Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education
Background/Context Many scholars in the fields of teacher education, multicultural education, and... more Background/Context Many scholars in the fields of teacher education, multicultural education, and bilingual education have argued that children of recent immigrants are best served in classrooms that have teachers who understand the cultural background and the home language of their students. Culturally knowledgeable and responsive teachers are important in early education and care settings that serve children from immigrant families. However, there is little research on immigrant teachers’ cultural and professional knowledge or on their political access to curricular/pedagogical decision-making. Focus of Study This study is part of the larger Children Crossing Borders (CCB) study: a comparative study of what practitioners and parents who are recent immigrants in multiple countries think should happen in early education settings. Here, we present an analysis of the teacher interviews that our team conducted in the United States and compare the perspectives of immigrant teachers with...
Research in Comparative and International Education
This paper briefly reviews theories of embodiment and then provides an example from our recent wo... more This paper briefly reviews theories of embodiment and then provides an example from our recent work on how we use video in our comparative studies of preschools to highlight embodied and implicit cultural pedagogies. The example we present focuses on how Japanese preschool teachers use the Japanese cultural practice of mimamoru (teaching by watching and waiting) as an embodied technique that combines gaze, location, posture, and touch. We demonstrate how a microanalysis of video footage, when used in conjunction with ethnographic interviews, can draw attention to culturally patterned embodied practices that may otherwise be difficult to perceive.
This is an ethnographic study of how two Japanese kindergartens are implementing the yōhoichigenk... more This is an ethnographic study of how two Japanese kindergartens are implementing the yōhoichigenka policy aimed at reforming the Japanese early childhood education system. The cases of these two kindergartens demonstrate what happens when a top-down mandate reaches the level of individual programs. The programs creatively find ways of responding to the reform mandate and to social change while maintaining what their administrators view as their pedagogical traditions. This paper also argues for the value of ethnographic methods to show how local programs are creative, resistant, and pragmatic in how they deal with top down pressures and directives.
cholars who are drawn to qualitative research methodologies represent a diverse group of discipli... more cholars who are drawn to qualitative research methodologies represent a diverse group of disciplines and fields. They also represent themselves as researchers and the theoretical frameworks in which they work quite differently. Indeed, it was this diversity in representation that initially motivated us to propose a New Directions feature on qualitative methodologies. Specifically, we were curious as to how scholars who use different approaches to inquiring about a wide range of literacies and literate practices would respond to an invitation to ...
Asia Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education, May 1, 2014
Preschools in Japan, as elsewhere, are key sites of child development, socialization, and encultu... more Preschools in Japan, as elsewhere, are key sites of child development, socialization, and enculturation. A series of ethnographically informed studies of Japanese preschools have identified and explicated approaches to early childhood education that are very unlike those of preschools in other countries. Many of these features of Japanese preschools that have been identified by ethnographic researchers challenge Western notions of early childhood education and care and child development. These features include high student/teacher ratios; low-intervention by teachers in children’s disputes; an emphasis on group-mindedness and collective over individual forms of social control; a prioritization of social development and a de-emphasis on academics; the cultivation of the experience and expression of feelings; and an emphasis on teaching children to adjust their behavior to contexts.
ABSTRACT Presents the screenplay synopsis and examples of scenes from a video that describes how ... more ABSTRACT Presents the screenplay synopsis and examples of scenes from a video that describes how one Hawaiian elementary school developed a video-literacy curriculum project, including how the project got started, hurdles that had to be overcome, and lessons learned from the experience. (SM)
Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education
Background/Context Many scholars in the fields of teacher education, multicultural education, and... more Background/Context Many scholars in the fields of teacher education, multicultural education, and bilingual education have argued that children of recent immigrants are best served in classrooms that have teachers who understand the cultural background and the home language of their students. Culturally knowledgeable and responsive teachers are important in early education and care settings that serve children from immigrant families. However, there is little research on immigrant teachers’ cultural and professional knowledge or on their political access to curricular/pedagogical decision-making. Focus of Study This study is part of the larger Children Crossing Borders (CCB) study: a comparative study of what practitioners and parents who are recent immigrants in multiple countries think should happen in early education settings. Here, we present an analysis of the teacher interviews that our team conducted in the United States and compare the perspectives of immigrant teachers with...
Research in Comparative and International Education
This paper briefly reviews theories of embodiment and then provides an example from our recent wo... more This paper briefly reviews theories of embodiment and then provides an example from our recent work on how we use video in our comparative studies of preschools to highlight embodied and implicit cultural pedagogies. The example we present focuses on how Japanese preschool teachers use the Japanese cultural practice of mimamoru (teaching by watching and waiting) as an embodied technique that combines gaze, location, posture, and touch. We demonstrate how a microanalysis of video footage, when used in conjunction with ethnographic interviews, can draw attention to culturally patterned embodied practices that may otherwise be difficult to perceive.
This is an ethnographic study of how two Japanese kindergartens are implementing the yōhoichigenk... more This is an ethnographic study of how two Japanese kindergartens are implementing the yōhoichigenka policy aimed at reforming the Japanese early childhood education system. The cases of these two kindergartens demonstrate what happens when a top-down mandate reaches the level of individual programs. The programs creatively find ways of responding to the reform mandate and to social change while maintaining what their administrators view as their pedagogical traditions. This paper also argues for the value of ethnographic methods to show how local programs are creative, resistant, and pragmatic in how they deal with top down pressures and directives.
cholars who are drawn to qualitative research methodologies represent a diverse group of discipli... more cholars who are drawn to qualitative research methodologies represent a diverse group of disciplines and fields. They also represent themselves as researchers and the theoretical frameworks in which they work quite differently. Indeed, it was this diversity in representation that initially motivated us to propose a New Directions feature on qualitative methodologies. Specifically, we were curious as to how scholars who use different approaches to inquiring about a wide range of literacies and literate practices would respond to an invitation to ...
Asia Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education, May 1, 2014
Preschools in Japan, as elsewhere, are key sites of child development, socialization, and encultu... more Preschools in Japan, as elsewhere, are key sites of child development, socialization, and enculturation. A series of ethnographically informed studies of Japanese preschools have identified and explicated approaches to early childhood education that are very unlike those of preschools in other countries. Many of these features of Japanese preschools that have been identified by ethnographic researchers challenge Western notions of early childhood education and care and child development. These features include high student/teacher ratios; low-intervention by teachers in children’s disputes; an emphasis on group-mindedness and collective over individual forms of social control; a prioritization of social development and a de-emphasis on academics; the cultivation of the experience and expression of feelings; and an emphasis on teaching children to adjust their behavior to contexts.
ABSTRACT Presents the screenplay synopsis and examples of scenes from a video that describes how ... more ABSTRACT Presents the screenplay synopsis and examples of scenes from a video that describes how one Hawaiian elementary school developed a video-literacy curriculum project, including how the project got started, hurdles that had to be overcome, and lessons learned from the experience. (SM)
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Papers by Joseph Tobin