Articles

As a result of the growing awareness of the importance of the first six years of a child’s life, an enormous number of initiatives are being made across the globe to ensure universal access to quality ECCE for all children. India, too, has made major reforms in this direction. In this context, one of the significant developments has been the National Education Policy 2020. This is the first education policy of the 21st Century. This policy lays significant emphasis on Early Childhood Care and Education (3-6 years) by ensuring universal access to high-quality ECCE across the country to be achieved no later than 2030. Over the last decade, India has seen a drastic change in the ownership of preschools; in terms of private preschools, though fewer in number, multiplying rapidly. The popular perception of preschool education is that the government can address coverage, and private initiatives can provide efficiency. Many parents also perceive private preschools as more efficient in fulfilling their aspirations. They are also willing to pay for their children’s preschool education disregarding the affordability. There is monopolistic competition in private preschools at the national level, specifically by the growth of many branded private preschools. Apart from this, there are a large number of private stand-alone preschools that have emerged to cater to the growing needs of the preschool provision. Among these private preschools, there are also small-budget private preschools (SBPPS) run by individual enterprises. These SBPPS charge low fees and are affordable to middle and lower-middle-class families. The present study attempts to study the SBPPS regarding infrastructural facilities (human and physical), the teaching-learning strategies, and the parents’ connotations regarding preschool education.

One of the articulated values of mathematics education in the Philippines is cultural rootedness. It refers to one’s appreciation of the value of mathematics in a community that includes the origins of mathematics in one’s culture, its rich history, evolution, and development. For students to capture the multi-faceted nature of mathematics and appreciate its relevance in their lives, different aspects of mathematics should be considered separately and perhaps, taught independently in schools. The cultural-historical dimension of mathematics is one such aspect. In this presentation, some initiatives in producing culturally and historically relevant mathematics lessons for primary and secondary schools in the Philippines will be shared. To expand these mathematics curriculum innovations, transdisciplinarity as an alternative perspective and approach is considered and applied in the context of an art movement in Manila. Recommendations to help sustain similar curriculum innovations in schools will be offered.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is regarded internationally critical to effectively prepare citizens for the twenty-first century (Early Childhood STEM Working Group, 2017; McClure et al., 2017, National Research Council, 2011). One basic assumption underlying this work how improving outcomes for children requires the provision of support for their teachers so that educators are empowered to provide high-quality STEM experiences during the first years of primary school. This paper presents the case study emerged from the Kanga-Kids Professional Development Model of Training for in-service Math teachers in the early years of elementary school. The model includes three main components: (1) workshops, (2) reflective coaching cycles, and (3) professional learning communities/workgroups. The findings show that the program has succeeded in changing basic attitudes and beliefs as well as daily routines at school in teaching math. This paper contributes to theoretical and practical literature in the area of STEM bringing a detailed example of the design and its impact.

Continuing professional development (CPD) of mathematics teachers may take several forms. Some of these involve merely the dissemination of knowledge by experts while others involve teachers in creating knowledge for and through practice. Research has shown that effective CPD for mathematics teachers involve experimenting in their classrooms and reporting back to a group, working collaboratively with fellow teachers, having time away from school to think and discuss common issues they faced in their classrooms and in addition to the pedagogical aspects of their deliberation also doing some mathematics. This paper presents a form of CPD that exemplify a shift of the centre of gravity for CPD from the “supply-side,” “offline” forms of knowledge transmission by professional development providers, such as University academics, to “demand-side,” “online” in-situ forms of knowledge creation by teachers. It involves a hybrid one that integrates the “training model of PD” with sustained support for mathematics teachers to integrate knowledge gained from the PD into their classroom practice. Here CPD is nestled in the classrooms of the teachers, and addresses their needs. The three phases of the CPD, namely: Learn (Acquisition and co-construction of knowledge), Apply (integrate new knowledge into classroom practice) and Teach (develop fellow teachers nationally and/or internationally) appear to make the engagement of teachers in CPD holistic.