Early childhood pedagogy in a Ghanaian socio-cultural medley: A case study of two Kindergarten classrooms

Thompson Mumuni

doi:10.21438/rbgas.061201

Abstract

In a quest for quality-driven early childhood education settings, it is important to explore subtleties that define socio-culturally-relevant pedagogy that is often ignored in scholarly literature. To address this gap in literature, a qualitative multi-case study approach was used to explore four Kindergarten teachers views regarding early childhood pedagogy over a six-month in Kindergarten classrooms in Tata School and at Kariba School. This study sought to establish "Why does children's socio-cultural contexts influence choice of pedagogy in kindergarten classrooms". The study was framed by Bronfenbrenner's framework, ecological theory. The sources of data comprised semi-structured individual interviews, pair-interviews and field notes of classrooms observations. Both within and across case interpretative analysis was used. The study established that, participants in the two cases perceived that a socio-cultural context-based pedagogy such as learning materials, storytelling, traditional songs and traditional rhymes supported children's development in terms of their understanding of concepts, language development, cognitive and moral development, respectively.

Highlights

The content of instructional practices of a pedagogue in early childhood settings is largely informed by theoritical insights of several theorists (Dewey, 1902; Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1957; Erickson and Maslow, 1975, Bronfenbrenner, 1979)
Since much of what these teachers shared aligned with the curriculum, these findings provide evidence to policy makers in Ghana that individual teachers, with differing educational backgrounds, appear to apply early childhood pedagogy taken into account children’s socio-cultural contexts
While the ways in which these teachers situate early childhood pedagogy in these two kindergarten classrooms varied with regard to specifics, a common thread running through the five themes was the interrelationship between pedagogy and the children’s socio-cultural context

Summary

Introduction

The content of instructional practices of a pedagogue in early childhood settings is largely informed by theoritical insights of several theorists (Dewey, 1902; Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1957; Erickson and Maslow, 1975, Bronfenbrenner, 1979) Some of these theorists have theorised the significance of developmentally appropriate pedagogy which is anchored on the provision of thought-provoking learning experiences, culturally situated learning, constructivist approach to learning and individual children-focused approach to learning. In effect, teaching and learning process and its efficacy to some is extent is dependent on the pedagogue in terms of insights, regarding learning needs, individual differences and the uniqueness that each child brings to the learning contexts These insights are significant, because it gives the early childhood educator nuanced understanding regarding choice of an effective pedagogy that is in sync with nature of children and how they

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