum to adult immigrant students to ensure meaningful learning? How does learning ultimately translate into practice when immigrant educators teach and care for children in Canadian ECE settings?
Utilizing an interpretive narrative approach that includes listening to, recording and layering the participants’ autobiographical accounts, I noted their responses to questions relevant to school, culture and the curriculum. Shaun Tan’s (2006) graphic novel, The Arrival, was the catalyst provoking our thinking and imaginations, and providing a visual lens through which to view and interpret ideas about identity and the immigrant experience. Listening to the participants’ stories, I heard their cultural perspectives about what exists in the space-in-between Self and Other, acknowledging the hermeneutic interlacing of their past and present experiences in forming “a unified flow of experience” (Gadamer, 2004a, p. 237). I examined how immigrants juxtapose what they know about child care and early learning from their culture(s) with relative pedagogical practices they observe in ECE settings. I explain how curriculum and culture are placed in terms of diversity and difference. This work raises awareness about the importance of relationality and issues of identity and offers different understandings about how immigrant educators and students can live and learn together in an always complex world.
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Education--Curriculum and Instruction, Education--Early Childhood
Citation
Bjartveit, C. J. (2015). The Space-In-Between: Ontology and the Place of Curriculum in the Culturally Diverse Post-Secondary Early Childhood Education Classroom (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28388