Early Childhood Care and Education at the Margins

The importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE) in the lives of very young children is gaining increasing attention around the globe and yet there is a persistent lack of diverse knowledge perspectives on this critical phase. This stems from dominant Eurocentric framings of early childhood research, and related theories. Early Childhood Care and Education at the Margins provides contextual accounts of ECCE in Africa in order to build multiple perspectives and to promote responsive thought and actions. The book is an entry point to knowledge production for birth to three in Africa and responds to the call for the field to be in dialogue with different perspectives that attempt to map concepts, debates and contemporary concerns. In this book, a group of African authors, representing both Anglophone and Francophone Africa, provide insider's perspectives on a wide range of geographic, cultural and thematic positions. In so doing, they show the breadth and depth of ideas on which the ECCE field draws. The chapters in the volume highlight a range of topics including poverty, early socialisation, local care practices, gendered roles, and service provision. They open up important points of departure for thinking about ECCE policy, practice, theory and research. The book presents African perspectives in a globalising world. It is therefore suitable for an international readership. It includes cross-cultural comparisons as well as critiques of dominant discourses which will be of particular interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students active in the field of ECCE, childhood studies, cultural studies and comparative education.

Hasina Banu Ebrahim is a full professor in Early Childhood Education at the University of South Africa. Auma Okwany is an assistant professor of Social Policy at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. Oumar Barry is an assistant professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal.

Acknowledgements List of Contributors Foreword Chapter 1: Creating visibility for birth to 3 in Africa: A push from the margins Auma Okwany and Hasina Banu Ebrahim Chapter 2: Small stories from the margins: Cartographies of child poverty and vulnerability experience in Kenya Elizabeth Ngutuku Chapter 3: Early child care and development in Central African refugee families in Cameroon Mbere villages Harouna Chapter 4: Reconstructing child caregiving: Perspectives on child headed households in Uganda Doris M. Kakuru Chapter 5: Contesting and rethinking the role of men in early childhood care and education support system for birth to 3 in Zimbabwe Hilton Nyamukapa Chapter 6: Repositioning peripheral voices: Examining institutional processes of exclusion in health care provisioning for urban poor children from birth to 3 years Aurelia Munene Chapter 7: Socialisation of children aged birth to 3 in Benin: Representations and routes Pélagie Mongbo-Gbenahou Chapter 8: Early childhood care narratives of young mothers in Uganda Annah Kamusiime Chapter 9: Bridging narratives: Intergenerational transmission of indigenous knowledge in the care and education of children from birth to 3 in Madagascar Zanafy Gladys Abdoul Chapter 10: Factors influencing parental choice of centre-based provision for early childhood care and education in Ghana Fauster Agbenyo Chapter 11: Perspectives on early childhood education as a fundamental right in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Roger Thamba Thamba Chapter 12: Challenges in implementing a home visiting model for early childhood development in South Africa Malibongwe Gwele and Hasina Banu Ebrahim Chapter 13: Paternal involvement in early childhood care and development in Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville: Contextual redefinition of indicators Olivier Abondo