Journal for Education in International Development 2:3 December 2006 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: THE EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY Alan Pence, University of Victoria Jessica Schafer, University of Ottawa Citation Pence, Alan, Shafer, Jessica (2006). Indigenous Knowledge and Early Childhood Development in Africa: The Early Childhood Development Virtual University, Journal for Education in International Development 2:3. Retrieved from www.equip123.net/jeid/articles/4/IndigenousKnowledgeandtheECDVU.pdf. on [insert month] [insert day], [insert year] Abstract This paper focuses on the use of indigenous knowledge in development, and especially in early childhood development practices and policies. It examines the Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU) program, which provides distance education capacity building programs in Africa. In particular, the article describes the generative curriculum model in which students contribute to the learning process by bringing indigenous knowledge and practices into the curriculum. The approach bears on ECD practice and curricula by seeking to better ground programs and policy in local, accepted, successful practices. By integrating indigenous knowledge into higher education addressing ECD, the ECDVU promotes more appropriate cross-cultural curriculum content, which can lead to more effective ECD policies and programs. Introduction One of the early Western academic uses of non-Western indigenous knowledge was the medicinal use of plants; the indigenous knowledge of botany served Western medicine and pharmacology. The value of indigenous knowledge has been increasingly recognized in other fields, including early childhood development, as development agencies and institutions of higher learning come to appreciate its contributions. 1 This paper focuses on the use of indigenous knowledge in development, and especially in early childhood development, to reach development goals more effectively, particularly given the failures of technical and technological fixes rooted in Western knowledge frameworks. 2 1 In the last decades, the World Bank has created an Indigenous Knowledge Program (http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/); several journals have been created around indigenous knowledge (http://www.nuffic.nl/ciran/ikdm/; www.indigenouslawjournal.org/, inter alia); indigenous knowledge networks and websites have been created (http://www.ik-pages.net/ik-network.html; http://www.africahistory.net), along with a database of best practices using indigenous knowledge (http://www.unesco.org/most/bpikreg.htm). 2 Robert Chambers (1983, 1994, 1997) has been a champion of this point of view. Indigenous Knowledge and Early Childhood Development 1