Zealand Early Childhood Education Research Articles

Reignited flames: Just Early Childhood Education in neoliberal times

In Australasia there is great enthusiasm if little understanding of the ontology of Reggio Emilia preschools. The ontology of both Reggio Emilia schools and the New Zealand Early Childhood Education (ECE) bi-cultural curriculum emerge from invasive experiences of military violence, of framing ECE as social justice. In this paper I tell three tales of ‘quality’. Two are contexted, local, where the quality draws on the ontology of resisting violence. The third, with a veneer of neutrality, does a violence to these, through decontextualized econometric claims to universality.

Culturally Oriented Environmental Identity Transitions: Migrant Indian Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand Early Childhood Education

Culturally Oriented Environmental Identity Transitions: Migrant Indian Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand Early Childhood Education

Mentoring in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education

Mentoring in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education

Culturally Reflective Practice: An Alternative Framework to Culturally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Education in New Zealand

This paper critically examines the adoption and implications of culturally appropriate and reflective practices in New Zealand early childhood education (ECE). Using the national ECE framework, Te Whāriki, as a case study, this analysis highlights the limitations of culturally appropriate practices in addressing systemic decontextualization issues. It proposes culturally reflective practices as a more comprehensive alternative. By integrating universal minimum standards of human and children’s rights with local cultural contexts, culturally reflective practices challenge dominant discourses and promote a democratic ECE system. This paper further explores the necessity of incorporating culturally sensitive and sustaining pedagogies in teacher education to foster a reflective practice that transcends mere cultural appropriateness.

The policy-research-practice triangle in New Zealand early childhood education: Complexities, impossibilities and silences

ABSTRACT Inspired by the New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE) Conference 2022, entitled ‘The Mighty Triangle: The strength of the research-policy-practice triangle for addressing local, national, and global challenges’ (https://www.nzare.org.nz/events/te-aonui-the-mighty-triangle/), this article examines some of the relational complexities and specificities within the Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education and care policy-research-practice triangle. This article problematises the notion of the ‘mighty’ triangle as a ‘durable’ structure by examining how each corner, side and angle is produced in the context of prevailing global neoliberal discourses. We argue that making sense of the complex dynamics within the Aotearoa ECE policy-research-practice triangle requires understanding the politics, relationships and dynamics of conflict and the struggle of those, directly and indirectly, involved in (and excluded) and influenced by the triangle. Therefore, the article critically engages with the ‘impossibilities’ and complexities of the ECE policy-research-practice triangle and takes a closer look at those impacted and/or marginalised by ‘beautiful durable structures’ of ECE triangle politics, particularly the voices of teachers.

Characteristics of professional development research in Aotearoa New Zealand's early childhood education sector

Teachers’ professional learning and development (PLD) is an essential component in the provision of quality education. Through objective 3.6 in the Early Learning Action Plan 2019-2029 (Ministry of Education, 2019a) the Ministry of Education has signalled a need for a managed, coherent system of PLD to support the professional learning needs of early childhood teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Over time, research has sought to enhance understanding of PLD in ways that can contribute to more effective PLD programmes. Yet, gaps remain between PLD research, policy and practice. Synthesising extant research is important to identify existing and cumulative knowledge, and reveal research-to-practice gaps. This article reports the results of a systematic literature review, conducted to identify characteristics of PLD research within Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood education sector. Fifty-six research articles and reports were systematically reviewed. Findings identify that the predominantly descriptive body of research is characterised by a convergence of researchers’ and teachers’ roles, largely positive outcomes, and a broad content focus with less attention paid to PLD processes.

Leadership practices and indicators of quality, connected through internal evaluation processes in the New Zealand ECE sector

The last few years has seen a significant increase in the attention paid to leadership in the New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) sector, particularly in guiding documents. While these provide greater clarity than previously on expectations around leadership practice, a greater understanding of what leadership means and how it is implemented in different contexts is still needed. This article is based on a study exploring how educational leadership is practised through internal evaluation processes in New Zealand ECE services, and how these practices support the professional capabilities and capacities of teachers. Previous research has highlighted that a practice approach to leadership removes the focus on the individual leader and allows leadership to emerge from collective action. The objectives of this research study were: to develop a better understanding of how educational leadership is practised through internal evaluation processes; explore what challenges or enables teachers to become involved and practise educational leadership through internal evaluation processes; and to understand how services monitor the impact of changes on teaching practice, made as a result of an internal evaluation.
 This qualitative research, which took the form of an interpretive case study, was framed around a single case design with multiple units of analysis. Data were gathered from three participating ECE services through interviews, focus groups and observations, and drew on the perspectives of both teachers and positional leaders. A reflexive thematic data analysis approach was employed, and four key themes were developed: identification with leadership; supportive workplace culture; continuous improvement; and effective leadership practices in ECE services. Seven effective leadership practices were also identified: relational leadership; creating the conditions for teamwork; engagement; knowledge expertise and sharing opinions; shared decision making; facilitating and guiding and accountability and organisation. This article contributes to our further understanding of educational leadership practices in New Zealand ECE services.

