Contextualising early childhood education and care in between global intentions and Sumud : Pedagogical pathways in kindergartens in Gaza and al Khalil

Abstract

The tensions between global metrics like the Human Development Index and local pedagogical approaches situate the study reported on in this article, introducing the concept of Sumud (“resilience”) as a pivot point. The study addresses the importance of having critical research for building capacity and competence for early childhood education and care in Palestine, which got its first national strategy and framework in 2017. Data from workshops with stakeholders, field visits and policy documents reveals that systemic challenges such as limited resources, untrained staff and the impact of external donor-driven policies inhibit practices in early childhood education and care in Palestine. The study highlights Sumud as a potential foundation for a locally grounded pedagogy that emphasises resilience, community and collective resistance. As a critical concept, it argues that addressing early childhood education through this lens may better align with the lived realities of Palestinian children and their need for justice, hope and steadfastness amidst adversity. This perspective challenges universal educational frameworks, advocating for critical, contextualised approaches to early childhood education and care.

Keywords

critical pedagogy early childhood education and care Human Development Index Palestine resilience

Introduction

Social and material relations are the crucial infrastructure for living safe and living well. Under certain conditions, continuing to exist, to move and to breathe is a form of resistance that grows from vulnerability and lack of safeguarding infrastructure (Butler, 2016). Where and how early childhood education and care (ECEC) is situated matters. In Palestine, the continuous occupation and sieges have been entangling every Palestinian child's life for generations (Habashi, 2011, 2013, 2015). Together with the ongoing genocide, it makes the context of the early childhood field even more complex (Amnesty International, 2024; Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, 2024; United Nations Office, 2024a, 2024c; United Nations Relief and Works Agency, 2024). For Palestinians, the concept of Sumud is a conceptualisation of how to survive and how to live under these conditions (Fassetta et al., 2020), and the ongoing genocide has renewed and strengthened its relevance.

Against this backdrop, this study addresses the tensions between global intentions, often highlighted as human capital, based on Human Development Index (HDI) measurements and reflected in ECEC policy documents, and situated approaches based on local prerequisites. The purpose is to introduce the concept of Sumud as a local approach to pedagogy (Van Teeffelen, 2008) and as a critical perspective on the HDI and indices. This might put the tensions between global intentions and local realities in motion, and create debate that is highly relevant to any local context worldwide.

This study is based on meetings and workshops with stakeholders in the early childhood education sector in Gaza and al Khalil (Hebron) during 2020–2021, as well as visits to kindergartens in the West Bank and Gaza from 2019 to 2023. The stakeholders involved were kindergarten teachers, supervisors, university lecturers and students in ECEC. Our study addresses the importance of critical research to build capacity and competence in ECEC in Palestine, which formulated its first national strategy and framework in 2017. The strategy underlines many of the current challenges in the early childhood sector. It focuses on fostering capable and resilient children in Palestine (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a). Investment in early childhood development is seen as an example of the promotion of human capital, which in turn is thought to increase productive capacity and as a preventive measure, reducing public expenditure on health care, welfare and criminal care (Fernandes, 2024; Heckman and Mosso, 2014). The surplus of human capital coming from a ‘positive start’ is seen as a long-term investment for the future, including a new generation who can take part in liberating Palestine (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a; Nikaein Towfighian, 2019). According to Moss (2013), it is a critical issue when ECEC is considered an investment, as it prohibits the complex understanding of an education that enhances children's well-being.

Educational policy in Palestine, including ECEC, is affected by donor expectations and neo-liberal thinking, with a focus on skills, measures and economic returns. This is clearly seen in the document describing the goals and financing from the World Bank on improving childhood development in the West Bank and Gaza (Al Ramahi and Davies, 2002; Shinn, 2012). Alongside this, the national policy documents highlight the value of making children more resilient (having Sumud), to challenge the status quo in the political and social situation of occupation in Palestine (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a, 2017b; Ministry of Education and Higher Education et al., 2017). By studying stakeholders’ insights and the intentions stated in the policy documents, this article argues that there is potential in turning to local concepts instead of automatically accepting global measurements like the HDI as quality indicators for human capital. The concept of Sumud might be the kind of ‘capital’ that it is necessary for humans to possess while living in Palestine. The study also highlights how the translation of Sumud in both national policy documents and other relevant international documents should be seen as being problematic.

