Early Childhood Folio 12 (2008)

Te Whāriki has two indicative learning outcomes: dispositions and working theories. The notion of dispositions has been explored extensively over the past few years, but the concept of working theories has remained obscure. This article begins to redress this situation. It looks at how children develop and refine their working theories about the world, and how early childhood teachers can challenge and guide their thinking.

How can early childhood centres develop environmental competency? This case study shows how, as children, teachers, and families interact to establish and maintain environmentally friendly systems, such as recycling, they support and encourage each other to extend and improve their practices. This ripples out to influence what families do at home and in the wider community.

Cameras, personal computers, the Internet, educational software. Information and communication technology is everywhere in modern life. How should early childhood teachers respond to the challenges of ICT? This article explores the idea of developing a philosophy of technology as a way to empower teachers to think critically about the role of ICT in education.

What happens when teachers exclude an aspect of children’s home culture—popular media—from early childhood centres? This case study documents how teacher rules (“no guns”, “no toys from home”) impacted more on boys than girls, and how boys subverted the rules to act out their media-inspired war, weapon, and superhero play.

Lesbian parents live in a world that often assumes that all families consist of mum, dad, and the kids. This can complicate their families’ participation in early childhood education. Through interviews with gay mothers, this article draws out the tensions underlying their experiences at early childhood centres. These mothers negotiate between achieving visibility and acceptance, and avoiding negative reactions for their children.

A solid mathematical vocabulary is a crucial basis for later mathematical learning. This article follows the development of mathematical language in a two-year-old. It examines when preschoolers learn basic terms—for colour, position, shape, and number—and documents the order in which they become part of this child’s meaningful vocabulary.

Dominant cultural beliefs about disability can impact on the learning, participation, and inclusion of disabled children. This case study highlights the experiences of one family and their daughter, Clare, at their early childhood centre, where teacher beliefs about disabled children being “deficient” and “different” resulted in Clare not fully participating in the life of the centre.

For the teachers at Botany Downs Kindergarten, inclusion is an attitude and a set of values. They don’t just focus on special-needs children; they create a welcoming, inclusive environment for all involved in the kindergarten—children, families, teachers, even pets—and use possibility thinking to overcome problems and increase inclusion.

In home-based early childhood networks, co-ordinators play a key role in supporting educators to provide quality education for children. This article investigates what co-ordinators can do to effectively support educators to enhance their work with children, including providing supportive advice and on-the-job training.