A Critical Exploration of Some Dominant Narratives in Early Childhood Education in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, early childhood education settings were not introduced until the late 1960s. For many years, the field has taken modest steps towards its development, leaving the vast majority of children under the age of six lacking access to early childhood education and care. Yet, during the last 10 years, the Saudi Ministry of Education has placed a significant emphasis on the expansion of the field through the implementation of a number of national initiatives and programmes. Given this significant change, the present work is concerned with exploring the contemporary narratives surrounding the education of young children in the Kingdom and the details of these initiatives and programmes, and many other policies and practices besides. Thus, a theoretical framework informed by post-structural notions of dominant discourses and its rejection of universalised knowledge is utilised to provide insight into how historical conditions may have contributed to the emergence of certain truths and realities regarding the education of young children in Saudi Arabia. It was also proposed that such an analysis would illustrate the ways in which the dominance of these narratives may influence how young children, their teachers and their educational settings are perceived today. The above aim and the adopted theoretical position allow this work to engage in a critical qualitative inquiry exploring the prevailing existing discourses that may have contributed to the formation and promotion of certain views concerning early childhood education within the local context. Data was primarily derived from two sources: (i) six key national documents published between 1970 and 2019, and (ii) 18 in-depth interviews with educators from various positions within the Saudi early childhood education system. Data analysis provides one possible way to examine critically the popular images within the field by drawing attention to the historical conditions that may have contributed to their dominance, the influence of both universalised knowledge and cultural context on constructing certain notions of reality, and how these images are, in turn, altering what we know about the field today. The study concludes that the current scene of Saudi early childhood education has two compelling narratives, each with its own imaginary of young children, their teachers and early childhood settings. This thesis, therefore, contributes to the existing literature on the dominance of particular discourses concerning the contemporary understanding of young children’s education and care by illustrating the emergence of these discourses and their impact on the construction and, perhaps, normalisation of particular knowledge in the field. The significance of this work lies in the fact that it is primarily concerned with a context in which such an analysis has yet to be conducted. As such, it provides an insight into how similar narratives to those found in the Global North can exist in another part of the world and how local conditions may influence both the plot and implications of these narratives.