Towards Structured Social Inclusion in Early Childhood Care and Education: A Case Study

The paper is based on a case study of a private school in India that seeks to observe and document social inclusion practices specifically in early childhood education. Being the foundation of a child’s development into adulthood, the study focuses on ECCE as the core temporal phase during which socio-cultural perceptual structures emerge and reinforce themselves throughout the child’s lifetime. By focusing on social inclusion practices in this fundamental point of a child’s life, the study seeks to reach the heart of the institutional bias and structural discrimination that is a part of educational frameworks today. The methodology involves the use of qualitative methods such as interviews and more importantly, case study-based direct observation of classroom environments in order to develop episodes where the interactions between actors and institutional processes result in intended and unintended exclusion and inclusion moments. The findings of the study indicate the immense importance and need for structured inclusion practices in ECCE which include modifications to curriculum, pedagogy, as well as teacher perceptions towards students from minority communities and disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the study also outlines the fundamental necessity of the independent agency of actors such as the teachers in inculcating this structured inclusion framework by going beyond the bounds of institutionally derived stereotypes in order to ensure a holistic and cohesive integration of children from economically weaker sections (EWS) into mainstream education.