Global Studies of Childhood

Volume 3 Number 1 2013

www.wwwords.co.uk/GSCH

Views from Somewhere:

situated knowledges and partial perspectives
in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom

MINDY BLAISE, VIVIENNE W.M. LEUNG & CHUNRONG SUN

Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation,
Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This article demonstrates an engaged situated methodology by drawing from an

exploratory study of literacy activities in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom. Bringing together
feminist understandings of situated knowledges and Asian critical cultural studies ideas about ‘Asia as
method’, the authors recognize that all aspects of knowledge production are situated individually and
globally. The authors work with their different positionalities by dialoguing across partial viewpoints.
This strategy of inter-referencing begins to blur hierarchical and binary thinking about insider/outsider
perspectives and Western/Chinese pedagogies. Working with dialoguing and inter-referencing across
partial perspectives, the authors enact de-colonizing and de-imperializing methodologies to develop
new reflexive and transformative knowledge practices.

Introduction
Over thirty years ago, feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraway began developing the
concept, ‘situated knowledges’ (1988, p. 581) as a strategy to challenge positivist and universalist
understandings of knowledge. In particular, Haraway was and continues to be interested in
contesting knowledge production that serves to maintain hierarchical structures and binary
thinking, such as objectivity/subjectivity, nature/culture, adult/child, human/nonhuman (1988,
1991, 2007). In the following quote, she questions the traditional ways in which science thinks
about objectivity and suggests that partial perspectives or situated knowledges can provide views
from somewhere, rather than nowhere.
Situated knowledges are about communities, not about isolated individuals. The only way to
find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular. The science question in feminism is about
objectivity as positioned rationality. Its images are not the products of escape and transcendence
of limits (the view from above) but the joining of partial views and halting voices into a collective
subject position that promises a vision of the means of ongoing finite embodiment, of living
within limits and contradictions – of views from somewhere. (Haraway, 1988, p. 590)
In Erika Engelstad and Siri Gerrard’s (2005) introduction to their book, Challenging Situatedness:
gender, culture and the production of knowledges, they contextualize Haraway’s work by explaining
how her initial ideas responded to Sandra Harding’s (1986) book, The Science Question in Feminism. It
is here where Harding discusses feminist theoretical and methodological engagements with science
and elaborates on feminist epistemologies. Harding also argues that the viewpoints of the
marginalized are more important and significant than those who are in power and that these
marginal or subjugated perspectives are worth paying attention to when considering how
knowledge is produced. Although Haraway agrees with Harding’s view of respecting and valuing
these subjugated knowledges, she does not totally privilege them because knowledge is always

