Earlier I posted about the ‘Investing in Mothers and Children’ international symposium held about ten days ago to mark the official launch of the inter-disciplinary Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development at the University of Toronto. I was fortunate to be able to present some of my research work from Pakistan at the poster session held at … Continue reading
Despite increasing awareness that culture and context shape our understandings and practices, there are still concepts in the early childhood discourse that we take for granted and don’t question as core tenets or principles. For example, we don’t generally interrogate or critique the idea that children learn through play, or the larger notion of ‘child-centered’ … Continue reading
Learning and development occur within social and physical contexts. Not only do learning and development occur within contexts, but in fact are shaped by contexts. Over the last few years, I have had opportunities to work with child development and early education programmes in various global contexts. In one of my earlier experiences working in the Majority … Continue reading
Recently the South Asian Forum for Education Development (SAFED) released their annual report on the status of education in Pakistan: Annual Status of Education Report 2011. (The full report in pdf format is available here.) The report highlights some of the key challenges facing education in Pakistan. In rural areas, one out of every five children … Continue reading
Sadaf Shallwani 