The context of childhood in Palestine

The occupation, the siege and the genocide have had a significant impact on the ECEC sector in Palestine. In the West Bank, many children experience harassment from settlers and violence from the Israeli military. Educational institutions have been under attack in both Gaza and the West Bank from the kindergarten level through to higher education (Global Coalition, 2022). In Gaza, children's everyday life has been severely affected by a strict blockade and several wars since 2007 (Mason, 2022). According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 1.9 million out of the 2.3 million inhabitants became internally displaced during the 2023–2025 war in Gaza, and 50% of them were children. It also reports that 88% of the schools were destroyed or damaged. In Gaza, by December 2024, more than 96% of children aged from 6 to 23 months faced severe food poverty. It is estimated that more than 60,000 children need acute malnutrition treatment (United Nations Office, 2024c). Also, children in al Khalil are experiencing the consequences of the war through limitations on their freedom of movement and a general higher military tension in their everyday lives (Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster, 2024; Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2024).

By mid 2023, there were 2,393,288 children under 18 years of age, representing 44% of the total population. In Gaza, they represented 47% and, in the West Bank, 41% of the population. Fourteen percent (750,000) of the total population was in the zero-to-five age range (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2023). Kindergarten in Palestine is defined as an educational institution for children between four and six years of age, and they attend classes called KG1 and KG2 (Ministry of Education and Higher Education et al., 2017). The number of children attending kindergarten in Palestine was 169,671 in 2022. Of these, 101,279 were in the West Bank and 68,392 in Gaza. There are 2198 kindergartens, with 1578 in the West Bank and 620 in Gaza, which means that the number of kindergartens and children enrolled shows a higher density of children in each kindergarten in Gaza than in the West Bank (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2023). The attendance rate for enrolment in kindergarten in the State of Palestine is 12% for three-year-olds and 61% for four-year-olds (UNICEF, 2022). Since October 2023, all children in Gaza have been deprived of their right of education as a consequence of the Israeli aggression (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2024).

The context of ECEC in Palestine

A national curriculum and textbooks were completed in 2006 for primary education students. This occurred 11 years after the establishment of the Palestinian Authorities (Alayan, 2012; Barakat, 2007). Before this, education had been under Israeli military rule since 1967. The curriculum in Gaza was based on the Egyptian curriculum and the curriculum in the West Bank on the Jordanian one (Barakat, 2007). There was an effort by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (2017a) to fulfil the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 4.2 by implementing Class 0 (the current KG2) in public schools to offer pre-primary education to all five-year-olds. Goal 4.2 is as follows: ‘By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a: 20).

In 2017, three important documents for ECEC were published by the Palestinian Authorities: the ‘Education Sector Strategic Plan 2017–2022’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a); the ‘National Strategy for Early Childhood Development and Intervention 2017–2022’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education et al., 2017), funded by UNICEF; and the Kindergarten Teacher's Manual (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017b), funded by UNICEF, Save the Children and American Near East Refugee Aid. The ‘National Strategy for Early Childhood Development and Intervention’ was written with several stakeholders in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from universities and national and international non-governmental organisations, as well as kindergarten supervisors. These documents rely on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989) and emphasise the importance of kindergarten attendance as preparation for school.