Pepe Meamea as a Framework for Samoan Infants and Toddlers in Aotearoa New Zealand

This article conceptualises Pepe Meamea (Samoan concept of infant/toddler) to ground Samoan cultural understandings, values and beliefs of the Samoan child as a collective, holistic and relational being. The Samoan worldview of children and childhood prioritises the whole child, and this has implications when positioned within a dominant Eurocentric early childhood curriculum (ECE) curriculum and pedagogy framework. The semiotics of the Samoan language references a collective position for personhood rather than an individual one which warrants further examination into Samoan conceptualisations of Pepe Meamea pushing back at normative assumptions. As an innovative practice and philosophy for teaching, Pepe Meamea already has deep Samoan cultural knowledges associated with its term. Pepe Meamea is understood and commonly referred to as infants or newborns. This presents initial talanoa (dialogue) with teachers from six Aoga Amata (Samoan early childhood centres) in a two-year research Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) project (2021‐2022). Using Samoan language as the conduit for creation and cultural reference ensures Samoan children’s cultural rights are adhered to through an Indigenous Samoan paradigm. As an innovative practice and concept, Pepe Meamea already has deep cultural Indigenous knowledge associated with its term; however, this article presents the possibilities of Pepe Meamea through the development of a pedagogical and relational framework that promotes its implementation in the Aotearoa New Zealand ECE environment. How the New Zealand Te Whāriki early childhood education (ECE) curriculum is responsive to Pepe Meamea is another dimension this paper will consider as the majority of the New Zealand Samoan population are born and raised in a New Zealand context. This research paper reports on the first phase of the project, the process of co-designing a Pepe Meamea pedagogical framework with Samoan teachers.

Insights into Indian immigrant children’s and parents’ experiences of New Zealand early childhood education

Immigrant families face many cultural and adjustment issues, including children’s engagement in early childhood education (ECE). Through research-based interviews, nine Indian parents shared their perceptions of their children’s experiences in New Zealand ECE. They identified positive experiences and concerns related to curriculum, language development, teacher’s attitudes, children’s participation, and EC centre operational hours. They offered recommendations including parents inquiring about ECE philosophies and practices prior to admission, and early enrolment. They made recommendations for teachers around timely and meaningful interactions with immigrant children and families, developing active listening skills, communicating with parents around curriculum approaches and health and hygiene practices, understanding each child’s diverse cultural and social practices, and promoting multicultural environments and knowledge in ECE.

Healthy Food Environments in Early Learning Services: An Analysis of Manager Survey Responses, Menus and Policies in Regional New Zealand Early Childhood Education and Care Centres.

Healthy food environments in early childhood play an important role in establishing health-promoting nutritional behaviours for later life. We surveyed Early Learning Services (ELS) in the Hawke’s Bay region of New Zealand and describe common barriers and facilitators to providing a healthy food environment, through descriptive survey analysis and thematic analysis of open-ended questions. We used a policy analysis tool to assess the strength and comprehensiveness of the individual centre’s nutrition policies and we report on the healthiness of menus provided daily in the centres. Sixty-two centres participated and 96.7% had policies on nutrition compared to 86.7% with policies on drinks. Of the 14 full policies provided for analysis, identified strengths were providing timelines for review and encouraging role modelling by teachers. The main weaknesses were communication with parents and staff, lack of nutrition training for staff and absence of policies for special occasion and fundraising food. With regard to practices in the ELS, food for celebrations was more likely to be healthy when provided by the centre rather than brought from home. Food used in fundraising was more likely to be unhealthy than healthy, though <20% of centres reported using food in fundraising. Only 40% of menus analysed met the national guidelines by not including any ‘red’ (unhealthy) items. Centre Managers considered the biggest barriers to improving food environments to be a lack of parental support and concerns about food-related choking. These results highlight the need for future focus in three areas: policies for water and milk-only, celebration and fundraising food; increased nutrition-focused professional learning and development for teachers; and communication between the centre and parents, as a crucial pathway to improved nutrition for children attending NZ early childhood education and care centres.

Provoking opportunities for science in early childhood education

This article presents findings from a doctoral study which examined the ways teaching teams in six New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) centres fostered and supported young children’s scientific experiences. The focus of this article is the pedagogical practice of using provocations to facilitate scientific opportunities. The way provocations fostered science occurrences will be explored drawing on the experiences of teachers in two of the centres involved in the research. The article will discuss where the pedagogical approach of provocations originates and provide examples of how provocations can facilitate opportunities for investigations around scientific concepts.

