Minority-world professionals in majority-world early childhood contexts: How do international field experiences promote intercultural competence or reinforce “professional” ethnocentrism?

Abstract

This colloquium problematizes the use of early childhood international field experiences as a tool for professional development with Euro-Western pre-service and in-service teachers. The authors critique experiences where minority-world educators teach or implement internships within majority-world contexts. It is critical for Euro-Western teacher education programs to provide pre-service and in-service teachers with opportunities to expand their global views of the early childhood professional through international field experiences. But how can this be done when conceptions of the “professional” are constructed in Euro-Western images, ideas, curricula, ideologies, and privilege? The authors make a call for early childhood teacher educators to reconsider, deconstruct, and re-examine themselves and their pre-service and in-service teachers’ rationale for engaging in international field experiences.

Keywords

Early childhood professional ethnocentrism intercultural competence interculturality international field experiences minority-world educators

Preparing intercultural professionals

How do international field experiences promote intercultural competence or reinforce the ethnocentric professionalism between minority-world and majority-world educators? This is the question we take up in this colloquium. The term “minority-world” is used for people who come from wealthier regions of the globe, which constitutes a small percentage of the world population, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The term “majority-world” has replaced the terms “third world” or “developing world,” as these terms construct a discourse about certain countries being less developed or advanced than others (Dahlberg et al., 2013). The terms noted above have been used by Alan Pence (1998, 2018) for the past 20 years in his collaborative research with First Nation communities in Canada and within the sub-Saharan African continent. Intercultural experiences in teacher education professional development have become a common practice, as evidenced by the proliferation of opportunities for various types of international field experiences, such as overseas student teaching, service learning, study tours, and cultural immersion (Smolcic and Katunich, 2017). In this colloquium, we critique experiences where minority-world educators teach or implement internships within international early years classroom contexts over short periods (i.e. several weeks to a few months) in majority-world communities.

After years of conducting international field experiences with mostly Western White female pre-service and in-service teachers in Nepal and Kenya, we are struggling to understand how these opportunities do and do not develop interculturalism among early childhood professionals. Intercultural competence and sensitivity is generally defined as the skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to engage appropriately and effectively with groups of people from diverse cultures (Cushner, 2007; Cushner and Chang, 2015). Our struggles are grounded in both successes and failures resulting from our long-term engagements in these two countries with US educators comprising pre-service (i.e. those without a university teacher education degree or license) and in-service (i.e. those with a teacher education degree or license) educators enrolled in university-sponsored international programs. Samara, a White female academic from the USA, has spent the past seven years conducting research with US pre-service early childhood teachers at urban preschools located in Kathmandu, Nepal (Madrid, Baldwin, & Belbase, 2016; Madrid Akpovo, 2017; Madrid Akpovo, Moran, & Brookshire, 2018). Lydiah, an academic originally from Kenya who now resides in the USA, has taken both pre-service and in-service teachers to Kenya for the past 14 years (Kambutu & Nganga, 2008; Nganga, 2016; Nganga & Kambutu, 2017). The goal of these experiences was focused on increasing the participants’ cultural awareness and expanding their abilities to interact with diverse groups of young children, families, and educators.

This is not such an easy task for early childhood teacher educators, however, when our Western White female pre-service and in-service teachers have spent years being socialized by Euro-Western theories of child development, learning, and pedagogies of developmentally appropriate practice. Lenz Taguchi (2008: 271), citing Mac Naughton, reminds us: “Noting how deeply developmental stage theory has taken root, Mac Naughton (2005) wrote that it has settled so firmly into the fabric of early childhood studies that its familiarity makes it just seem ‘right’, ‘best’ and ‘ethical.’” From the framework of developmentally appropriate practice, the early childhood professional is child-centered; play is a vehicle for learning; and adults must display care and love for children to be happy and healthy. More recently, being a good professional has also been associated with rich environments and materials that offer “quality” natural spaces for young children (Spencer and Wright, 2014). The idea of developmentally appropriate practice was most explicitly formulated by the US National Association for the Education of Young Children during the 1980s as a means to defend informal play-based programs for young children (Woodhead, 2006). Developmentally appropriate practice has echoed traditional (i.e. Western) child-centered values based on Piagetian theory and emphasizing respect for universal stages of development, natural play, and exploration-based learning supported by trained practitioners. This model was criticized and revised (Bredekamp and Copple, 1997) to include a statement that learning is influenced by multiple social and cultural contexts. Nonetheless, the views of normative Western development are still applied in non-Western contexts where they might or might not be relevant (Woodhead, 2006).

