Startseite “Miss, our clothes are clean:” contesting liminality in Lebanese kindergarten classrooms
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

“Miss, our clothes are clean:” contesting liminality in Lebanese kindergarten classrooms

  • Thea Renda Abu El-Haj ORCID logo EMAIL logo und Samira Chatila
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 11. Januar 2023

Abstract

Across the world, optimistic educational policy discourses promote early childhood education as a key strategy for combating poverty and for building bright futures for the most vulnerable members of society. Viewed from the ground up, this picture of early childhood education as a path to bright futures for all children is often belied by political and economic entrenchments. This article draws on a four-year ethnographic study of multiple classrooms in one Lebanese public kindergarten school that serves the most vulnerable children in Lebanon – Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian children who face daily the insecurities of poverty, displacement, and political violence. Drawing on anthropological theory that illustrates how social identities forged at the level of historical timescales are constructed and contested at the microlevel of everyday life, we pay particular attention to spatio-temporal liminal contexts within which children renounce productions of their own, their peers’, and their families’ marginality.


Corresponding author: Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, USA, E-mail:

Funding source: Rutgers University, Gaia Center's International Research Collaborative Grantab

  1. Research funding: This work was supported by Rutgers University, Gaia Center’s International Research Collaborative Grantab.

References

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda. Against Implications: ethnographic witnessing as research stance in the Lebanese conflict zone. Comparative Education Review, in press.Suche in Google Scholar

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda. 2015. Unsettled belonging: educating Palestinian American youth after 9/11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226289632.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Abu El-Haj, Thea Renda, Garene Kaloustian, Sally Wesley Bonet & Samira Chatila. 2018. Fifi the punishing cat and other civic lessons from a Lebanese public kindergarten. Journal of Education in Emergencies 4(1). 13–44.Suche in Google Scholar

Adair, Jennifer Keys & Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove. 2021. Segregation by experience: agency, racism, and learning in the early grades. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226765754.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Adair, Jennifer Keys, Louise Phillips, Jenny Ritchie & Shubhi Sachdeva. 2016. Civic action and play: examples from Maori, Aboriginal Australian and Latino communities. Early Child Development and Care 187(5–6). 798–811. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2016.1237049.Suche in Google Scholar

Adair, Jennifer Keys, Kiyomi Sánchez-Suzuki Colegrove & Molly E. McManus. 2017. How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3). 309–334. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-87.3.309.Suche in Google Scholar

Adelman, Elizabeth, Vidur Chopra & Sarah Dryden-Peterson. 2019. Including and educating Syrian refugees in national education systems: the case of Lebanon. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000371554 (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Akar, Bassel. 2012. The space between civic education and active citizenship in Lebanon. In Maha Shuayb (ed.), Rethinking education for social cohesion: international case studies, 154–170. London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781137283900_11Suche in Google Scholar

Barnett, Steven W. 2008. Preschool education and its lasting effects: research and policy implications. National Institute for Early Education Research. Available at: http://greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Barnett_EarlyEd.pdf (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Birch, Sondra H. & Gary W. Ladd. 1997. The teacher-child relationship and children’s early school adjustment. Journal of School Psychology 35(1). 61–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-4405(96)00029-5.Suche in Google Scholar

Bizri, Fida. 2013. Linguistic green lines in Lebanon. Mediterranean Politics 18(3). 444–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2013.834568.Suche in Google Scholar

Bonet, Sally Wesley. 2018. “So where are the promises of this America? Where is the democracy and where are the human rights?” Refugee youth, citizenship education, and exclusion from public schooling. Curriculum Inquiry 48(1). 53–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2017.1409591.Suche in Google Scholar

Burchinal, Margaret R., Joanne E. Roberts, Rhodus RigginsJr., Susan A. Zeisel, Eloise Neebe & Donna Bryant. 2000. Relating quality of center-based child care to early cognitive and language development longitudinally. Child Development 71(2). 339–357. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00149.Suche in Google Scholar

Center for Educational Research and Development (CRDP). (2022). Statistics bulletin. Lebanon: CRDP. Available at: https://www.crdp.org/statistics-bulletin (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Curby, Timothy W., Kevin J. Grimm & Robert C. Pianta. 2010. Stability and change in early childhood classroom interactions during the first two hours of a day. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 25(3). 373–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2010.02.004.Suche in Google Scholar

De Vault, Marjorie. 1991. Feeding the family: the social organization of caring as gendered work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Dyrness, Andrea. 2012. Contra Viento y Marea (Against wind and tide): Building civic identity among children of emigration in El Salvador. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 43(1). 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1492.2011.01156.x.Suche in Google Scholar

Erickson, Frederick. 1987. Transformation and school success: the politics of educational achievement. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 18(4). 335–356. https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.1987.18.4.04x0023w.Suche in Google Scholar

Erickson, Frederick. 2004. Talk and social theory: ecologies of speaking and listening in everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Gee, James Paul. 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315819679Suche in Google Scholar

Holland, Dorothy, William LachichotteJr., Debra Skinner & Carole Cain. 1998. Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Jackson, Philip Wesley. 1968. Life in classrooms. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Suche in Google Scholar

