‘Humpty Dumpty’: Teaching Strategy or Postcolonial Method – What Do We Know About Power, Voice and Identity Within Early Childhood Education in the Twenty-First Century?

Abstract

Although some would consider postcolonialism redundant because colonialism is considered dead and a paradigm of previous centuries, its discourses and their impacts remain. By applying the well-known nursery rhyme ‘Humpty Dumpty’, this chapter revives three tenets of postcolonialism, namely, power, identity and voice to explore just how colonial discourses remain entrenched and reified in education and more specifically early childhood education. It asserts that unlike Humpty Dumpty, who could never be put together again, postcolonialism should never be put together, in its varied forms, towards challenging and changing discourses of power, identity and voice unless it is decolonised, thus understanding how early childhood education is as much a colonising tool, asserting power, subjugating identities and silencing voices through the implanting First World early childhood models in Third World contexts. As a discourse, decolonisation must be constructed, framed and led by those whose power, identity and voice are not merely given a place but effectively restored and centred in early childhood education in the twenty-first century.