In order to illustrate this point, we note that being and feeling like a good teacher from Euro-Western standards looks nothing like being and feeling like a good teacher in the communities in Kenya and Nepal that we have encountered. In those countries, teachers use direct instruction and children’s interests do not shape the direction of the curriculum. Adults use blunt and assertive talk with children, and the creation of “aesthetically pleasing” or “quality materials for provocations” does not exist in the professional vocabulary. But, let us clarify. It is not that the majority-world teachers we have worked with in Nepal and Kenya do not see themselves as child-centered, caring, or concerned about the rights of the child or quality early childhood environments; rather, it is how these concepts are embedded, lived, appropriated, and enacted in the everyday lives of teachers, children, and families in the local context. The differences between what it means to be a “good” professional in the minority-world and majority-world shock, confuse, and bring up strong negative emotional reactions from our pre-service and in-service teachers when they see, hear, and experience unfamiliar customs, norms, beliefs, and practices during international field experiences (Kambutu & Nganga, 2008; Madrid, Baldwin, & Belbase, 2016; Nganga, 2015).

We cannot assume that change will occur: the problem of the ethnocentric professional and international field experiences

The confusion and frustrations that arise often cause the pre-service and in-service teachers to evaluate majority-world norms, routines, and values negatively—from an ethnocentric perspective and through a privileged lens. These strong emotional reactions also lead them to conclude that these “less advanced, needy, and uneducated” majority-world teachers and children simply need to be taught the “correct” way to be with each other in early care and education spaces. Analyzing data from our two long-term research projects in Nepal and Kenya, we found that most pre-service and in-service teachers positioned the early childhood customs and norms found there as deficient, outdated, and not child-centered or progressive (Madrid Akpovo, Nganga, & Acharya, 2018). Consequently, a privileged position was constructed by assuming that teaching practices and the curricula of the host communities in Nepal and Kenya could be “fixed” not only through monetary resources, but also by adopting Euro-Western policies and pedagogies.

When discussing White privilege, Feagin and O’Brien (2003) suggest that through volunteering in programs that serve the marginalized “Other,” individuals can increase their awareness of privilege, providing that they employ strategies to deconstruct, challenge, and then acknowledge the lived experience of White privilege and its effect on others. They warn, however, that how individuals respond during contact with those who are different from themselves depends on how they exert agency when responding to the privilege that is inherent in their more affluent minority-world position (Lipsitz, 2006; Nenga, 2011). For example, when reflecting on what was learned during an international field experience in Nepal, one female early childhood teacher noted:

I was able to realize how similar children are, even thousands of miles across the world, but I still was able to realize that they need individualized instruction. When I returned from Nepal, I went back to work at the early childhood center and I constantly found myself comparing my experiences in Nepal to my workplace … We have so many resources and so much help available to us here in the United States that I think we oftentimes take for granted.

Here, the teacher notes that she learned how similar children are “across the world,” and how all children “need individualized instruction.” She also highlights how the experience made her compare and contrast the resources available in the USA with those available in Nepal. In doing so, she constructs a binary view about schools in Nepal as “marginalized” or “needy” and the schools in the USA as “privileged” and “resourceful.” Moreover, the notion that children are the same everywhere is grounded in an ethnocentric discourse of minimization, which forefronts similarities and ignores differences among groups of people (Bennett, 1993). A similar binary discourse and privileged position were expressed by teachers from Lydiah’s program in Kenya. One female teacher stated:

I could not believe the level of poverty I was seeing; it made me think of how lucky I was to be an American. Now, when I work with my students in the inner city, I know not to complain. The experience has made me a better educator.

Thus, it is critical for Euro-Western teacher education programs to provide pre-service and in-service teachers with opportunities to expand their global views of the early childhood professional through international field experiences. But how do we do this when the dominant conceptions of the early childhood teacher are constructed in Euro-Western images, ideas, curricula, ideologies, and privilege?

As indicated in the examples above, we cannot assume that positive outcomes will occur due to an international field experience (Vande Berg et al., 2012). Careful and deliberate planning, documentation of student learning, and exposure to previous coursework that prepares pre-service and in-service teachers to work with diverse learners should be provided before, during, and after these experiences. Contextually appropriate practice (Li and Chen, 2016), as well as the notion that teaching is a cultural activity, should be ongoing aspects of the reflective process, as pre-service and in-service teachers revisit and uncover their cultural assumptions. This revisiting and uncovering of cultural assumptions can lead to increased understandings about ethnocentrisms regarding quality education in various cultural contexts (Madrid Akpovo, 2017; Kroll and Meier, 2015; Tobin, 2005; Tobin et al., 1989, 2009).

