Table Of ContentPALGRAVE STUDIES ON CHILDREN AND DEVELOPMENT
Early Childhood and
Development Work
Theories, Policies, and Practices
Edited by
Anne-Trine Kjørholt, Helen Penn
Palgrave Studies on Children and Development
Series Editors
Michael Bourdillon
African Studies Centre Leiden
University of Zimbabwe
Harare, Zimbabwe
Jo Boyden
Department of International Development
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK
Roy Huijsmans
Institute of Social Studies
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Den Haag, The Netherlands
Nicola Ansell
Social and Political Sciences
Brunel University London
Uxbridge, UK
The series focuses on the interface between childhood studies and
international development. Children and young people often feature as
targets of development or are mobilized as representing the future in
debates on broader development problems such as climate change.
Increased attention to children in international development policy and
practice is also fuelled by the near universally ratified United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the recently adopted
Sustainable Development Goals.
Nonetheless, relatively little has been written on how the experience of
childhood and youth is shaped by development as well as how young
people as social actors negotiate, appropriate or even resist development
discourses and practices. Equally, the increased emphasis in research on
children and young people’s voices, lived experiences and participation has
yet to impact policy and practice in substantial ways.
This series brings together cutting-edge research presented in a variety
of forms, including monographs, edited volumes and the Palgrave Pivot
format; and so furthers theoretical, conceptual and policy debates situated
on the interface of childhood and international development. The series
includes a mini- series from Young Lives, a unique 15-year longitudinal
study of child childhood poverty in developing countries. A particular
strength of the series is its inter-disciplinary approach and its emphasis on
bringing together material that links issues from developed and developing
countries, as they affect children and young people. The series will present
original and valuable new knowledge for an important and growing field
of scholarship.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14569
Anne-Trine Kjørholt • Helen Penn
Editors
Early Childhood and
Development Work
Theories, Policies, and Practices
Editors
Anne-Trine Kjørholt Helen Penn
Norwegian Centre for Child Research Thomas Coram Research Unit
Department of Education and UCL Institute of Education
Lifelong Learning University College
Norwegian University of Science and London, UK
Technology
University of East London
Trondheim, Norway
London, UK
Palgrave Studies on Children and Development
ISBN 978-3-319-91318-6 ISBN 978-3-319-91319-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91319-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943898
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A
cknowledgments
We would like to thank Jo Boyden, director of Young Lives, for her sug-
gestions about the book and for hosting one of us, Anne-Trine Kjørholt,
as a guest researcher at the University of Oxford. Discussions with her
excellent team have been highly stimulating and inspiring for the work
with this book.
We would also like to thank Norad (Norwegian Agency for Development
Co-operation), who funded the project Effects of civil society on early child-
hood education and care in Ethiopia and Zambia, a collaborative research
project between University of Zambia, Addis Ababa University, Save the
Children Norway and the Norwegian Centre for Child Research, NTNU
(Norwegian University of Science and Technology).
We would like to express our gratitude to colleagues at the Thomas
Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University College,
London, for their practical support.
v
c
ontents
1 P atronage, Welfare, Tenders, Private Consultancies
and Expert Measurement: What Is Happening in Early
Childhood Education and Care 1
Helen Penn
2 E arly Childhood and Children’s Rights: A Critical
Perspective 17
Anne-Trine Kjørholt
3 P erspectivist Challenges for ECD Intervention in Africa 39
Robert Serpell
4 E arly Childhood Education and Care from a Gender
Perspective 69
Silke Staab
5 S outh Africa: Measuring Up—The Sobambisana
Evaluation 91
Linda Biersteker and Andy Dawes
6 P romoting Indigenous Epistemologies in Early Childhood
Development Policy and Practice in Pastoralist
Communities in Kenya 113
John Teria Ng’asike and Beth Blue Swadener
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 Conceptualizing Early Schooling in Pakistan: Perspectives
from Teachers and Parents 133
Sadaf Shallwani
8 Uzbekistan: Implementing ECEC Services
in Authoritarian Regimes 153
Helen Penn
9 ‘The Knowledge Is in Your Ears, in the Stories You Hear
from the Grandparents’: Creating Intercultural Dialogue
Through Memories of Childhood 165
Anne-Trine Kjørholt, Beatrice Matafwali, and Mubanga Mofu
10 Growing into Music 193
Lucy Durán and Helen Penn
11 Early Childhood: A Panacea for Intervention? Theories,
Approaches and Practices in Development Work 209
Helen Penn and Anne-Trine Kjørholt
Index 225
n c
otes on ontributors
Linda Biersteker was a research director at the Early Learning Resource
Unit in Cape Town and is a freelance consultant. She has published widely
on early child development in South Africa.
Andy Dawes is based at the Department of Psychology, Cape Town
University. He was co-founder of the University of Cape Town Children’s
Institute and, until 2008, was Research Director in Child Youth and
Family Development program of the Human Sciences Research Council.
He has been an associate fellow in the Department of Social Policy and
Intervention at the University of Oxford. He is an associate in the
Department for International Development where he works with the
Young Lives cohort study of children growing up in poverty. His exper-
tise includes the development of indicators for measuring children’s
well-being and their access to rights, prevention of child maltreatment
and violence to young children, and evaluations of early childhood
interventions.
Lucy Durán is a musicologist and Senior Lecturer in African Music at the
School of African and Oriental Studies, and a music producer and radio
presenter. Her main regional interests are in West Africa and Cuba. She
has been researching music in Gambia, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea,
Mali and Cuba for nearly 40 years, and has widely published on Mande
traditional and popular music, women singers of Mali, the kora, oral trans-
mission of musical knowledge in Mande jeli (griot) families, and Cuban
son and rumba.
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Anne-Trine Kjørholt is a Professor and former Director of the
Norwegian Centre for Child Research, Department of Education and
Lifelong Learning, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
Norway. She has led many research projects in Europe and African coun-
tries related to various topics, such as early childhood policies and prac-
tices, children’s rights, cross-cultural perspectives on childhood, local
knowledge and identities across three generations.
Beatrice Matafwali holds a PhD and is Head of the Department of
Educational Psychology, Sociology and Special Education in the School of
Education at University of Zambia. Her research fields include applied
psychology, health psychology and developmental psychology.
Mubanga Mofu is a lecturer in the Department of Educational,
Psychology, Sociology and Special Education, University of Zambia. Her
research interests are in early childhood education, disability and child
assessment.
Helen Penn is a Visiting Professor at Thomas Coram Research Unit,
Institute of Education, UCL and Professor Emerita, University of East
London. For the last three years, she has been working partly as a freelance
consultant and as an associate of the consultancy group Education for
Change Ltd., which has undertaken a variety of evaluations for UNICEF,
in the CEE-CIS region, and globally. She is working on projects for the
EU on the privatization of early education and care.
Robert Serpell is Professor of Psychology at the University of Zambia.
From 2003 to 2006, he was Vice-Chancellor of the University. He has
conducted numerous studies on gaps in academic performance between
ethnic groups. Serpell’s work shows how conceptions of intelligence vary
from culture to culture, and that the majority of these views do not
reflect Western ideas.
Sadaf Shallwani has worked for the Aga Khan Foundation in Pakistan
on school readiness. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto. She
is Senior Officer for Learning and Evaluation at Firelight Foundation.
Silke Staab works as a research specialist with UN Women (NY). She
holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Manchester and has exten-
sive experience researching and publishing on various aspects of gender,
politics and social policy in journals including Development and
Change, Social Politics and Third World Quarterly. She is also co-editor of
