NEGOTIATING LOCAL AND GLOBAL DISCOURSE IN KINDERGARTEN: STORIES FROM INDONESIA

This paper aims to explore how kindergartens in Indonesia become a space to negotiate local and global discourses. Informed by postcolonial theories, it seeks to identify a hybrid space that goes beyond the binary between South and North. Based on fieldwork in three different kindergartens in Indonesia, this paper illuminates different forms of negotiation adopted by the kindergartens. Two most pervasive global discourses found are related with child-centeredness and neoliberalism. The kindergartens negotiate these discourses through a social aspiration, character building, and religious values discourses. The finding suggests how juxtaposed ideas continue to intersect with one another ECE.