Diversity and Equity

12th November 2019
The review for the following articles were presented:

1. Equity in Early Childhood Education
2. Challenges of developing pedagogy through diversity and equity within curriculum
3. Cultural diversity and early years ideology
4. New understanding of cultural diversity and the implications for early childhood policy, pedagogy and practice

The above picture was used to discussed equality and equity. Both strategies are used to promote fairness. However, equality and equity ARE NOT EQUAL. Equality is treating everyone the same as they start from the same point (quantity, value, rank, status) and everyone benefits from same support and receive equal treatment irregardless of their needs. Equality is justified by quantity. 

While equity is a need based approach where everyone get supported by what they need to be successful. Equity justified things on the basis of quality. 

In many parts of the world including Malaysia, the education data is incomplete for certain groups such as: 

• vulnerable group
• nomadic population
• informal school education
• person displaced by conflict
• children in labour
• school in remote region

The marginalised groups were made invisible. As such, it is difficult to identify their needs in promoting equity in education. 

Why inequity happen in education?

1. low awareness about the important of education
2. lack of quality teachers to handle special needs children
3. the pre-schools which target the low income groups were enrolled by others children who have better starting point

There is no single universally convincing answer to the debate on equity. The differences in learning outcome was due to many factors including a person's ability and motivation, background, resources etc. 

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The second article was the comparison of pedagogies and its challenges between a multicultural and mono-cultural school. Multicultural school children have realistic view about diversity in culture and the school has diverse settings and activities that support different culture. Mono-cultural school did value the diversity through theme teaching and are more creative in learning diversity. 

Diversity is not only about ethnic/race, but also background and culture. The concept of salad bowl vs melting pot was brought up for discussion. I personally prefer salad bowl because our cultural richness made Malaysia special and beautiful.

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The third article was about the parenting and learning style of an Anglo family and a Bangladeshi family. 

Anglo                             Bangladeshi

child-centeres                      teacher centered

able to speak and communicate            listen is more important than speaking

Issues and challenges:

• Children were sent to the school which cater their choice of language. This may cause serious implication for national integration. 
• Too many children speaking unknown language. So, national language is used as medium of instruction.
• pre-school should provide inclusive and multicultural education 

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The research question for the 4th article: How are cultural processes, values and tradition related to children's development?

Culture: 

- more to socialization of childhood

- way of being

- cultural variable is an unstable construct (more than language)

- own needs and preference (individualism)

- needs and wants of family and community (collectivism)

Role of teachers:

- understand the cultural variation

- different teaching style

- equal access to opportunity (participate/contribute)

- celebrate diversity

- include diverse learning materials

- adapting the education system - be adaptive

- acknowledge the unique ways a family raise their child

- deliberately create something within ZPD of a child