The situation for children in Palestine has been indefensible since 1948, but, since 7 October 2023, it has deteriorated in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip primarily due to the ongoing occupation, siege and genocide. The consequences for children are internal displacement; loss of family members; a lack of food, health care and education; the destruction of their neighbourhoods (UNICEF, 2024); cultural erasure (Taha, 2024); and the devastation of the environmental ecosystems of the land itself (ecocide; Forensic Architecture, 2024). During a visit to a school in al Khalil in February 2020, the headmaster said: ‘We have a political situation, not a pedagogical situation’ – and the field of early childhood research in Palestine should be understood within these conditions.

Childhood and human capital

Palestine’s ‘National Strategy for Early Childhood Development and Intervention’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education et al., 2017) sees kindergartens as important for school preparation and as a way to promote human capital reserve and participate in national liberation. It underlines the importance of staff working in kindergartens to apply holistic child developmental approaches and inclusive education principles, and help children to develop their explorative, analytical and critical thinking skills. Policymakers argue for investment in ECEC as a contributing factor in the development and further advancement of society (Duraiappah et al., 2022; Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a; Word Bank Education, 2019).

Since 1990, the United Nations Development Programme has been publishing reports on human development, measured by the HDI and indices. The reports present a long-term HDI and focus on contemporary issues in a global context. The underlying principle is for national development to be measured by economic improvements in health and education, but it simplifies and captures only parts of what human development entails. The latest report states that the trend in the general index has been falling since 2019, including the index for Palestine. The gridlocked situation in the global community, with a polarisation between and within countries, makes international cooperation challenging (United Nations Development Programme, 2024). A UNICEF report on the child-related Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development states:

the world is not becoming a safer place for children. Today, children are among those most affected by numerous ongoing and compounding crises – including an economic downturn, climate change and environmental degradation, public health emergencies and heightened levels of war and conflict – which often exacerbate one another. (UNICEF, 2023: 8)

The HDI will not capture the way these conditions and challenges affect children's everyday life in Palestine in sufficiently accurate ways.

Sumud, steadfastness and ‘living well’ in Palestinian education

We introduce the concept of Sumud to explore the possibility that a local concept might have the potential to impact the lives of young children. Sumud gives the study an entrance that is ethical, epistemological and ontological in the Palestinian context. In Meari's (2014) words, Sumud fills the air that Palestinians inhale. Sumud is often translated as a form of steadfastness, describing the sustaining of hope for Palestinian resistance and a way of holding onto its own narratives, despite the occupation. It focuses on resilience during difficult times rather than disadvantages (Fassetta et al., 2020). Sumud, as a philosophy, calls for collectiveness as being something Palestinians live with, like an everyday practice (Meari, 2014). Living with Sumud also entails joy as part of living with hope (Rijke and Van Teeffelen, 2014). Sumud was on the agenda at the United Nations Development Programme's (2022) conference ‘From Sumud to transformative resilience’. The conference discussed resilience as vital in situations of vulnerability and referred to Sumud as active and transformative, including the prospect for change.

Elhendi and Buzzanell (2024) pinpoint the lack of demands for justice and collective understanding. However, Sumud understood in a local context does include collective resistance to living with injustice and unbearable living conditions (Giacaman, 2020), and this is what we put forth in our thinking with Sumud as a collective pathway to more justice.

Previous research

There are few academic studies in English in the field of early childhood in Palestine. Previous research has been on early childhood teacher education (Isauro et al., 2018; Khales, 2015). Other articles are concerned with the practice of writing reflection notes in a kindergarten teacher's practicum (Khales, 2016), kindergarten teachers’ practices and beliefs relating to assessment (Haroun and Khales, 2019), teaching mathematics through games (Al Khales et al., 2024) and kindergarten children's experience of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic (Khales, 2022). Recent research has focused on psychosocial support in kindergartens (El-Khodary et al., 2021) and leadership in kindergartens (Adwan et al., 2023; Hognestad et al., 2024; Sayma et al., 2022). The relatively new framework plan and the government’s willingness to learn more about the field makes this article relevant, even though it only scratches the surface of the research needed to constitute a community and knowledge-based pedagogy for future purposes.

