showing 5 related works from this author
Hierarchies of knowledge, incommensurabilities and silences in South African ECD policy: Whose knowledge counts?
2017
AbstractPolicy 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, I explore 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. I throw 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…
Voices heard and lessons learnt : Exploring multiple knowledges and local participation in a community-based integrated early childhood development p…
2019
Abstract 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) communitybased Integrated Approach to Early Childhood Development (ECD) project implemented in the rural Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It explores the critical relationship established between a range 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 initiati…
Data practices and inequality in South African early childhood development policy: Technocratic management versus social transformation
2019
Background: In 1994, the African National Congress identified early childhood development as a potential strategy to redress the inequalities of apartheid, however, two and a half decades later, poverty still persists, and South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Aim: This article explores how policy texts based on and with the use of certain data practices establish ‘truths’ about childhoods and society, construct families and communities, and determine forms of provision to address inequality. Setting: In 2015, the South African government published the National Integrated Early Childhood Policy (NIECDP) to continue to address poverty and inequality. Its implementat…
Revealing colonial power relations in early childhood policy making: An autoethnographic story on selective evidence
2021
The COVID-19 pandemic exposes uncertainty, instability and glaring inequality that requires urgent global policy decisions. Historically, bureaucrats regard uncertainty as the enemy and look for tested solutions (Stevens, 2011). In contrast, Fielding & Moss (2010) acknowledge an uncertain future and encourage shifting policy making towards the search for possibilities instead of replicating singular solutions. Escobar (2020) advocates for pluriversal politics, with many possibilities created through collective decision-making by autonomous interlinked networks. In this paper, I combine autoethnography with policy analysis drawing on my own experience in South African early childhood pol…
Corrigendum: Data practices and inequality in South African early childhood development policy: Technocratic management versus social transformation
2019
No abstract available.