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Alison Browning
Drexel University
EDGI 532
Professor D. Brent Edwards

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Rachel Christina's Tend the Olive, Water the VIne: Globalization and the Negotiation of Early Childhood in Palestine focuses on the Palestinian Early Childhood Resource Center, a Palestinian nongovernmental organization that works in the education sector.  Christina spent 11 months from 1999-200 interviewing a variety of important actors at ECRC, observing early childhood education teachers and classrooms in refugee, urban and village settings, reviewing documents and attending NGO and government conferences in Palestine.  Through her interviews and observations Christina tries to understand how one organization is successfully addressing the needs of the local while at the same time navigating its role in the global context of education, Palestine and NGOs.

Christina discovers how teacher training can be a way to create change at a very local level.  For the ECRC, "local means the local culture of the particular village, refugee camp or city neighborhood in which early childhood education institutions are located" (pg. 34).  Teachers are trained to promote play-based learning, which is a rights-based approached.  The teachers also engage in serious reflection about their practices and the program and this assessment is brought back to the ECRC and the programs are tailored and changed as needed.

Christina also explores how the ECRC is contributing to the development of early childhood programs at a national level.  In order to have a better working relationship with the government, the ECRC took on a more advocacy-based and consultative role (pg. 82).  The ECRC also made sure to be a consistent participant in many initiatives.  Christine sites this "multifaceted approach" as an "intelligent choice, and one which increased the ECRC's chances of success in having its vision of early childhood incorporated into national programming" (pg. 85).

Christina concludes that ECRC has been successful because of the balance it has struck between the local and the global and its definitions and understanding of those terms.  The Centre has many definitions of the term local and this fluidity has allowed it to to "take an active role in shaping the direction of the systems within which it operates" (pg. 144).

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Christina, R. (2006). Tend the olive, water the vine: Globalization and the negotiation of early childhood in Palestine. Greenwich, CT: IAP-Information Age Pub.

Palestinian Early Childhood Education Centre. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ecrc-jer.org/

Praetorius, D. (n.d.). Israel MAP: The Palestinian Region's Changing Borders. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/19/israel-map-the-palestinia_n_864379.html

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"ECRC demonstrates that the NGO sector does hold potential for the articulation of local concerns and preferences within globalizing development agendas, and indeed for the development of a more mediated and hybridized world system" (pg. 138)

The case of the ECRC offers hope that grassroots movements and organizations that take care to listen and understand local needs can be successful within a larger global context.  The ECRC at the most local level empowered teachers and worked within diverse communities to establish programs, create materials and conduct research that would benefit children, adults and the community at large.  From their experiences and research, the ECRC helped the government and other NGOs understand not only the importance of early childhood education, but the importance of working at very local levels to achieve success.  By following the example of the ECRC other NGOs and program around the globe could learn how to strike the balance between the global and local in order successfully meet the needs of a community.

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Rachel Christina chose to do an ethnographic study so that while researching attention could be paid to the "multiple layers of 'culture' which influenced how the participants created meaning in their context" (Christina, 2006, pg. 166).  Christina worked in Palestine from 1993-1995 as an early childhood educator and this background helped her gain entry into the field and provided her contact with key personnel at ECRC.  Christina made sure to clearly define her role within the organization as a "scholar-in-residence."  This role allowed Christina to do two things.  First, being a scholar-in-residence gave the author access to documents, activities and debates.  It also allowed her to give back to the organization in the form of grant proposals, translations and planning (pg. 170).  Second, being a scholar-in residence allowed Christina to negotiate tensions that arose within the organization and position herself as neutral (pg. 170).   Christina also entered this study being fluent in colloquial Palestinian Arabic allowing her to conduct interviews with the staff and teachers in their native language thus, helping to establish a trust between the author and subjects of the study (pg. 171). Christina completed her research over a period of 11 months from 1999-2000.  She conducted several interviews with staff and teachers at the ECRC.  Christina also used participant-observation to gather data and analyze the ECRC.  The author conducted observations at schools, trainings, homes and policy meetings.

Through her extensive interviews and observations the author was able to provide a detailed look at how one NGO is trying to negotiate meaning and exist in a very complicated political, social and cultural environment.  Along with her language skills and her previous experience as an educator in Palestine, Christina was able to create a foundation of trust which led to candid interviews and a "local" of understanding of political, cultural and social tensions.  As a scholar-in- residence, the author was granted an "insider" vantage point of ECRC that not every researcher would likely have been granted.