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Views from Somewhere

political, never innocent. One of Haraway’s most important contributions to these knowledge
debates is her interest in making room for ‘the more’. This means making room for and attending
to all the ‘objects’ (human and nonhuman) under study as well as considering the researchers
involved in these inquiries. From this perspective, the researcher no longer stands from a safe
distance, ‘objectively “doing” research “on” objects’, but is researching from somewhere, including
with the human child, teacher, and co-researchers, as well as the nonhuman elements such as the
texts on the wall, pencils, paper, or books. While situated knowledges highlight the material, social
and political conditions that enable knowledges, this also comes with responsibility for these
knowledges in all their diversities (Haraway, 2007).
More recently, Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010) an Asian critical cultural studies scholar has been
raising questions about the production of Asian knowledges. Through the concept, ‘Asia as
method’ Chen calls for the production of regionally specific data about Asian values and
knowledges. Asia as method is not simply about conducting research in Asia, nor is it taking an
anti-West research stance. Rather it is a strategy for moving beyond postcolonial studies,
globalization studies, and Asia studies in order to ‘dialogue’ with the rest of the world about Asian
knowledges and values. Asia becomes the ‘method’ in which new knowledges, epistemologies, and
subjectivities are produced. Chen writes:
‘Asia as method’ ... [is] a critical proposition ... [that can] transform the existing knowledge
structure and at the same time transform ourselves. The potential of Asia as method is this: using
the idea of Asia as an imaginary anchoring point, societies in Asia can become each other’s points
of reference, so that the understanding of the self may be transformed, and subjectivity rebuilt.
(Chen, 2010, p. 212)
Those working within critical educational studies have found inspiration in the Asia as method
concept and are just beginning to explore what this means for teaching and learning. For example,
Lin (2012) works with these ideas to transform the structure of knowledge in teacher education and
school curriculum and Chan (2012) brings together various educational studies across 14 Asian
countries to initiate a dialogical process of knowledge generation that does not look solely to the
West for answers. Blaise (2012) has used these ideas to generate distinctive and historically
grounded East Asian understandings of gender inequality in the early years across Hong Kong,
Singapore, and South Korea.
This article brings together Haraway’s (1988, 1991) situated knowledges and Chen’s (2010)
Asia as method to show how new knowledge practices might be enacted for moving beyond
hierarchical and binary thinking. This is a deliberate strategy for privileging and working with the
partial perspectives that the researchers (two Asian and one Western) bring to a study about
literacy activities in a Hong Kong kindergarten. Instead of seeing these different, multiple, and
partial perspectives as problematic or ‘unscientific’, they are viewed as positive and productive. By
having these different views ‘dialogue’ with each other, different points of reference are created
that do not simply rely on the West for answers.
This article shows how we, Blaise, Leung and Sun, are attempting to produce Asian-specific
knowledge about literacy activities in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom that does not describe
how Western understandings of literacy learning are adopted or adapted to the Asian context (see,
for example Yu & Pine, 2006; Li et al, 2012). Our research aims to represent literacy activities
outside of the ‘Asian versus Western’ narrative that is habitually told in research within this region.
These ways of understanding literacy learning in Asian contexts are problematic because they rely
on the belief that there is a ‘best’ practice out there, waiting to be found. This thinking relies on
dichotomies and binary oppositions to produce meaning.
In early childhood education this becomes evident in the ways practices are described as either
developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) or developmentally inappropriate practices (DIP)
(Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). Framing practices as either appropriate or inappropriate attempts to
determine a final or fixed meaning about what practice is, or is not. Within this binary opposition,
we know what one word means (appropriate) because it is opposite to the other (inappropriate).
Examples of binary thinking are easily found in early childhood education. For instance, on the
Hong Kong Education Bureau website a list of ‘Dos and don’ts for kindergartens’ is provided for
teachers to follow in regards to regulations, guidelines, curriculum, planning and organization,
learning and teaching, assessment, and relations with parents (Hong Kong Education Bureau,

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2012). This list instructs teachers in what to do; ‘adopt different teaching approaches and organize
various child-centred learning activities’, and what not to do; ‘don’t adopt a one-way, lecturing
form of teaching’. This binary thinking fails to acknowledge that a variety of practices, such as one-
way teaching or direct instruction from the teacher might be ‘best’ practice for particular literacy
learners, or in particular situations.
Although several scholars across a wide range of disciplines have taken up Haraway’s (1988,
1991) situated knowledges in their work (see Marcus & Clifford, 1986; Engelstad & Gerrard, 2005;
Lather, 2007; Lang, 2011), and Chen’s (2010) ideas around Asia as method are increasingly being
drawn upon in critical educational studies (see Blaise, 2012; Chan, 2012; Lin, 2012), little attention
has been paid to what these concepts might mean for researching Asian literacy practices in early
childhood. This article builds on the work of these scholars by bringing together aspects of
situatedness and Asia as method to develop an engaged methodology that works with and makes
room for partial understandings about practice, rather than trying to fix, name, and determine what
is ‘good’ or ‘best’ literacy practice in Asia.
In order to show what an engaged situated methodology might look like, we draw from an
exploratory study of literacy activities in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom (Blaise et al, 2012)
and present three partial viewpoints of what we observed. We attempt to move beyond simply
presenting various stories or multiple perspectives, by recognizing that all aspects of knowledge
production are situated. We take this situatedness into account by first locating the literacy
practices within the Hong Kong language policy context. Next we recognize our researcher
positionalities and work with them by dialoguing across our partial viewpoints to show how a
strategy of inter-referencing begins to blur hierarchical and binary thinking about insider/outsider
perspectives and Western/Chinese pedagogies. Finally, implications are made about how we might
take responsibility for these diverse knowledges and shift future research practices that attend to
situated and partial perspectives of those missing, and often marginalized Asian voices.

Situatedness
Haraway’s notion of situated knowledges is part of the wider feminist debate about what counts as
knowledge (Lang, 2011). These ideas are related to the feminist critiques of science that questioned
the missing voices of women in the production of this knowledge (Harding, 1991). These debates
highlight how the production of scientific knowledge is not separate from the social and cultural
contexts in which it is produced. Similarly, how literacy is understood and enacted in this Hong
Kong kindergarten classroom cannot be disconnected from how it is situated within the micro and
macro politics of teaching, learning, curriculum, and childhoods, both locally and globally. The
literacy practices we observed are situated within various social and cultural contexts, including the
teacher’s values and beliefs about childhood, teaching, and learning; our own values and beliefs;
the formal literacy curriculum promoted by the Hong Kong Education Bureau (2012) (including
the ‘dos and don’ts list’); the literacy programme adopted by the kindergarten and the teacher,
parent expectations about literacy learning; how early childhood education is funded by the Hong
Kong government, etc.
While conducting this exploratory study, we observed various literacy practices, which were
all related to the storybook, The One Hundredth Guest (第壹百個客人), written by Guangcai Hao
(郝廣才) (2004). This school had adopted what Li and Chau (2010) call ‘the storybook approach’,
which can be considered a developmentally appropriate strategy for teaching literacy skills through
a Western approach to teaching and learning. This approach might be considered interdisciplinary
because it aims to construct an integrated curriculum by using a story as the core framework for
learning. We observed the whole class reading out loud the storybook, which was projected onto a
large screen (see Figure 1) and children choosing pencils (see Figure 2) to complete a daily required
handwriting activity that they completed individually (see Figure 3). We were also interested in
documenting the physical environment of the kindergarten classroom. In particular, we wanted to
know more about the ways in which literacy was understood in this learning community and
represented on the walls of the classroom (see Figure 4 and 5). It is also important to remember
that these local, or micro-literacy practices, cannot be understood without situating them with the
wider, or macro-practices, of Hong Kong. Situatedness, however, does not mean that these micro-

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practices are nested safely within the macro-context, or that the cultural and social context is a
neutral backdrop to these practices. Instead, both the micro and the macro are interrelated, whose
boundaries are not clearly set, but rather merge or mingle in various ways. In addition to the
literacy learning and teaching practices, our research practices of observing, interacting, noticing,
and questioning are also part of situated knowledges.

Figure 1. Whole group reading aloud, The One Hundredth Guest (第壹百個客人).

Figure 2. Pencils for children to choose.

Situated knowledges moves beyond just naming knowledge as either ‘Western’ or ‘Chinese’, or
producing three different stories about literacy activities in an early childhood classroom. Instead,
situated knowledges is about producing and having more stories in conversation with each other
and without using the West as the sole reference point. In order to enact this knowledge process,
we draw inspiration from the ways in which Chen (2010) uses ‘dialoguing’ and ‘inter-referencing’ as
practices that produce new and different knowledge that does not rely exclusively on Western
understandings of literacy and challenges hierarchical thinking. The next section will discuss how
we are working with dialoguing and inter-referencing to challenge the hierarchical thinking that
considers the ‘West is best’ in regards to early childhood literacy practices.

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Figure 3. Chinese character writing activity.

Figure 4. The classroom wall, with an example of Chinese character script writing.

Figure 5. The classroom wall.

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Dialoguing and Inter-referencing

‘Dialoguing’ and ‘inter-referencing’ are two methods that Chen (2010) develops in his attempts at
generating Asian knowledges without relying on the West as the only and preferred frame of
reference. In his book, he does this by creating new reference points across Asia to dialogue with
each other. These reference points include a focus on Asian contexts, such as Korea, Taiwan, Japan,
and Hong Kong, as well as drawing from an assortment of texts, such as film, literature, poetry, and
childhood memories, that aid in creating different conversations about what it means to be
Taiwanese. Chen uses inter-referencing as a strategy for creating new Asian knowledge. It is a
different kind of comparison method that turns away from referring exclusively to the West, by
turning instead towards Asian reference points, and in the process generates situated knowledges.
While there are colonial dynamics present across Asia, such as those found in the relationship
between Japan and China, or Hong Kong and mainland China, working with these inter-regional
flows of power is of importance because they help us to understand the heterogeneity of the Asian
region, the situatedness of Asian knowledges, and how these power relations continuously
contribute to knowledge production. Increasing the variety of dialogues across Asia and inter-
referencing different Asian worldviews might have the potential to undercut some of these colonial
power relations that still persist in Asia from the history of various Western nations’
colonization/neo-colonization of their/our countries.
In this article, dialoguing and inter-referencing are used by engaging with data generated from
our three partial researcher perspectives in the exploratory study of literacy practices conducted in
a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom. We begin with our first impressions of the literacy
environment. In order to move beyond naming Mindy’s observations as the ‘Western perspective’,
and Vivienne and Chunrong’s observations as the ‘Asian perspectives’, we want the research and
our perspectives to do more. We do this in two ways. First, we attempt to privilege Chunrong’s
mainland Chinese perspective and Vivienne’s Hong Kong perspective by keeping them in constant
dialogue with each other and with Mindy’s impressions. At the same time, Mindy’s Western views
have been intentionally sidelined. Second, inter-referencing is used to draw new reference points
about literacy activities, without relying on the ‘West is best’ model. These inter-referencing
dialogues are part of the ongoing analysis process and can also help us become aware of taken-for-
granted assumptions that often get in the way of understanding partial perspectives.

The Language Policy Context in Hong Kong

In order to situate our perspectives, the Hong Kong language context is useful for understanding
the complexity of ‘Chinese’ literacy learning. First, Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese spoken in
some southern parts of China. It is also not accepted as standard written Chinese used in formal
writing because Modern Standard Chinese is unanimously accepted as the only written form used
in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities (Poon, 2010).
Therefore, Putonghua (aka ‘Mandarin’) is the official language within mainland China, used as a
lingua franca to allow communication across the many different mutually unintelligible dialects
within China. Since the handover from the British to the Chinese in 1997, Hong Kong’s schools
now work within a bi-literate and trilingual language policy. This means that children are expected
to be bi-literate in two written languages, traditional Chinese characters and English, and able to
speak three languages; Cantonese, Putonghua and English. Before the handover in 1997, English
was the medium of instruction (MOI) in schools, and since 1997 the MOI is now Cantonese, with
very few schools still using English. Language learning in Hong Kong is complex and there is much
research about the issues involved in these. Poon (2004) provides an overview of the complex
language policies necessary in Hong Kong, both pre- and post-handover. For instance, in a footnote
Poon explains,
Modern Standard Chinese and Cantonese are considerably different in lexis, syntax,
pronunciation and phonology. Hong Kong students think in their mother tongue Cantonese, the
written form of which is not recognised as standard written Chinese. They have to learn to write
in Modern Standard Chinese, the spoken form of which (Putonghua) they do not speak.
Therefore, they cannot write what they think and say. (p. 56, n. 9)

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What this means is that Hong Kong people usually speak Cantonese, which is different in Chinese
writing. In addition, slang is often used in Cantonese, so Hong Kong people write differently (in
terms of the form) to what they say in Cantonese.

Our Researcher Positionings

When considering the situatedness of knowledge, it is necessary to recognize that our researcher
positionings make a difference. Our social locations, as women, of different ages, ethnicities, and
linguistic abilities, effect how and what we know. One of the most noticeable differences are the
linguistic abilities that we each bring to the Cantonese speaking and traditional Chinese writing
kindergarten classroom. Not only do our positionings make a difference to what we each might be
interested in noticing in the classroom or what we choose to notice, but also how we interpret and
analyze the data, how we relate to participants and objects in the classroom, and how we interpret
these literacy events (Code, 2006).
Chunrong participates in this project as a female graduate student who recently came from
Yunnan province, which is a remote province in southwest China. She speaks Putonghua and a
little English, and can read a large portion of traditional Chinese. She has both a Bachelor’s and
Master’s degree in early childhood education and has worked as a college lecturer in Yunnan. She
has researched in Yunnan kindergartens and is familiar with education policies in mainland China
and practices in Yunnan. Her research interests focus on teaching and learning in kindergarten
classrooms and early moral education.
Vivienne joins the project as a Chinese woman who grew up in the British colony of Hong
Kong before the handover in 1997. Within the research team, she is the only member who is
bilingual in English and Cantonese. In addition to her bilingual background, she also speaks
average Putonghua. Vivienne was a kindergarten teacher in Hong Kong, and trained further as an
early childhood teacher in Australia. Her educational, teaching and research experiences have been
and continue to be cross-cultural combinations of Hong Kong, Chinese, Australian, and British
knowledges. Her research interests are related to early childhood curriculum, pedagogies and new
technologies in teaching young children.
Mindy comes to this project as a feminist researcher, interested in gendered childhoods. She is
monolingual, only able to read, write, and speak English. She has taught and researched in the
USA, Australia, Singapore, and now in Hong Kong. As a kindergarten teacher she developed a
child-centred and developmentally appropriate curriculum (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; Copple &
Bredekamp, 2009) in the mid-1990s, during a time when the field of early childhood in the USA was
experiencing a push towards a more academic style of curriculum. Mindy’s international teaching
and researching experiences, combined with her interest in postpositivism and feminism have
forced her to wonder about the ways in which developmental knowledge is a form of cognitive
imperialism in early childhood education.

First Impressions
In order to begin a dialogue about what we each saw, found interesting, and valued in the
classroom, we draw from our observational field notes and present our first impressions. Working
from a situated research perspective means that these are, of course, partial perspectives.

Vivienne: my first glance

Over the five days we were in the classroom, our observations included both whole group and
group time activities. Group time activities included Chinese writing, floor blocks, art corner,
science corner, computer corner, home corner in the classroom and one small group led by the
head teacher for small group activities in the physical play and music rooms. The classroom was
occupied fully by 32 children who sat in front of the screen for the whole group time storytelling.
The setting for children was the same over the five days with very limited space for children to
move around and interact with peers. The head teacher stood in the front of the classroom and the
story that had been made into a PowerPoint presentation was shown on a large screen. In the five

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days, the whole group time lasted for 45 minutes on average, which I felt was long for five-year-old
children. Children were observed and seemed interested in the story for the first 15 minutes.
However, they started to lose their attention when they had few opportunities to be involved in
the story process. For example, in day one, a boy was biting his fingers during the whole group
time and on the third day of observing, I noticed a girl and a boy leaning on the table, and a boy
playing with the ponytail of a girl sitting in front of him. They also did not appear to have any eye
contact with the head teacher, when she was reading aloud the story. Additionally, while reading
the story to the children, I noticed that the teacher focused on the vocabulary used in the story. She
instructed the children to read the vocabulary words and asked questions about the meaning of
each word in relation to their life experiences. For example, on the third day, the head teacher
asked the meaning of 柔軟 (this means ‘soft’ in English) and children guessed its meaning giving
examples such as, ‘like a sponge cake, bed, bouncing ball’. The head teacher tried to split the
Chinese single words into different components for children to remember easily. For example, she
did this when introducing the Chinese word ‘軟’ and reminded children that they should know the
left side of the character ‘車’ (this means ‘car’ in English). But it did not make any sense to the
whole single word ‘軟’ which means ‘soft’. I just thought the head teacher focused on the writing
of the Chinese words and did not put the writing in context. It was just a strategy for helping
children to remember the scripts of the Chinese word. Another example of this practice was
observed when the story shows how customers had to wait in line at the pizza restaurant and then
the teacher asked the children to recall times when they need to line up. The teacher is drawing on
children’s previous experiences and stimulated children to think about the meaning of the
vocabulary words. This strategy was successful in helping the teacher to understand what children
know about the vocabulary words by listening to their elaboration from their lived experiences.
Nevertheless, I found that there was only the interaction between the children with the head
teacher and there was very limited peer interaction during the small group activity time. The group
time sessions were very teacher directed.

ChungRong: my curiosity about handwriting

When I first walked into the classroom, I noticed on the wall that there were examples of how to
follow the stroke orders to correctly write three Chinese words. Each Chinese word is composed of
two Chinese characters, they are 便宜 (‘cheap’), 價錢 (‘price’) and 柔軟 (‘soft’) (see Figure 4). The
writing order was displayed under each character. I was very surprised about this because from my
experiences of early writing instruction in Yunnan, China, it is believed that formal Chinese
character writing should be taught in primary school rather than in kindergarten. Educational
authorities forbid kindergartens to teach literacy skills directly in the early childhood education
policies (Li & Rao, 2005). Some scholars do not support teaching writing in kindergarten (Chen,
1996; Yao & Yuan, 2004). There are also some scholars who advocate emergent writing, but they
think the main purpose of emergent writing is to let children have chances to explore Chinese
characters and this should be different from ‘real’ writing (Zhou, 2002; Lin et al, 2004). In reality,
there are indeed some private kindergartens and a few public kindergartens teaching writing in
order to cater to the needs of parents in mainland China. It is not likely that these teachers would
teach Chinese writing explicitly and stick such things on the classroom wall. If they do so, then
parents and educational authorities would get a sense that formal handwriting was being taught.
And yet, children need to learn how to write Chinese characters. It is part of being literate.
As I look at the traces of formal handwriting on this kindergarten wall I wonder, how much
formal Chinese writing instruction will I see? How does formal Chinese writing instruction and
practice make children feel? Is it too difficult for them or do they get tired? How do the children
remember so many strokes? How will the teacher teach them writing? There are the questions that
I wanted to know more about. Therefore, during the following days, I paid more attentions to
children’s writing activities. From my observations, I found that children were required to write
two Chinese characters and two English words every day. I saw many children’s handwriting in
their homework books, and I felt that their work is much more advanced than mainland children of
the same age. I watched them writing and I didn’t think they were feeling any pain or that it was
too difficult. I really wanted to know more about the children’s ideas about writing. Unfortunately,

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because of the language barrier, we were unable to communicate. I was beginning to get interested
in kindergarten children’s writing, and I was no longer thinking simply that teachers should not be
teaching young children writing.

Mindy: child and adult bodies[1]

When we walked into the kindergarten classroom, I noticed lots and lots of child bodies filling up
the kindergarten classroom. I counted 32 Chinese child bodies, dressed in school uniforms, sitting
either in chairs or on the floor facing a large screen that was hanging from the wall (see Figure 1).
The child bodies on the floor each had a small rectangular mat to sit on. One teaching body was
standing in the front of the children, near the screen that had been pulled down. The story about a
pizza restaurant, The One Hundredth Guest, was projected onto the screen, and the female teaching
body was pointing to the words with a laser pointer while child bodies were reading the story out
loud. The two other female teaching bodies were attentive and standing tall. With hands behind
their backs, they hovered and carefully watched the sitting and wiggling child bodies. When a child
body began wiggling they received a stern look from the female teaching body. Children were
sitting and their bodies were facing the screen. Our three researching bodies were directed to the
back of the room, where we were asked to have a seat on one of the pink child-sized chairs. While
scrunched behind the group of sitting Chinese child bodies, my white Western body felt oversized
and out of place. I could not understand what the teacher was saying, there was no space for my
body or my bag, and this room seemed too full of bodies, stuff, and teacher talk. While sitting
scrunched over and in the back of the room, I watched as most of the children obediently followed
along with the teacher. Then, slowly, one girl child body turned around and looked at me. I smiled,
and she quickly turned back to the screen. I could see the back of her head, looking up towards the
screen. I wondered if she was paying attention. Then, a boy body turns around and smiles. I smile
back, and then he quickly turns back around facing the screen. Then another boy body slowly turns
around, giving me a curious look. My Western female researching body felt out of place and it did
not belong in this already crowded and overly stuffed kindergarten classroom.

Dialoguing about Literacy and Learning

We have created a dialogue between our three partial perspectives by first naming our positions as
researchers. In order to privilege the perspectives that Vivienne and Chunrong bring to the project,
we use the strategy of inter-referencing in order to direct the discussion towards literacy practices
in mainland China and Hong Kong, rather than focusing on the West. For example, after listening
to and reading about Vivienne’s initial impressions of the 45-minute, whole group story telling
time, Chunrong comments:
These are similar with story telling activities in Yunnan, mainland China. But we don’t use a
story approach, so the teaching processes have some differences. For instance, the sequencing of
literary activities that occur in most Yunnan kindergartens happens first with the teacher telling
the story to the whole group. Then the teacher might ask questions about the [characters’] roles
and plot in order to help children to understand the content and feelings of the [characters’] roles
in the story, they may also guide children to some words in the story, but their main purpose
should be enriching children’s vocabulary. Teachers seldom notice the structures of some
Chinese characters [those in Chinese writing] unless it is a special literacy activity. Finally,
teachers often lead children to connect the story to their lives in order to help children
understand some truths and gain some enlightenment.
By drawing on her experiences in mainland China, Chunrong is using the strategy of inter-
referencing to direct the dialogue away from the West. She does this by intentionally naming these
‘Asian’ views as mainland Chinese and Hong Kong perspectives, as well as dialoguing about them
with Vivienne. This is an important step towards challenging the notion that ‘Asia’ is
homogeneous and that power relations do not exist across the region. The initial impressions that
we provide here, combined with the observational field notes and our researcher debriefings
showed that Chinese character writing was something that interested Chunrong throughout the
study. Chunrong was initially surprised at the children’s writing capabilities, because in Yunnan it is

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believed that young children are not ‘ready’ to do formal Chinese character writing, and so it is not
taught until primary school. In response to Chunrong’s astonishment that young children can
indeed write Chinese characters, Vivienne comments, ‘I think this belief might be because Yunnan
is in the rural area. Like in Hong Kong, I think that they might teach handwriting in kindergarten in
big cities like Shanghai and Beijing.’
Vivienne’s comment is of importance, as she raises issues related to the differences found in
educational experiences across urban and rural locations. This is often written about in Asian
educational research because social exclusion and educational inequalities are found in many
schools located in remote undeveloped cities (Li, 2012). Chunrong shares:
In the early childhood education field, especially in Yunnan, many remote villages have no early
childhood institutions. If they do, they will have a totally different result if we compare literacy
teaching between urban and rural areas. Before I came to Hong Kong, our college did a survey
on the development situation of early childhood education in Yunnan. In my opinion, children in
kindergartens in the rural areas might be given more nonstandard reading and writing training
because most teachers in rural kindergartens are unqualified and not familiar with the early
childhood education policies. I also think they have poor curriculum and instruction in these
kindergartens, and most parents in rural countries simply consider the results of early childhood
education as reading and writing abilities. Also, rural kindergartens have fewer teaching and
learning materials, pencils and books are less expensive than many other learning materials, so
they teach more formal reading and writing.
Although Chunrong cites Asian research that explains how teaching writing skills directly to young
children in kindergarten is forbidden, Vivienne explains why this practice prevails in Hong Kong:
Yes, you are right Chunrong [about the policies forbidding teachers to formally teach
handwriting in kindergarten], but this is due to the expectation of Chinese parents, they want
their children to write as early as possible. It is a misunderstanding of schooling and learning of
the parents. In Hong Kong, the preschools are funded under a Voucher scheme, which places
pressure on kindergartens to enroll more students. In order to get more students, and to keep
their kindergartens open, directors and owners of Hong Kong kindergartens will change the
curriculum in order to meet parents’ expectations.
Chunrong’s comments also show that this phenomenon is happening not just in Hong Kong, but in
Yunnan province too. According to Vivienne, parents’ expectations are based on ‘the
misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about “meaningful” learning of young children by
Chinese parents.’ Chunrong was surprised and impressed that the teachers put the explicit teaching
of stroke order and Chinese character writing on the wall (see Figure 4). Vivienne responds to this
by explaining, ‘Those displays are purposefully for the parents, rather than setting up an interactive
environment that children can engage in it.’
Like Chunrong, Mindy was impressed with the children’s abilities to complete such complex
character writing and also wondered how the children in this classroom remembered all of the
strokes and the correct order of the strokes to successfully complete writing the Chinese characters.
Chinese characters are made up of,
between one and over 20 different strokes, with the average number of strokes being 11 for the
complex characters used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and nine for the simplified characters used
in mainland China. (Chan, 1982; Seidenberg, 1985, as cited by Li et al, 2008)
Despite the awe and amazement that Chunrong and Mindy had in children’s handwriting
capabilities, Vivienne felt that,
Usually, children don’t enjoy the writing tasks required by teachers. In fact, in the classroom that
we observed in the children are required to finish the daily handwriting activity (see Figure 3)
before having a chance to take part in the activity centres. However, I think they enjoyed the
writing that emerged in the process of play, e.g. those name tags that they made for the home
corner set up as restaurant (see Figure 6).

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Figure 6. Children’s emergent writing in the homecorner.

This interest in children’s ability to complete these complex Chinese characters brought back
memories of learning how to write these characters as a child for Vivienne,
When I was young, I also practiced my writing with a Chinese brush and Chinese ink. We also
had special paper for this calligraphy. I hated doing this because it was so hard for me to control
the ink flow and use the brush to write in small boxes in the writing book. It was not easy to
handle with little fingers and the writing was expected to be neat and tidy with the ink.
Whenever they were not marked as good, I was requested to do the correction.
Mindy’s inability to understand Cantonese meant that she focused on different aspects of the
literacy environment. Mindy was overwhelmed by the space in this classroom and her first
impressions raised several questions for Vivienne as she asked,
Did you feel there is a problem about the classroom space? How do you think the crowded
classroom might relate to the literacy represented on the wall? What kind of stern look did the
teachers give to the children? Did you think it was problematic? How might these looks indicate
the expectations they have for the children?

De-colonizing and De-imperializing Practices

We present our initial efforts at dialoguing and inter-referencing to encourage those involved in
knowledge production to consider the usefulness of working with partial perspectives as part of a
de-imperializing and de-colonizing methodology. We believe that this enables a reflexivity that can
undercut the desires to identify with the empire, and in this case referencing the West about ‘best’
literacy practices. De-colonizing and de-imperializing can be understood as active interventions
that occur while dialoguing. For instance, consider how Mindy might answer Vivienne’s questions
about the classroom space and the teaching bodies. One way might involve Mindy referring to her
Western experiences as a kindergarten teacher. However, this response might be taken as ‘truth’,
and further maintain the West/non-Western binary. It might also prevent any further dialoguing
to occur. Another way in which Mindy might reply is by reframing her questions to keep the
dialogue moving, as well as producing new knowledge and reference points. This response might
include Mindy’s uncertainty about what she observed, so she might turn the dialogue over to
Chunrong asking her views about the classroom space or the role of teaching bodies in mainland
China.

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Views from Somewhere

As de-colonizing and de-imperializing practices, participants must be aware of power relations

between themselves, regions, and knowledges, and decide new ways to work with them. This will
require Vivienne, Chunrong, and Mindy to find ways that address both the colonial history of the
Hong Kong curriculum and the past and present power relations that exist between mainland
China, Hong Kong, and potentially other Asian regions, and how these discourses are working to
produce knowledge about literacy practices in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom. These
dialogues, as de-colonizing and de-imperializing practices, can be considered as local spaces for
transforming and rebuilding subjectivity and knowledge.
These de-colonizing and de-imperializing practices do not just magically happen and they are
not easy practices to do. Building on Haraway’s (1988, 1991, 2007) notion of responsibility is useful
for reconsidering our roles as writers and co-researchers. For example, it forces us to see that we
have a responsibility to do this knowledge-making differently. This means being aware of the
power relations that exist between insider and outsider perspectives and across regions, and finding
ways to work with these differences. Responsibility also implies that we need to find ways to get
these partial perspectives and situated knowledges into academic discourse, such as this
publication.
These views about literacy in a Hong Kong kindergarten classroom were produced
somewhere. They were produced in a crowded and vibrant kindergarten classroom located on the
ground floor of a large government-subsidized tower block of flats; outside a busy Hong Kong dai
pai dong (大排檔) while having yum cha; sitting around a table, in a sunny corner office, overlooking
a campus tree-lined street, and through email. The partial perspectives that we each bring to this
project are much more than a mainland Chinese woman, a Hong Kong woman, and a Western
woman coming together and analyzing data. Instead, our views are shaped historically and we
bring these living colonial histories to our exchanges. However, rather than ignoring them, we are
finding ways to work with these. These are certainly views from somewhere, and not from a
mysterious out there.
Finally, while in some ways this has been a small project, it has had a big impact on us. The
process of creating and working with situated knowledges has played a part in ‘transforming
ourselves’ (Chen, 2010, p. 212). We are becoming different kinds of researchers who are learning
with others and creating new ways to dialogue through respect, understanding, and listening.

Notes
[1] Mindy does not write in a naturalistic style because she is drawing from posthumanism, which is a
different way of looking at and understanding relationality and materiality (see Blaise, 2013, for an
example of how this is done in early childhood).

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Views from Somewhere

MINDY BLAISE* is associate professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education and co-
director of Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation at the Hong Kong Institute of
Education. Mindy’s areas of research interest relate to engaging with ‘postdevelopmental’ and
postfoundational perspectives to rethink early childhood teaching, research, curriculum and
childhood. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality issues and challenges the broader notion
of a universal childhood and encourages the field to engage with, rather than shut down, difference
and diversity. Mindy has recently co-edited, with Affrica Taylor and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, a
special issue for Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, ‘Relating Childhood to the More-than-
Human’ (July 2012). She is also co-editing (with Liz Brooker and Suzy Edwards) the SAGE
International Handbook of Research on Play and Learning (forthcoming, 2013). Correspondence:
blaise@ied.edu.hk

VIVIENNE WAI MAN LEUNG is an assistant professor in the Department of Early Childhood
Education and a member of the Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation at the Hong Kong
Institute of Education. She is involved in both preservice and inservice teacher training
programmes. Her teaching areas include ‘learning and teaching in early childhood education’,
‘early childhood curriculum: theory and practice’ and ‘information and communication
technologies in early childhood curriculum’. She has been a practicum supervisor of both inservice
and preservice students of early childhood programmes. Her research has been related to the use of
information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning with young children
and teacher training. She is currently involved in three research projects in the areas of early
literacy, video-based assessment for preservice student teachers and multimodal learning
experiences of children using e-platform. Correspondence: wmleung@ied.edu.hk

CHUNRONG SUN is a graduate student at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. She is studying
for her doctorate of education in the Department of Early Childhood Education and is a member of
the Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation. She has a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in
early childhood education and has worked as a college lecturer in Yunnan, China. She has
researched in Yunnan kindergartens and is familiar with education policies in mainland China and
practices in Yunnan. Her research interests focus on teaching and learning in kindergarten
classrooms and early moral education. Correspondence: s1103380@s.ied.edu.hk

*Contact author

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