Cultural conflicts of the child-centered approach to early childhood education in Taiwan

This paper discusses the cultural conflicts around the Western notion of child-centredness in Taiwanese preschools. We highlight the implementation and translation of Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) in Taiwan as an example to understand productions of differences, norms, and cultural conflicts in Taiwanese early childhood education. Throughout this paper, we argue that multiplicities and differences are not acknowledged but instead are dangerously ignored while a singular norm and homogeneous universal standard are made. From this perspective, we assert that the global circulation of a particular Western notion of child-centredness should be (re)conceptualized as a cultural construct through which a particular system of reasoning or cultural knowledge is perpetuated.