Gollnick and Chinn (2013: 6) define ethnocentrism as “the inability to view other cultures as equal viable alternatives for organizing reality.” This is where the problem of international field experiences resides when minority-world teachers visit majority-world classrooms. Although they found their experiences “interesting” and they “learn a lot,” our teachers did not leave with a belief that the Nepali or Kenyan ways of teaching are equitable and viable alternatives for organizing their classroom life or pedagogy. The feeling of superiority and Euro-Western privilege is problematic when exploring why many early childhood pre-service and in-service teachers decide to engage in international field experiences. A related issue is why college instructors decide to lead and construct these programs. Is participating in an international field experience a form of voyeurism into the lives of those considered marginalized? Do teacher educators implicitly support this ethnocentrism and voyeurism by romanticizing the notion of the marginalized “Other” through service learning? Or are these ventures “voluntourism,” which positions the affluent and “progressive” Euro-Westerner as the “helper” and “savior” in majority-world classrooms? While early childhood studies of international student teaching have shown that personal growth and individual transformation (Bonnett, 2015) are a potential outcome, are personal growth and individual transformation a justifiable outcome or just another White Euro-Western luxury at the expense of our majority-world communities?

Barriers and solutions: moving toward possibilities

There is not a specific formula to develop interculturally competent early childhood teachers through international field experiences. Developing intercultural understandings of teaching and learning is a process, not a product with a checklist or recipe. Research has shown that developing intercultural competence is a layered, complex, and multifaceted way of being, knowing, and feeling with others (Cushner, 2007; Cushner and Chang, 2015). Successful programs use long-term engagement, critical reflection, and cultural mentors. For example, in one program within the USA, participants must agree to a two-year commitment, which begins with a preparatory phase that spans two to three semesters and includes monthly classes, readings, and workshops, and culminates in a full semester of an international student teaching experience (West, 2013). In addition, before going abroad, the program requires pre-service teachers to complete 10 weeks of student teaching in a familiar context.

Along with extending the length and depth of programs, various researchers have found the following to aid in building intercultural knowledge and relationships:

Establishing long-term connections with local overseas partners. Our research with minority-world educators in Nepal and Kenya confirmed that multiple and frequent interactions with faculty, peers, and cultural mentors seem to have a positive effect on students’ ability to develop ethnorelative reflection (Madrid Akpovo, Nganga, & Acharya, 2018; West, 2013).

Using in-depth pre-departure orientations guided by faculty or coordinators who are knowledgeable about the theories and practices that lead to increased intercultural competence (Kambutu & Nganga, 2008; Vande Berg et al., 2012).

The integration of the curriculum within college courses that have topics about global-mindedness, interculturality, and global competence (Dervin, 2016; Merryfield, 2000; West, 2013, Nganga 2013; Nganga, 2015).

The points noted above should be situated within guided participation with more experienced others, as well as coursework and content that address the racial, cultural, global, and political concerns about the child, teacher, and family within cultural and historical contexts before, during, and after the field experience.

The crux of the argument posed in this colloquium is that those who are conducting and participating in international field experiences have minimized the co-constructed, nuanced, and political nature of social interactions, in particular among people who hold distinctly different world views (Dervin, 2016). In a comprehensive review of research on international field experiences in teacher education, Smolcic and Katunich (2017: 55) warn that “the most problematic theoretical stance found in the body of literature that we looked at is the absence of any clearly explicated theoretical framework guiding the study design or analysis.” When designing and implementing an international field experience without a theoretical framework or based on Euro-Western theories of individual growth and development, power relationships, hegemony, inequalities, privilege, and politics are ignored, and the co-constructed nature of human interaction is left unnoticed or unexamined (Shi-Xu, 2001). Field experiences cannot be stand-alone occasions for intercultural learning unless we find ways to revisit them again and again through our research as we generate new questions and develop some new lenses for looking at our own professional practices, assumptions, and biases. Given this, solutions should be grounded in examining what types of lenses are being used to guide the international field experience, as well as employing new lenses of “interculturality,” which could lead to practices and possibilities that we have not imagined in our limited past conceptions and models of intercultural competence (Dervin, 2016).

We make a call for minority-world early childhood teachers and teacher educators to reconsider, deconstruct, and re-examine themselves and their pre-service and in-service students’ rationale for engaging in international field experiences. Why are we engaging in these international field experiences? For whom are these experiences? Who benefit(s)? What theory of intercultural learning and development is used to guide the experience? These experiences are supposed to increase awareness about cultural diversity and develop intercultural competence. All too often, however, they become surface-level attempts to understand the “Other” with little reflection on the deeper societal structures that construct race, privilege, knowledge, and power.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Samara Madrid Akpovo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Her research has focused on the emotional lives of adults and children in early childhood classrooms using collaborative ethnographic methods along with feminist and post-structural frameworks. A central theme in her research has been to challenge and deconstruct normative ways of being, feeling, and knowing with young children and teachers in diverse social and cultural contexts. Her research also examines early childhood pre-service teachers’ development of cross-cultural and intercultural understandings during international field experiences.

Lydiah Nganga is Associate Professor in the School of Teacher Education, University of Wyoming. Her research focuses on global/international education, multicultural education, contextually appropriate practice, curriculum studies, antibias education and social justice in teacher education and early childhood programs. Contact her at Lnganga@uwyo.edu.

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