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This research examined the critical incidents of 10 United States (US) early childhood student teachers during a three-week university-sponsored international field experience conducted in three urban preschools in Kathmandu, Nepal. The purpose of employing the critical incident technique was to allow the US student teachers to reflect critically on successful and unsuccessful intercultural interactions in an effort to identify cultural assumptions about teaching young children. The approach was used not only to make assumptions visible, but also to make conceptual and behavioral changes based on what was learned from the critical reflection. The student teachers wrote weekly critical incidents, which were then discussed during weekly individual interviews. Three group discussions, a research journal, and field notes were used to triangulate the findings. A qualitative thematic analysis revealed five types of written critical incidents: descriptive, hypothetical, resistive, reflective, and integrative. Illustrative critical incidents are presented to compare and contrast how the international field experience allowed for productive reflection of cultural assumptions for some student teachers while leading to resistance to cultural assumptions for other student teachers. The findings suggest that outcomes vary based on the student teachers’ ability not only to identify their cultural assumptions, but also to challenge their cultural assumptions with actions grounded in ethnorelative reflection when teaching diverse groups of young children in the US and abroad.

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This ethnographic study examined the (un)intended 1 consequences of increased privatization of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Nepal and Kenya. Qualitative data showed overreliance on high-stakes standardized tests increased competition for ‘good grades or examination scores’, thus (un)intentionally creating ideal conditions for proliferation of for-profit private schools that predominantly taught culturally decontextualized education at all levels of schooling. Private schools in both countries served high-income families and children, while low-income families and children did not have access to ECE or attended government and not-for-profit programmes. Rather than bridging the gap between low and high-income families, these educational spaces influenced existing social divisions and inequalities. Therefore, this study concluded that private schools in Nepal and Kenya function like businesses, which (un)intentionally promoted educational injustice 2 against children from low-income families. Consequently, authors recommend enactment of new educational policies and practices that promote culturally contextualized curricula in ECE programmes.