Building on Living Traditions: Early Childhood Education and Culture in Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands, a small developing nation in the South Pacific, demonstrates an emerging community-based kindergarten model with the potential to promote context and culture relevant early learning and development, despite deeply embedded foundations in colonial legacies. Based on the Kahua reg...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCurrent issues in comparative education Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 157 - 175
Main Author Burton, Lindsay J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Teachers College, Columbia University 2012
Subjects
Developing Nations
Early Childhood Education
Ethnography
Folk Culture
Foreign Countries
Kindergarten
Solomon Islands
South Pacific
Sustainability
Young Children
Solomon Islands
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Summary:The Solomon Islands, a small developing nation in the South Pacific, demonstrates an emerging community-based kindergarten model with the potential to promote context and culture relevant early learning and development, despite deeply embedded foundations in colonial legacies. Based on the Kahua region of Makira-Ulawa Province, this collaborative, ethnographically-informed, study explores how the kindergarten is situated at the core of a cultural revolution. Findings enlighten how the kindergarten is serving as the basis to building on living traditions through cultural reinvigoration efforts, while the very essence of the kindergarten's sustainability has become dependent upon the revitalization of traditional practices historically fundamental to Kahuan society. From this, implications drawn address how community-based initiatives can facilitate early childhood education while still supporting context-specific cultures and identities through sustainable initiatives. (Contains 1 table, 2 figures and 7 endnotes.)
ISSN:1523-1615
1523-1615
DOI:10.52214/cice.v15i1.11471