ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights current issues in urban early childhood education and early childhood teacher education in five Asian countries: India, Singapore, China, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. The countries selected here themselves demonstrate the enormous range of sociocultural, economic, political, linguistic, racial, and ethnic diversity not only among each other but also within themselves. The inquiries employed a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to examining current trends in policy and practice surrounding early childhood education and teacher education within specific sociocultural contexts and worldviews. The culture of global economics and consumerism itself is a colonizing one in as much as the largest group targeted as consumers are young children. Numerous early childhood teachers and parents in the countries included in this study commented on the adverse effects of the commercial media on young children, and noted the uphill battle against the Western images of toys, fast foods, clothing, and lifestyles.
