A Qualitative Analysis of Classroom Culture and Participation Competence in an Early Childhood Setting

Abstract

In this paper, a teacher-student interaction that turns problematic is analyzed; data is collected ethnographically in a village school in a southern province. As the education model of contemporary classrooms is a model of modern education and unfolding activities of lessons follow modern methods, classrooms having modernizing effect on individuals is discussed within the framework of a historical background on relation between schooling and modernization. In addition, as the children from traditional family background encounter modern interactional forms for the first time in schools, their home brought interactional competencies turning into their disadvantage in classrooms and associated negative effects, on both education and modernization process, is discussed. The interaction between the two turning problematic is found to be related to teachers’ taken-for-granted approach towards classroom order and competencies required for participation. It is proposed that teacher education programs need to include topics on social and cultural foundations to prevent the education of culturally distant children from becoming a complicated process.