The study

Conceptually, this study is situated within a critical pedagogical perspective (Darder et al., 2016) particularly related to the Palestinian setting (Fasheh, 2019 in Sukarieh, 2019: 197-198; Lughod, 1973; Silwadi and Mayo, 2014). The Palestinian concept of Sumud is central and provides access to local perspectives and intentions for the early childhood field. To identify how Sumud appears in documents, we use summative content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005).

We acknowledge the risks of misunderstandings, simplifying, and telling stories that we cannot fully know and may not be ours to tell. Still, our aim is to emphasise some possible entrances into discussions that might bring value to a research field that is in its infancy in Palestine.

Ethical approval

This study follows the ethical research guidelines in Norway (Norwegian National Research Ethics Committee, 2022) and at the collaborative universities in Palestine (Deanship of Academic Research, n.d.; Research Ethics Committee, Al Quds University, 2017). None of the data in this study includes personal data. The workshop participants and the staff in the kindergartens were given oral information about the research purposes. The pictures of the handwritten notes were collected from the participants, who gave their oral consent to use them as data in this study. The notes are not a documentation of specific participants’ thoughts or meanings, but were taken on behalf of the group working together at the workshop.

It is crucial to highlight that what we see as universal research ethics is largely produced and conducted in the Global North. Israel (2018) claims that it follows the broader international flow of capital, knowledge and ideology. He criticises it for being based on universal claims about ethics, and excluding other contexts and experiences. According to Kassis et al. (2022), there are no locally developed guidelines for research ethics in the Arab world. Often, research ethics is based on the western modernist conception and not on the reality of the Arab world. Kassis et al. (2022) argue for nurturing an Arab system instead of embracing and modifying western universal standards that arose in societies and institutions with different value systems than those that are common in the Arab world. These standards do not automatically consider the specific cultural context in which the research takes place. There are different values and cultural perspectives on and in everyday life that might create different expectations from and for researchers in, for instance, Gaza and Norway. It is a critical issue that research in Middle Eastern and North African countries is automatically implementing guidelines made for countries in Europe and North America, taking for granted that the conditions for research will be the same. This might be seen as an ongoing colonisation or way of elevating some standards as the ‘right’ standards for all.

Data

The data for this study was collected over four years. It consists of summaries, notes and summaries and notes from workshops in al Khalil and Gaza, Palestine, in 2020, and fieldnotes from encounters with teachers, supervisors and managers from early childhood centres from 2019 to 2023. The summative content analysis draws on policy documents for the period 2017–2022.

Workshops

To start the process of establishing a joint Master’s programme for teachers who work in the field of ECEC (children aged 4 to 10), the collaborative universities in the NORPART project invited teachers, supervisors, headteachers, owners of kindergartens and other stakeholders to take part in workshops.¹ These workshops were organised by the staff at the University of Hebron and Islamic University of Gaza.

Fieldnotes from encounters with kindergartens and people in the field

During the four years of the NORPART project, there were organised visits to early childhood centres in al Khalil (2020), Gaza (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), Bethlehem (2019) and Ramallah (2019). These experiences have been collected as various notations. Parts of this material have proven to be valuable as fillers in this study, to make the insight more nuanced and strengthen the data from the workshops.

Palestinian early childhood education policy documents

We have examined how Sumud appears in the following early childhood education policy documents: the ‘Education Sector Strategic Plan 2017–2022’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a), the ‘National Strategy for Early Childhood Development and Intervention 2017–2022’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education et al., 2017) and the Kindergarten Teacher's Manual (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017b).

Insights from Gaza and al Khalil

During the workshop sessions, there were clearly common perceptions on some issues, which are summarised in what follows. Conversations with people from the kindergarten field strengthen these perceptions and will be presented in the following section.

