Miao Ethnic Kindergarten Teachers’ Concerns, Solutions, and Attitudes in Localizing a ‘Foreign’ Curriculum in Southwest China

Among the Miao ethnic minority areas, there has been a local effort to adopt Anji Play. This play-oriented kindergarten curriculum originates from Zhejiang, a tier-one province, into the Qiandongnan Prefecture of Guizhou. However, teachers’ experiences, perspectives, and attitudes play a critical role in successfully improving curricula [1,2], especially in places where cultural contexts significantly differ from those of the curriculum’s origin. Together with issues including cultural mismatches and differing educational philosophies, localizing the Anji Play from Zhejiang was no easy task. This article focused on narrating Miao teachers’ perspectives, concerns, and attitudes on the complexities of curriculum localization that permeated their attempts to ensure that educational practices resonated with local cultural values. At the end of the article, feasible means to empower the local Miao teachers to exercise their professional judgment and implementation while adapting unfamiliar curricula to local contexts are also discussed.