Abstract
The science and practice of Early Childhood Development (ECD) rely heavily on research from the Euro-American middle class—a minority of the world’s population—and research in or from the majority world is severely under-represented. This problem has been acknowledged in ECD, an applied field aiming to assess and improve child development globally, and in the related fields of global health and developmental sciences. Thus, now is the time to search for effective pathways towards global representation. To date, most calls for change within ECD and related fields have focused on various aspects of knowledge production and publication. Although more majority world research is certainly needed, we should work equally on the reception of existing research. A large body of research on childhood in the majority world already exists (eg, in anthropology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology), but majority world research is almost entirely absent in ECD. The under-representation of majority world research in ECD cannot simply be blamed on the scarcity of research, however. This under-representation is also perpetuated by the exclusion of existing, accessible, and highly relevant majority world research from the dominant academic discourses—in other words, by epistemic exclusion. If epistemic exclusion in the field of ECD continues, the existence of more majority world research will not reduce the current minority world biases in ECD research. Ending epistemic exclusion is therefore an essential step towards a truly global ECD practice.
Scheidecker, Gabriel