Abstract:
In the quest for quality in early childhood education, it is important to explore the
subtleties that define socio-culturally relevant pedagogy. A qualitative, multi-case
study approach was used to explore perspectives of teachers about socio-cultural
influences on their teaching in kindergarten classrooms in Ghana. Four teachers
from two kindergartens participated in the research. Data were collected across a
six-month period and were drawn from semi-structured individual interviews,
paired-teacher interviews, and field notes made during classrooms observations.
Both within-case and cross-case analyses were used to explore how the local sociocultural
context influenced the use of learning materials, storytelling, and use of
traditional songs and rhymes. Teachers believed that adapting their practices to the
socio-cultural context could support children’s understanding of cognitive concepts,
language, literacy and moral development. The findings provide evidence about
how individual teachers take account of the socio-cultural contexts in their pedagogy.
The findings demonstrated that the teachers had sufficient agency to modify
and adapt their pedagogies that took account of the social-cultural experiences of
children and applied these ideas within the curriculum framework in order to support
children’s learning.