Kelcey, Jo & Samira Chatila. 2020. Increasing inclusion or furthering fragmentation? How the global strategy to include refugees in national education systems has been implemented in Lebanon. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 36(2). 9–19. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.40713.Suche in Google Scholar

Ladd, Gary W., Sondra H. Birch & Eric S. Buhs. 1999. Children’s social and scholastic lives in kindergarten: related spheres of influence? Child Development 70(6). 1373–1400. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00101.Suche in Google Scholar

Lahti, Sara E. 2019. A tale of two NGO discourses: NGO stories of suffering Qur’anic school children in Senegal. In Kristen E. Chiney & Aviva Sinervo (eds.), Disadvantaged childhoods and humanitarian intervention: processes of affective commodification and objectification, 113–134. London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-3-030-01623-4_5Suche in Google Scholar

Levinson, Bradley. 2005. Citizenship, identity, democracy: engaging the political in the anthropology of education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36(4). 329–340.10.1525/aeq.2005.36.4.329Suche in Google Scholar

McDermott, Ray & Shirin Vossoughi. 2020. The culture of poverty, again. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education 14(2). 60–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2020.1733960.Suche in Google Scholar

Middle East Monitor (MEM). 2019. The Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and the right to work. MEM. Available at: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190731-the-palestinian-refugees-in-lebanon-and-the-right-to-work/ (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Nicholson, Julie, Priya Mariana Shimpi & Colette Rabin. 2014. ‘If I am not doing my own playing then I am not able to truly share the gift of play with children’: using poststructuralism and care ethics to examine future early childhood educators’ relationships with play in adulthood. Early Child Development and Care 184(8). 1192–1210. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2013.856894.Suche in Google Scholar

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 2015. Early childhood education and care. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/education/school/earlychildhoodeducationandcare.htm (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Pramling, Niklas & Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson (eds.). 2011. Educational encounters: Nordic studies in early childhood didactics. London: Springer.10.1007/978-94-007-1617-9Suche in Google Scholar

Riggan, Jennifer. 2016. The struggling state: nationalism, mass militarization, and the education of Eritrea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.10.26530/OAPEN_605457Suche in Google Scholar

Rubin, Beth C. 2007. “There’s still not justice:” youth civic identity development amid distinct school and community contexts. Teachers College Record 109(2). 449–481. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146810710900202.Suche in Google Scholar

Shuayb, Maha. 2016. Education for social cohesion attempts in Lebanon: reflections on the 1994 and 2010 education reforms. Education as Change 20(3). 225–242. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2016/1531.Suche in Google Scholar

Shuayb, Maha, Nada Al Maghlouth, Katharina Held, Nader Ahmad, Thaera Badran & Saba Al Qantar. 2016. An education for the future: the schooling experience of syrian refugee children in Lebanon and Germany. Centre for Lebanese Studies. Available at: https://lebanesestudies.com/papers/an-education-for-the-future-the-schooling-experience-of-syrian-refugee-children-in-lebanon-and-germany/ (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Sinervo, Aviva & Kristen Cheney. 2019. NGO economies of affect: humanitarianism and childhood in contemporary and historical perspective. In Kristen Chiney & Aviva Sinervo (eds.), Disadvantaged childhoods and humanitarian intervention: processes of affective commodification and objectification, 1–35. London: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-3-030-01623-4_1Suche in Google Scholar

Subramanian, Mathangi. 2015. Rethinking play: a postcolonial feminist critique of international early childhood education policy. International Journal of Educational Development 45. 161–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.10.001.Suche in Google Scholar

Thomassen, Bjørn. 2015. Thinking with liminality: to the boundaries of an anthropological concept. In Agnes Horváth, Bjørn Thomassen & Harald Wydra (eds.), Breaking boundaries: varieties of liminality, 39–58. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.10.2307/j.ctt9qcxbg.6Suche in Google Scholar

Turner, Victor. 1969. The ritual process: structure and anti-structure. New York: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

UNHCR. 2020a. Lebanon: education. Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/lb/education (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

UNHCR. 2020b. Lebanon fact sheet. Available at: https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/UNHCR%20Lebanon%20operational%20fact%20sheet%20November%202020.pdf (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

UNRWA. (2022). Where we work. Available at: https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/lebanon (accessed 10 October 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Valdes, Guadalupe. 1996. Con Respeto: bridging the distance between culturally diverse families and schools. New York: Teachers College Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Varenne, Hervé & Ray McDermott. 1998. Successful failure: the school america builds. New York: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Wortham, Stanton. 2006. Learning identity: the joint emergence of social identification and academic learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511810015Suche in Google Scholar

Zakharia, Zeena. 2008. Languages, schooling, and the (re-)construction of identity in contemporary Lebanon. Available at: https://primo.lib.umn.edu/permalink/f/dkvf4l/TN_cdi_proquest_journals_304626306 (accessed 12 February 2022).Suche in Google Scholar

Received: 2022-02-25
Accepted: 2022-10-03
Published Online: 2023-01-11
Published in Print: 2023-01-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 20.10.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0041/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen