Author Information
Aditi Mitra, Hamar Chinhari Welfare Society, IndiaAbstract
This paper attempts to understand and rethink Early Childhood Education from the context of the life world and the worldview of rural and indigenous communities. It is an attempt to contextualise (and in the process indigenize and decolonize) the developmental and learning goals of pre-schoolers in two Open Learning Centres in two villages in Chhattisgarh in central India. Modern and urban understandings (which are also westernized understandings) of child development and child education continue to colonize the culture of existing pre-schools. This necessitated the creation of a space – Open Learning Centres called Srijan-Shala (Abode of Creativity) – where early childhood education shall be in tune with the indigenous life world and worldview. There is a stress in Srijan-Shalas on points of dialogue and possible commonality between the apparently “traditional” and the purportedly “modern”. This paper is a rigorous documentation of an attempt at building such a space and our journey through the painstaking process of training teachers in the ethos of a democratic classroom (where learning, playing and questioning are co-constitutive), creating indigenized decolonized curriculum and lessons, and birthing pedagogic practices and innovations that are caring. Women of the same village – who have received education and are the founders of Chinhari – teach in their respective Srinjan-Shalas, sharing their know-how of their own environment, cultural practices and traditions in a form of caring collective. The paper critically reflects on the birth and the sustainability of the idea of decolonized early childhood education in rural and indigenous contexts and communities.
Paper Information
Conference: ACE2025Stream: Education
This paper is part of the ACE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
Full Paper
View / Download the full paper in a new tab/window
To cite this article:
Mitra A. (2026) Decolonising Education: Rethinking Early Childhood Education in Indigenous Spaces ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 1565-1575) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.119
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.119
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress