An Open Letter in Response to Culturally-biased Misrepresentations of Anji County Educator Voices
https://youtu.be/cuksYrro7Cc
February 10, 2022
Dear Ms. Liu Junjie and Dr. Åsta Birkeland:
Your study “Perceptions of Risky Play among Kindergarten Teachers in Norway and China” portrays public early childhood educators in Anji County, China as overly concerned about child safety, afraid to let children take risks, opposed by parents, unwilling to allow play in bad weather, and lacking support systems for the “development of risky play.” Your study implies that these educators do not possess a firm and developed theoretical basis for their decisions about risk, and that they regularly instruct children about safety. You create the impression that the concept of embracing risk in play is new to these educators, and you conclude that cultural and systemic barriers will make it difficult for these educators to develop the ability to make “appropriate risk-taking decisions” in the future.
This portrayal of Anji County early educator perspectives and practices is wholly inaccurate. The practice of early education in Anji County for more than 15 years has been focused on providing time, space, and freedom for children to engage in play that often includes high degrees of perceived risk of bodily injury. In fact, Anji County early educators make it their primary professional commitment to step back and let children take risks and solve problems independently.Children in Anji County public early childhood programs often get cuts and bruises in their play, and they play in all weather conditions, in environments full of affordances for their own self-structured and self-determined risk-taking. Moreover, Anji County early educators are known to have the support of local parents, colleagues, the community, and the government to both create these opportunities for risk in play and research the role of risk in play.
As the primary Mandarin-English translator and interpreter for the Anji Childhood Education Research Center, I believe that the significant inaccuracies in your study result from: 1.) the use of a problematic methodology for cross-cultural research that relies on the analysis of multilingual data related to complex concepts, 2.) insufficient research into the philosophy and practice of early childhood education in Anji County, 3.) a lack of familiarity with specific pedagogical language used by Anji County early educators, leading to misinterpretations and mistranslation, and 4.) the use of broad characterizations about Chinese attitudes to validate conclusions about the meaning of statements made by Anji County early educators.
Because your study reaches fundamentally inaccurate conclusions based on erroneous data and severely misrepresents the experience of Anji County early educators, families and communities, I respectfully request that you instruct International Journal of Early Childhood to immediately retract “Perceptions of Risky Play among Kindergarten Teachers in Norway and China.”
Sincerely ,
Jesse Robert Coffino
CC:
Dr. Ali Kemal Tekin, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Early Childhood
Ms. Cheng Xueqin, Director, Anji Childhood Education Research Center(安吉幼儿教育研究中心主任，程学琴女士）