It is difficult to find limitations to Christina's approaches in this study.  The author was careful to define her role to the participants and in the ECRC so that her integrity and trust could not be questioned by those involved in this study.  The schools that the author visited were located in diverse areas: a refugee camp school, an urban school and seven village schools (pg. 176).  Christina also chose a wide variety of teachers and staff to interview and this allowed her to gather data from all involved in the ECRC.  In addition to these interviews, Christina also observed conferences that involved other NGOs, as well as the World Bank, SIDA and UNICEF.  Observations of this nature "provided important data on the relationships among the various actors in the childhood sector" (pg. 176).

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Christina address three major research questions in her study:

How does the Early Childhood Resource Centre attempt to develop and implement programming for the Palestinian early childhood sector that integrates local needs and preferences with global trends in developmental and education theory and related practice?  How are the "local" and the "global" defined and manipulated within the daily activities of the organization? (pg. 139)

What is the composition of the web of influences that affect the design and implementation of the ECRC's programming, and what is the nature of the Centre's interaction with those influences? (pg. 144)

What are the most significant outcomes of the Centre's negotiations of control with various other players in the development industry? (pg. 151)

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A (very) Brief History of Education in Palestine

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A (very) Brief History of Education in Palestine

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It would be impossible to understand Christina's study about early childhood education in Palestine without first having some general information about the history of Palestinian education.  Christina (2006) writes "the Palestinian educational system is essentially a colonial legacy, controlled consecutively by the Ottoman Turks, by Jordan after the 1948 war, by Egypt in Gaza and then by Israeli military authorities following the 1967 occupation (pg. 2).  Throughout its history the staff in schools (whether they be refugee, urban or village schools) and the lower-level administrators have been Palestinian.  However, the ultimate decision makers on education were always outsiders and as Christina describes "the rigid nature of the overall education system prevented bottom-up actions for the assertion of Palestinian identity through schooling" (pg. 3).  In 1994 the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) assumed responsibility for the the school system including curriculum, administration, testing, teacher training and financing (pg. 4).

Since 1994 there has been much educational policy discourse around the imperative of designing an educational system which "truly reflects Palestinian priorities and identity" (pg. 4).  Unfortunately, there are three challenges to this agenda that the author describes.  First, defining a "Palestinian identity" is difficult because of shifting political and social influences (pg. 5).  Second, the PNA is heavily dependent on external funding for educational reform and along with this funding comes assumptions about best practices that are mostly Western (pg 5).  Third, Palestine's existence is "contingent upon the preferences and leverage of the same international actors which are funding its development efforts, and those efforts wax and wane depending on the particular state's or agency's relationship with Israel (pg. 5).

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"Planning for the future is often based on unquestioned assumptions or popular "truths" about history and context which frequently undermine efforts to promote change on the ground by contradicting or invaliding the lived experiences of the people who are the focus of development efforts" (Christina, 2006, pg. 1)

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"Development is a process of identity and negotiation for all parties, and that negotiation involves both incorporation and rejection of a variety of influences" (Christina, 2006, pg. 31)

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The Palestinian Early Childhood Resource Center was established in 1985 to address weaknesses in the "provision of care and education for young children in occupied territories" (Christina, 2006, pg. xvii).  These weaknesses include: a lack of human and material resources and a lack of services for (poor) children. The ECRC's stated mission is to "address the need for a progressive approach to early childhood education and care with integrates universal childhood development knowledge and the realities of Palestinian Arab culture and civilization" (Christina, 2006, pg. xviii).

The ECRC:

provides in-service teacher training for early childhood professionals

provides in-service training for the staff in the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Ministry of Social Affairs

runs or serves as a consultant for nurseries and kindergartens

coordinates training in villages, refugee camps and towns

maintains a library of resources on early childhood education

designs and produces low-cost learning materials

conducts research on theory and practice in the early childhood field. (Christina, 2006, pg. xviii).

The organization is run by an independent board of Palestinian directors. ECRC receives funding from the Palestinian National Authority, Christian Aid, OxFam, the Ford Foundation and some private donations.

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The land in green is Palestinian territory that is under the control of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).