Competence and knowledge in early childhood pedagogy and education

One of the main challenges the participants in the workshops highlighted is the lack of educated staff in kindergartens and the insufficient number of kindergarten teachers with qualifications at the Bachelor’s level and additional specialisations at all academic levels. They mentioned the need for qualified supervisors and managers with relevant education, psychologists or people to provide children with psychological support, and, more generally, the scarcity of specialists in the early childhood field (Notes from workshop at Hebron University, 04.02.2020 and Islamic University of Gaza 06.02.2020).

Qualifications: One of the challenges pointed out by one of the supervisors is that the teachers at the university are not specialised in ECEC. The supervisor says they talk like schoolteachers and schedule like school classes, and contribute to the continuation of teacher-led practice in kindergarten. (Skeie and Nicolaysen's notes, visit to a kindergarten in Gaza, 6 February 2020)

Observation in classroom: Working with letters, drawing the letter Dha in Arabic, making envelopes to put it in, working in groups around tables, teacher moving from table to table. Comment from the supervisor: ‘The teacher is mainly using classical/traditional methods, teacher-centred. Teachers talk, talk, talk. The children don’t learn, but the teacher thinks they are teaching’. (Skeie and Nicolaysen's notes, visit to a kindergarten in Gaza, 6 February 2020)

The staff underline the importance of learning skills. They argue with exams that the children will do when they are 12 years old. When we ask about time for the children to play together, they tell us that the children play in the breaks. When we are done with the visit, the educator who has been showing us the early childhood centre starts to explain more about the play time. It seems like she has noticed that we are interested in other things than what she has shown us and would like to ‘fix’ the impression. (Nicolaysen's visit to a kindergarten in al Khalil, 3 February 2020)

The challenging conditions of being a teacher

The workshop participants highlighted the number of children in each group as a challenge for activities, arguing that it is difficult when activities are suitable for 10 children, not 35. The aspect of time was seen as an issue – for instance, the bigger the group, the less time there is for each child. They asked for assistant teachers in the classroom. One of the consequences of the financial constraints is the lack of a suitable educational environment, which affects teachers’ creativity. They found the expectation to teach writing and reading skills in Arabic and English, as well as mathematical skills, problematic, and they attributed this partly to pressure from families and partly to expected preparation for school. Some private kindergartens practise examinations. The consequences, as the participants saw it, are that the pressure on skills-building and examinations in the private sector creates a highly different base for the children when they start first grade. They also asked for a closer connection between kindergarten and first grade at school, and directed this to cooperation between teachers in kindergartens and schools (Notes from workshop at Hebron University, 04.02.2020 and Islamic University of Gaza 06.02.2020).

Observation in classroom: One of the teachers in KG1 invited me into her classroom. She showed me play-dough that she had made herself. She gave it to me to feel it, and it was really flexible and soft. I tried to ask the children what I could make with the play-dough. I didn’t get any response, so I tried to make a snake. Not so much reaction. Maybe they did not understand or were not used to interacting in that way. Also, I was using the material in a different way than what they are used to in the classroom. Afterwards, the educator took the play-dough back and she gave children of groups of two and three a small piece of play-dough, and asked them to form a letter. Most probably the letter they are working with that day. Earlier, the kindergarten manager told me that they concentrate on one letter for one or two weeks. They use different ways of learning, like the play-dough or educator-led theatre. (Skeie's, visit to a kindergarten in Gaza, 23 January 2022)

The philosophy of education: curriculum, didactics and care

The idea of having a common understanding of the curriculum in early childhood pedagogy and education seems to be clear, but when it comes to the statements from the participants, it seems to be less consistent than the aforementioned areas. One of the points in the summary from the workshop in Gaza was that there is no unified curriculum for kindergartens in the Gaza Strip. The participants also mentioned ‘the loss of the educational message’. We can see this from one of the groups in al Khalil as well, when they said that there is no clear idea on what to do in ECEC, no common strategy, no common philosophy, no understanding of development in learning and no common curriculum in line with the development of the child. At the same time, some of the participants stated that there is already a curriculum with a philosophy and goals for pedagogical work. They called for a mutual educational philosophy between the practical field and universities, with a closer connection between what is taught and what is practised. They underlined that the curriculum is not only about skills-based learning. It has to include other aspects, such as understanding the personalities of children and their body language, and a stronger focus on play (Notes from workshop at Hebron University, 04.02.2020 and Islamic University of Gaza 06.02.2020).

