Culturally or contextually appropriate?

This edition of Early Childhood Matters is centred on an analysis of culturally relevant approaches in early childhood development undertaken by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation. The objective was to learn from the accumulated experiences of 11 projects. One aim was to explore how projects that work in culturally appropriate ways can pay special attention in their work with children and parents to factors such as language, cultural norms, childrearing practices and family relationships. The second aim was to highlight the ways in which projects working in different contexts handle relationships between cultures. The geographic spread covered Australia, Botswana, Malaysia, The Netherlands, USA, Colombia, Israel and the Palestinian Autonomous region. The chosen projects worked with indigenous peoples in their traditional settings, with migrants and in multi-ethnic environments