Developmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian early childhood classrooms

Abstract

The goal of the present study is to explore the use of developmentally appropriate practices in Asian Indian early childhood classrooms. This information is critical for all early childhood educators and teacher educators because the society we live in is fast becoming extremely diverse and our classrooms 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 south India. The trained researchers filled out the Rating Scale to Assess the Use of Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Early Childhood Classrooms to evaluate the use of developmentally appropriate practices in the classrooms. The observations are in the categories of creating a caring community of learners, teaching to enhance development and learning, constructing appropriate curriculum, assessing children’s learning and development, and reciprocal relationships with parents and families. Preliminary descriptive analysis of the data showed that most of the classrooms scored between two and three in all of the five subscales. The mean scores for the classrooms are as follows: creating a caring community of learners, mean = 2.09; teaching to enhance learning and development, mean = 2.66; constructing appropriate curriculum, mean = 1.96; assessing children’s learning 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 not have an abundance of appropriate practices occurring in the classrooms. However, in light of the diverse nature of educational programs and practices in the various countries, we have to interpret these results carefully. The results do give us information about what practices are given importance and which ones are not considered that important in India.