This exploratory, cross-national research study investigated how ten female early childhood educators, five in Nepal and five in Kenya, understood and defined young children’s socio-emotional development (SED). Research Findings: Revealed that teachers’ understandings of SED were influenced by several factors such as ethno-culture, language, and relationships at different ecological levels. The study further revealed that Nepali and Kenya teachers’ understandings and definitions of SED included a hybrid version that contained both Euro-Western notions of SED as well as their localized cultural understandings grounded in religious and gendered norms, values, expectation, and traditions. Practice or Policy: These features suggest that there is a need for early childhood teachers from majority-world countries to consider differential impacts of context and culture on young children’s SED and be cautious about appropriating Euro-Western expectations. Further research studies with larger samples that represent both male and female teachers from wider geographical areas in both countries are needed to determine what aspects of SED are universal and those that can offer alternative ways of thinking about and engaging with SED in early childhood spaces.

Educational policies and practices in the current age of heightened globalization are increasingly grounded on unjust binary curriculum approaches that favor educational designs from Minority-World countries at the expense of epistemologies of indigenous people in Majority-World nations that are typically deemed culturally inferior (Gupta, 2015). Essentially, those opposing binaries promote neocolonial and neoliberal ideologies while disregarding lived cultural contexts of people in Majority-World countries (Lee, 2012). To grapple with this conundrum, this ethnographic study examined how educators in Kenya and Nepal (N = 26) contested, constructed, and transformed educational practices in contexts of globalization, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism. Qualitative data from four schools in Kathmandu, Nepal (16 participants) and two schools in Kenya (10 participants) revealed that educators struggled with issues of intellectual imperialism. Therefore, they strived to deconstruct the existing unjust binary curricula policies by embracing pluralist educational discourses essential to sustaining indigenous languages and dialects. In doing so, those educators focused on advancing local cultural values, rights, and ideologies without antagonizing influential stakeholders from Minority-World nations.

In recent contexts where global political polarization and anti-diversity movements have increased, early childhood educators face mounting pressures to conform to standardizations that are often d...