Perspectives from Southeast Asia: A conversation with Dr. Vina Adriany

Welcome to the 2nd season of PedPod by EX-PED-LAB podcast!

This season, we will be exploring more perspectives through different formats. Apart from having guests from the continents of Asia, South America, and Africa, there will be episodes that feature global and local (GLOCAL) project initiatives from Banrkunne and EX-PED-LAB researchers.

We kick off this season with a conversation with Dr. Vina Adriany who is a Professor at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, and also currently the Director for the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Centre for Early Childhood Education Care, Education and Parenting (SEAMEO CECCEP). Vina's research interests lie in the discourses of gender and social justice in early childhood education and care (ECEC), and she is also interested in the impact of neoliberalism in ECEC.

In this episode, Vina shares:
“I think when we are talking about pedagogical innovation, it's not simply about new teaching methods or, you know, it's not simply about bringing new technology to the classroom. I'm not saying they are not important. They are extremely important. But I think we need to redefine what we mean by pedagogical innovation. So for me, pedagogical innovation is an attempt to challenge dominant discourse. It can be a Western production theory of knowledge. It can be an economic discourse, which is very strong when we talk about early childhood education. Economic discourse is everywhere. And it's also our attempt to decolonize and perhaps democratize our education because we are trying to create the bridge between Western knowledge and indigenous knowledge. Throughout our conversation, I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to completely deny the existence of Western theories, but I think there is a need to go beyond Western theories. So having local theories, in my opinion, can really complement Western theories on children's development. And also because we talk about, you know, that in Southeast Asia, communities play a very important role so I think when we talk about pedagogical innovation it's not only limited to teacher training programs but what can we do in order to also empower our communities because communities I think play a very important role in shaping educational practices of our children and also believing that teachers and our community are co-constructors of knowledge. So they are not a passive recipient of any programs, or any training that the government wants to implement, but they are also actively participating in the construction of knowledge. So I think that perhaps my understanding of pedagogical innovation really calls for, you know, a more decolonized perspective and also a culturally responsive approach to seeing education in general, especially early childhood education.”

Happy listening!