They work on a specific topic (weather), and all the children colour a pre-drawn umbrella, write ‘umbrella’ and make the umbrella in different ways.

Thursday thematic day, they do not have ordinary classroom activities, but they worked with different themes across the classes and did different activities outdoors. The last Thursday they worked with the theme of fruits, lemon. Some of the children were drawing, others were cooking with lemons.

They used a curriculum from Cambridge in English, maths and science to prepare the children for the Cambridge exams. And they were working on adding more subjects that will follow the Cambridge curriculum. (Skeie and Nicolaysen's notes, visit to a kindergarten in al Khalil, 3 February 2020)

Reading the summaries from the workshops also highlights another aspect, which is viewed as a kind of answer to the question of how to accomplish what they see as solutions to the challenges and conditions they meet in their everyday practice. All the groups described some qualifications needed beyond formal academic qualifications. They talked about understanding children’s personalities and knowing how to deal with them. They told stories of children without mothers and discussed how to approach them on Mother's Day. They talked about court cases where divorced parents were not allowed to pick up their children from kindergarten; about children sharing too much about their private lives and whether to stop them from talking or to do something about what they were sharing; about the embarrassment of knowing and the challenge of keeping what the child has said a secret; about witnessing abuse and how to deal with traumatised children and the problem of aggression and violence in some groups. A formulation by one of the groups in al Khalil might serve as a local statement on the ambitions in the field: it is important to be a caregiver who has an eagerness to help and embrace emotional connectedness to children as a teacher (Notes from workshop at Hebron University, 04.02.2020).

Sumud in ECEC policy documents

The concept of Sumud is present in the preface of the ‘Education Sector Strategic Plan 2017–2022’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a: 5) and is used 12 times in the Arabic version. It is translated as ‘resilient’ or ‘resilience’ in the English version; ‘resilient’ is found nine times and ‘resilience’ six. The first mention is related to Palestinian society as a whole and the value of a high-quality education. The aim is to build a generation with skills, knowledge and good ethics that is resilient and capable of dealing with challenges in life, contributing to research and scientific inventions, and solving problems (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017a). On the other occasions when the concept is used, the document refers to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on a broad level, such as climate changes, agriculture and financial crisis. In the ‘National Strategy for Early Childhood Development and Intervention 2017–2022’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education et al., 2017: 11), Sumud is connected to neuroscience and how environmental factors and toxic stress can have a severe effect on children's development, introducing ‘new ways to protect vulnerable children and help them build resilience so they can survive, grow and reach their full potential’. Another relevant publication by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education is the Kindergarten Teacher’s Manual, where Sumud is mentioned once, also in the preface: ‘A positive upbringing will grant our children the values of strength, stability, generosity, and tolerance and at the same time secure development, growth, and advancement for the community’ (Ministry of Education and Higher Education, 2017b: 6). Here, ‘stability’ is the term used for Sumud. The translations of Sumud into ‘resilient’/‘resilience’ and ‘stability’ in the English versions of the policy documents simplifies the rather complex connotations in Arabic. Also, the World Bank brings the concept of resilience into its developmental plan for the West Bank and Gaza, but only related to their health programme for children and climate change (World Bank Education, 2019). The domination of the English language is a concern for local scholars, as Fasheh (2019) in Sukharieh (2019) argues with regard to the use of Arabic: ‘Choosing words from Arabic demonstrates the richness that exists in every culture and, simultaneously, shows the limitation of cultures. No culture can encompass the totality of experience or have universal claims about life’ (in Sukarieh, 2019: 193). He reminds us of the risk of losing the richness of meaning when translating local concepts, arguing that Arabic concepts give other entrances than the western idea of education (Fasheh, 2019, in Sukarieh, 2019: 193).