Japanese children’s experiences in New Zealand early childhood education settings

Early childhood education (ECE) settings in Aotearoa New Zealand are becoming increasingly ethnically superdiverse. This article draws on a research project that examined the cultural challenges that Japanese children sometimes encounter in New Zealand ECE contexts which was undertaken for my Doctor of Education. Data were analysed using a conceptual framework developed from five key notions that apply to third-culture individuals (TCI). The experiences of one child in this project and the tensions he experienced negotiating his self-identity as a Japanese child are described and their impact on his sense of belonging to the group of children at the centre is considered. The findings revealed that, despite the good intentions of teachers, the child’s Japanese cultural identity, and his attempts to share it, were frequently challenged by his teachers’ lack of cultural knowledge about Japan. I argue that these experiences resulted in complex situations for both the Japanese child and his teachers.

Extent of tablet computer use in New Zealand's early childhood education services

In 2017, New Zealand’s revised curriculum for early childhood education, Te Whāriki, expanded reference to the use of technology for teaching and learning to include digital media and related devices. This article reports findings from a doctoral study about tablet computer use among New Zealand’s four major early childhood service types: education and care centres, home-based services, kindergartens, and playcentres. Data were gathered in 2017, initially through a national survey, followed by a collective case study. Seven services participated in the collective case study which was designed to explain the results of the survey. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to analyse survey data while cross-case analysis was used to identify themes from the responses from each service in the collective case study.&#x0D; The results are presented according to two categories of respondents, services who classified themselves as non-users and services who were using tablet computers for teaching and learning at the time of the survey. The national survey results revealed that more than half of the services did not use tablets. Non-users’ reasons for not using tablet computers are discussed considering findings from both quantitative and qualitative phases of the study. Services who used tablets did so for a variety of reasons, including for documentation and assessment, to support children’s learning and teaching work. Qualitative data regarding policies or guidelines for staff about the use of and access to digital media, teachers’ and educators’ learning for how to use touchscreen tablets for teaching and learning, as well as services’ preferences on the facilitation of children’s tablet use are also presented.&#x0D; An important issue uncovered in this study was the use of personal tablets within ECE services. Among non-users, teachers and educators from more than half of home-based services and playcentres used their personally owned tablet computers, raising concerns about cybersafety and screen time. Many user services did not have formal guidelines or policies regarding tablet use. The data suggest that some services relied on the use of teachers’ and educators’ personally owned tablets. Implications arising from the findings of this study are explored, including the relevance of using digital technology for supporting distance learning and learning at home as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Business managers in children’s playground : Exploring a problematic (or not!) identity construction of early childhood teachers in New Zealand

The impacts of neo-liberal education reforms on the early childhood education sector have been a focal point of scholarly critiques in New Zealand. Interestingly, only a few studies have addressed how teacher professional identities and professionalism have changed in response to the neo-liberal context of New Zealand early childhood education. It has been, however, recognised that understanding the complexity of teacher professional identities within the rapidly transforming landscape of early childhood education is a key consideration in implementing and sustaining a change agenda in education policies and practices. In this article, the author draws on data from her research study about how teachers’ professional identities have been reconstructed in response to the shifting discourses in New Zealand early childhood education policies and practices. Specifically, the author explores the construction of teachers as business managers, which has emerged through an interplay of discourses of marketisation and privatisation driving some of the country’s early childhood education policies and practices. It is argued that the construction of teachers as business managers has altered core professional ethical values underpinning the teaching profession, professionalism and the purpose of early childhood education in New Zealand, which were traditionally embedded in discourses of collective democracy, equity and social justice.

“Polish One’s Jade with Stones from Another Mountain”: Examining the Case of a New Zealand-Inspired Early Childhood Education Centre in China

This article reports on a case study that investigated the implementation of New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) beliefs in a kindergarten in China and its implications. The study used a process of document analysis and individual interviews with teachers and parents to collect data. The incorporation of “Western” education approaches is not a new phenomenon in China. This paper uses empirical findings to highlight new concerns regarding this ongoing practice. It analyses the tensions emerging when a foreign curriculum and pedagogy are imported into a local setting without consideration of social and cultural contextual factors. It further scrutinises how imported and global beliefs and practices are responsive to, and sustain, valuable local knowledge that has been embraced and enacted for generations.

Supporting teachers’ practice through professional learning and development: What’s happening in New Zealand early childhood education?

