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.

This study is an attempt to improve students’ writing proficiency at a high school in Vietnam. To achieve this aim, a two-cycle Critical Participatory Action Research project was conducted. During the intervention procedure, Process-genre approach was implemented into writing lessons which focused on expository essays. The data were collected from the teacher’s journal, questionnaire as well as the pre-test and post-test. The results indicate that students made considerable progress in most aspects of their writing, and they expressed positive opinions about this approach.

The study addresses the transition to teach a curriculum designed for face-to-face teaching through a full mode online teaching. There has been infusion of online technologies in teaching contexts, and teaching practices globally, little attention has been given to online teaching and learning in Bhutanese higher education context. This study investigated the opportunities and challenges of online teaching in the colleges of the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) using a convergent mixed method approach. Survey questionnaire and interviews were used to collect the data. 153 teaching faculties and 1206 students responded to the survey. 30 faculties and 30 students consisting of equal number of male and female were interviewed. Descriptive analysis and inferential statistics were conducted for the survey data. The quantitative finding reveals age, experiences, educational qualification and colleges as important predictors of efficacy in the online teaching learning and assessment practices. The results also show that lecturers and students were somewhat satisfied with lecturers’ online teaching knowledge and skills. However, there are insignificant differences in the skills and knowledge possessed by both male and female lecturers and students of RUB colleges. Further, a positive correlation between lecturers’ online knowledge and skills to online assessment, learning support and resources was noted while students’ accessibility to online learning platforms and materials had lower correlation with other items. The qualitative finding indicates similar benefits and challenges related to online teaching. The study suggests respective colleges to support lecturers in their acquisition of ICT knowledge and skills to equip them for the digital age.

Currently, young children are experiencing the development of technologies in learning early literacy. Additionally, young children spend most of their daily time in their homes with families and caregivers. Therefore, early years educators are required to have a fulfilled understanding of how to promote learning early literacy with the integration of digital technologies. In this paper, we examined a range of peer-reviewed articles from 2014 to 2021 by using a qualitative method. We find that young children’s involvement combined with the mediation of parents probably fosters the learning process of early literacy by utilizing digital technologies at home. Moreover, the exchange of knowledge related to young children’s early literacy learning through using digital devices at home between schools and families also positively impacts the outcomes of the early literacy learning process. Even though the influence of digital devices on early literacy learning at home provides positive results, this paper identifies some gaps that emerge in the learning process.