Creating a rich curriculum through intentional teaching

Early childhood curricula are designed to provide young children with a range of experiences and interactions in order to grow their knowledge, skills, and dispositions for learning. New Zealand early childhood teachers typically aim to provide rich play and learning experiences which foreground children’s interests, position teachers as facilitative, and where extensive teacher engagement within children’s play may be perceived as undesirable interference. This passive positioning of teachers in early childhood education may be detrimental to young children’s learning and wellbeing. To address this, we propose teachers’ engagement in intentional teaching as an important aspect of ensuring children experience the rich curriculum intended in Te Whāriki 2017.