Early childhood teachers’ professional learning and development (PLD) is a significant factor in the provision of quality early childhood education (ECE), yet gaining a full picture of PLD in the New Zealand ECE context is problematic. Information about government-funded PLD programmes is available through evaluations, however, teachers access PLD from a range of providers, many of whom are not government-funded, nor subject to regular monitoring for quality. Teachers’ reports, therefore, represent important sources of insight into PLD. We surveyed New Zealand early childhood teachers about their experiences of PLD, including topics, delivery, and facilitation. We analysed 345 responses. Workshops were the most commonly experienced PLD model. Many respondents had also experienced job-embedded support, but may not have experienced the types of facilitation strategies likely to prompt shifts in teaching practice. This article reports the survey results, examines implications and discusses features of PLD that support shifts in teaching practice.

One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum

Early childhood scholars in New Zealand have long lamented a rising dominance of neoliberalism. Correspondingly they suggest that there has been a lessening of socialist ideals and principles of Te Ao Māori after years of a right-wing government. With the ‘refresh’ of New Zealand’s national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki under the Fifth National Government we sought to investigate the location of these discourses in Te Whāriki. Borrowing from Tolkien this paper draws on the metaphor of a ruling, in this case neoliberal, discourse as ‘one ring to rule them all’. We investigate the governmentality of the Fifth National Government through their Four Year Plan 2016–2020 and its permeation of the revised curriculum. Seeking to better understand the location and dominance of neoliberalism within the updated Te Whāriki, the paper analyses both the 1996 curriculum and the 2017 revision for socialist, neoliberal and Te Ao Māori discourses, and their status within the document. A post-structuralist conceptual framework is employed for this study, bringing to bear Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva in conversation. Analysis across both Te Whāriki and the Four Year Plan found that while neoliberalism was certainly a pervasive discourse, it was, in fact, accompanied by discourses of socialism, neoliberalism and Te Ao Māori. The paper concludes by suggesting that, while neoliberalism may appear to dominate texts, there are complex interanimations between a number of discourses. This multitude potentially ameliorates any one discourse’s domination or, conversely, compromises others. With these findings come important implications concerning the pervasive discourse of neoliberalism and its shaping potential. However, there are also concerns for a new form of colonisation within early childhood curriculum and policy reform.

Space speaks: A portrait of an early childhood centre and the affordances provided by the learning environment

The quality of early childhood education and care fundamentally depends on teachers’ wise practice. However, the environments in which that education and care occur can influence, inform, and shape teachers’ practice, and children’s and families’ experiences. This article draws on a written “portrait” of the learning environment created at one New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) centre, capturing both physical and non-physical aspects of the environment and highlighting the affordances the environment offered to children and families/whānau. A Reggio Emilia lens is used to inform analysis of the learning environment and the associated affordances. The portrait (McChesney, 2020) and this article may support practitioners by providing a vision of what can be in terms of early childhood learning environments, and by providing a possible framework for self-review and inquiry.

Reimagining teacher subjectivity in Pacific early childhood education in New Zealand

This article presents a transnational Moana talanoa 1 between two Pacific early childhood education scholars. Calling on both Samoan and Tongan indigenous understandings that breathe life into a Moana subjectivity is inclusive of ways of knowing, relating and becoming. We turn our attention to the importance of talanoa (stories/storying) in reconstituting olaga 2 and tangata kakato 3 in the act of decolonising Pacific 4 personhood in New Zealand early childhood education. Moana, the waters that bind Pacific peoples through genealogy, relationality and cosmogony, generate intersubjectivity; a folding of past-present-futures. It is in the spirit of Moana that we bring attention to the interconnectedness of subjects in the context of early childhood education in New Zealand. By way of movement in and with Moana, the currents, depth and flows, we problematise politics of early childhood education and professional teacher identity. Such tensions require navigation and as Hawaiian scholar Meyer said: ‘How one knows, indeed, what one prioritises with regards to this knowing, ends up being the stuffing of identity, the truth that links us to our distant cosmologies, and the essence of who we are as Oceanic peoples’ (p. 125). In thinking-Moana-intersubjectivity, we call into question how the agency and subjectivity of teacher identity can be reimagined. We share our narratives through poetry and story as a mode of expression in analysing and decolonising personhood.

Indian teachers and environmental identity in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education

The Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education (ECE) landscape is becoming increasingly multicultural, in particular with a significant number of migrant Indian teachers working in the field. This paper explores the potential role of environmental identity as migrant Indian ECE teachers navigate between the Indian and New Zealand cultures, wherein the environment may hold different meanings and place in these two cultural systems. The natural environment holds a special place in Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural systems and is an integral part of the national identity. It can be argued that early childhood environmental education is important, and is already playing a part, in developing children’s environmental identity across the country. In facilitating this, teachers’ environmental identities can be equally important, especially in the case of migrant teachers, whose identities are influenced by different cultural systems. Our interest is in the environmental identities of migrant Indian teachers’ given their growing numbers in Aotearoa New Zealand ECE.