Conceptualized within a socio-cultural constructivist and postcolonial paradigm, the book explores a definite tension between "Western" theories of child development and the "Indian" ways of being and thinking. This book also provides a richly descriptive and relatively unexamined account of the culturally complex and multi-dimensional relationship that exists in urban India between formal teacher education, early childhood classrooms, and the daily experiences of children and early childhood teachers. Rich examples and anecdotes from research data, concrete details, and several chapters devoted to the voices of teachers describing their classroom make this book one of the first of its kind.