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HIERARCHIES OF KNOWLEDGE, INCOMMENSURABILITIES AND SILENCES IN SOUTH AFRICAN ECD POLICY: WHOSE KNOWLEDGE COUNTS?

100%

Rudolph N.

Pedagogický časopis (Journal of Pedagogy)

2017

vol. 8

issue 1

77 – 98

Policy for young children in South Africa is now receiving high-level government support through the ANC’s renewed commitment to redress poverty and inequity and creating ‘a better life for all’ as promised before the 1994 election. In this article, the author explores the power relations, knowledge hierarchies and discourses of childhood, family and society in National Curriculum Framework (NCF) as it relates to children’s everyday contexts. He throws light on how the curriculum’s discourses relate to the diverse South African settings, child rearing practices and world-views, and how they interact with normative discourses of South African policy and global early childhood frameworks. The NCF acknowledges indigenous and local knowledges and suggests that the content should be adapted to local contexts. He argues that the good intentions of these documents to address inequities are undermined by the uncritical acceptance of global taken-for-granted discourses, such as narrow notions of evidence, western child development, understanding of the child as a return of investment and referencing urban middle class community contexts and values. These global discourses make the poorest children and their families invisible, and silence other visions of childhood and good society, including the notion of ‘convivial society’ set out in the 1955 Freedom Charter.

VOICES HEARD AND LESSONS LEARNT: EXPLORING MULTIPLE KNOWLEDGES AND LOCAL PARTICIPATION IN A COMMUNITY-BASED INTEGRATED EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA

63%

Murray J., Rudolph N.

Pedagogický časopis (Journal of Pedagogy)

2019

vol. 10

issue 1

13 – 32

Following calls for diverse and contextual perspectives of the rich lives of young children, their families and communities from/in the Global South, this paper presents critical reflections emerging from a three-year (2016-2019) community based Integrated Approach to Early Childhood Development (ECD) project implemented in the rural Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It explores the critical relationship established between ranges of stakeholders involved in this project as reflected on by two community activists working together in the area of early childhood in the province for thirty years. This article highlights the importance of situating any community development initiative aimed at addressing early childhood provision in marginalised communities within a social justice framework. This includes identifying constraints inherent in unequal relations of power that risk undermining solidarity and agency for community stakeholders. It foregrounds accountability measures that emerge from local initiatives rather than from narrow predetermined project outcomes. This provides an opportunity to learn from, and engage with, experiences from the margins, thereby challenging some dominant narratives circulating, and often informing, early childhood policy and provision.

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2 Pedagogický časopis (Journal of Pedagogy)

2 Rudolph N.

1 Murray J.

1 2019

1 2017

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HIERARCHIES OF KNOWLEDGE, INCOMMENSURABILITIES AND SILENCES IN SOUTH AFRICAN ECD POLICY: WHOSE KNOWLEDGE COUNTS?

VOICES HEARD AND LESSONS LEARNT: EXPLORING MULTIPLE KNOWLEDGES AND LOCAL PARTICIPATION IN A COMMUNITY-BASED INTEGRATED EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA