Quality Preschools: Commonalities and Uniqueness across Nations
Abstract: This paper explores
how different forms of pre-school education have developed in various countries
on different continents. Particular attention is paid to European traditions of
pre-school education and how their roots differ in post-communist countries and
in traditional western European countries. It is drawn primarily from
experience of one particular post-communist country – the Slovak Republic.
Doubt is cast on whether there is such a thing as a universal European
tradition, and contrasts are made between “aesthetic” and “craft” approaches to
pre-school education. The paper highlights the historic roots of centralised
national programmes that take the form of prescriptive documents concerned
either with the inputs or outputs of education and which differ from a
traditional, open, framework-based curriculum. It draws attention to the issue
of a “culturally relevant pedagogy” in the search for appropriate pre-schooling
models for developing countries. The paper is based on the author’s personal
experiences as the head of a team tasked with creating and implementing a new
pre-school education programme in the Slovak Republic and as an academic
performing comparative research on pre-school education in different cultures.
Keywords: Pre-school education
inEurope; Post-communist countries; Pre-school curricula; Developing countries;
Diversity in pre-school education
Author: Branislav Pupala
Journal Code: jppaudsdgg160020