Sumud as an ambition for the early childhood field

This article does not claim to present findings or results, but aims to provoke a critical discussion inspired by the encounters between universities and the kindergarten field at the aforementioned workshops and the international conference Early Childhood in a Changing World: Visions and Experiences, held in Gaza and al Khalil and organised by the NORPART project in May 2023.² The wish and interest to seek more knowledge about the expanding field of ECEC in Palestine has been a driving force behind this study. At the current time, educational practices seem to be based on traditional teaching approaches that have little connection with the lives of young children in Palestine.

Donors like the World Bank tend to emphasise the economic factors of the HDI rather than the social, cultural and other aspects (Penn, 2011) of education. Gaza and al Khalil are examples of how a deadlocked geopolitical situation creates challenging childhood conditions. The HDI measures are thus general perceptions based on international standards that do not necessarily reflect the conditions in a country. Moss (2013) criticises policies based on economic revenues for investing in ECEC as reductionistic. As we see it, there is a tension between the global indexes and the local pedagogical approaches. Bringing the concept of Sumud in dialogue with the HDI might create a critical pathway to acknowledging that local ways of understanding what is crucial for children already exist. Following Moss (2014), there is no easy way to remove these kinds of tensions; it is more about acknowledging that they exist and then working with them, making them the subject of research.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a right for every child (United Nations General Assembly, 1989), and ECEC is supposed to acknowledge and take care of the distinctiveness of childhood where it is lived, in order to ensure that the Convention is experienced by each child in their everyday life. Habashi (2015) argues that there is a potential conflict between the Palestinian national law and the implementation of the Convention, which in the Palestinian context in some ways comes into conflict with traditional ways of fostering children, where the family has a central position. When ECEC is based on the Convention, there will have to be negotiations on how this will influence the pedagogical work in kindergartens, especially because the United Nations’ conventions are universal but still not descriptive in terms of how to practise them. The understanding of the Convention might vary in different parts of the world due to the cultural, political and religious grounds for taking care of children in the private and public sphere. When the World Bank and United Nations call for universal measurements for living well, they also risk reducing the value of local knowledge and prerequisites, making the early childhood field doubt its judgements on what it sees as crucial for growing up under the specific conditions in Gaza, al Khalil or any other place in the world. This is a discussion that has to be raised, especially, as Moss (2014) points out, with the World Bank using information from studies in the USA as if it were universal and applied to other contexts, instead of using local knowledge. Despite raising the importance of diversity in ways of life, valuing and practising this is still not the norm (Moss, 2010). Moss (2014) calls for critical thinking in ECEC not as something automatically good, but as something that needs to be continuously challenged and questioned to make conscious decisions.

One of the Palestinian voices that is critical towards the idea of standardised and universal thinking, curricula and tools for education is Munir Fasheh. In a forum for Arabic teachers, he states:

What I am advocating … is ending the hegemony of one form of teaching and learning, and allowing various ways to grow and flourish. This is a prerequisite for a real and sincere movement towards education for all in the sense of providing spaces, facilities, and means where everyone can learn. (Fasheh, 2009)

This is also supported by UNESCO (2019). Further, he argues that ‘[u]niversalism and fragmentation go hand in hand’ and that ‘[t]he belief in a single undifferentiated universal path for progress is in contradiction with pluralism. … No culture is universal; and cultures cannot be fully understood via words and concepts’ (Fasheh, 2019 in Sukarieh, 2019: 193). Seen like this, the HDI measurements will be inadequate in any local context.

