Advocating for children’s rights in early education is an important role for teachers. This role has many challenges, not least of which is understanding what children’s rights are and how they can be used effectively to support children’s learning. This article reports on how teachers in an early care and education centre advocated for children’s rights.

Through the use of fictionalisation, a narrative inquiry tool that allows for the “trying on” of future possibilities, I survey the state of the US curriculum field in the aftermath of Schwab’s “practical”. I note that the theory–practice binary, which Schwab explicated in the 1970s, morphed into a highly convoluted theory–practice–policy divide by the 2000s. I demonstrate the latter in the narrative exemplar of my teacher education practices I include.

New Zealand’s previous examination-based secondary assessment system can be viewed as encompassing cultural values presenting unfair challenges for indigenous and other nonmajority students. The standards-based National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) incorporates enhanced flexibility, student choice and grading practices independent of comparisons with others. These features may be a better match for the educational aspirations of collectivist cultures, yet little is known about the views of Māori and Pacific students and their parents on NCEA.

This article is offered as a provocation for teachers, encouraging them to reflect on underlying assumptions about the ways in which resources for children’s learning are managed. The article explores how the familiar notion of children’s “freedom of choice” was played out in a centre. It describes how, within the apparent freedom, teacher controls set parameters around the range of available resources and children’s access to them, and defined how they might be used.