As shown, the policy documents, when written in Arabic, use the concept of Sumud, which can be seen as emphasising local ways of living as a basis for educational philosophy and policy. But we see little of this in practice. Rijke and Van Teeffelen (2014) argue that the Palestinian Authorities have a two-sided approach that, on the one hand, is a way of strengthening the national institutions and, on the other, embraces the neo-liberal economy, which undermines Sumud as the art of living. Moss (2014) criticises neo-liberal thinking for trusting the market and investments in early intervention to guarantee quality and high returns in ECEC. He argues that there are other stories to be told about how to fulfil the potential of a nation's citizens. Against this backdrop, we suggest the philosophy of Sumud as an alternative story, which can potentially guide pedagogical practice in a community with a need for steadfastness, resilience, hope and the demand for justice.

In our data, we see the ambivalence between wanting the best for children, as the universal standards proclaim, and the local knowledge of what it is like to live under occupation and siege – the reality of bringing up and nurturing children under conditions that, for most teachers in the world, are unknown and maybe even unimaginable. The United Nations Development Programme (2024) acknowledges the lack of agency-centred aspects in the HDI and calls for a more diverse, emancipatory approach in thinking about human development, grounded in human rights and sustainability. By bringing the concept of Sumud to the table, we argue that there might be a Sumud pedagogy to develop in the Palestinian field of ECEC, which might even be an essential human ‘capital’ not only for the children of today, but also for generations to come. We are aware of the critical issue that might be awakened by addressing Sumud as necessary in children's lives. It should not be so. Sumud cannot be reduced to learning outcomes. Our approach to Sumud is not as ‘resilience’ in English, as ‘the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2023). Childhood under occupation, siege and genocide is not something children should have to endure, even if it may have become the normal situation for them.

Discussing Palestinian ECEC policy and pedagogy in the wake of the ongoing genocide, settler violence and absence of the Convention on the Rights of the Child might seem inappropriate or a provocation. The international community’s agreement held by the United Nations and its justice system is at stake as long as it is incapable of withholding the outspoken standards for children's well-being across the world. Destruction, as proven in Gaza, will paradoxically lead to even more donor investments in ECEC because of the increased need for external financing to be able to rebuild what has been erased (World Bank et al., 2024). As seen from the data from the workshops and the notes, the stakeholders are concerned about bringing in foreign programmes and pressure on the field to meet international standards, which marks a contradiction between the continuous difficulties due to the occupation, siege and the genocide, with the prolonging of external funding, and the stakeholders’ pedagogical ambitions. Sumud pedagogy, according to Van Teeffelen (2008), emphasises the democratic and participative character of, and openness to, many different life stories, which we also find in Fasheh's (2019 in Sukarieh, 2019: 192) perspective on education, which is closer to plural, collective learning based on ‘life-knowledge’ with the aim of living well, rather than institutional teaching based on ‘technical knowledge’ with the aim of economic development. New social and material infrastructures (Butler, 2016) need to be rebuilt in ways that are not maintaining vulnerability as the ground for necessary resistance and resilience, but instead creating hope for better futures.

Footnotes

Author note

This article is dedicated to our dear colleague and co-author Ibrahim, who was killed in Gaza 23rd of October 2023.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the project ‘Developing the Teacher Education in Pedagogy for Early Childhood Education and Early Elementary School in Palestine and Norway’ (grant number NORPART-2018/10166).

ORCID iDs

Marie Skeie

Mona Nicolaysen

Manal Abu Minshar

Notes

Author biographies

Marie Skeie is a researcher, artist and curator. Her research interest is in collective textile practices and land crafting as artistic and pedagogical practices in common situations.

Mona Nicolaysen is a researcher with long experience from the practice field of ECEC. Her research interests are relational materiality in pedagogy and research, craft-based methodology and the children's right to aesthetic utterances.

Manal Abu Minshar is a researcher and the head of the Department of Education at Hebron University since 2016. Her research interests lie in the area of teaching methods and teachers' training.

Ibrahim Hamed Hussein al-Astal (20 January 1961 – 23 October 2023) was a Palestinian educational theorist and researcher. He worked as a dean and professor at Islamic University of Gaza, Faculty of Education.

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