Early Childhood Folio vol. 22 no. 2 (2018)

People, places and things: Implications for New Zealand’s strategic plan for early learning

Early Childhood Folio is seeking articles for this special issue. It follows the University of Waikato Early Years Research Centre annual teachers’ conference of the same name, and the publication of the government’s draft strategic plan for early learning. This issue seeks articles that are research-based and that highlight implications for the development of the strategic plan.… Read more

An emphasis on critical thinking, a questioning of taken for granted assumptions, and rights-based thinking are framings for many of the articles in this issue.

Popular culture is omnipresent in the lives of young children. The mass media, movies, television, and product advertising all carry messages about acceptability and desirability, deeply entangled with traditional stereotypes about gender, sex-roles, and sexuality. The intersection of discourses of media, gender, and performativity and their impact on children’s behaviour was observed in relation to Frozen, the Disney movie, during a kindergarten-based research project. The central… Read more

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, 2001) highlights our role as educators in the “preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples” (Article 29(1)(d)). Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017) requires kaiako to view young children as both local kaitiaki and as global citizens. In a recent study we sought to… Read more

This article reports on a project midway through a 2-year investigation of the pedagogical interactions that take place for 2 year olds in mixed-age early childhood education (ECE) settings. Teachers slowed down and scrutinised their practice by videoing, analysing, and theorising their dialogue with and about 2 year olds as a central form of teaching and learning. The primary aim of the project was to make explicit the nature of 2 year olds’ dialogue in ECE settings traditionally oriented… Read more

This article presents the findings from a collaborative action research (CAR) study undertaken by a small group of early childhood education teachers working in a New Zealand setting with children aged 3–4 years. The teachers’ shared aim was to explore and improve their teaching practices to more effectively support children’s prosocial behaviour and social development. Prosocial behaviour is an essential component of children’s social-emotional development and has been shown to be a… Read more

This article draws on a small survey of Auckland-area early childhood services to explore “tree climbing as curriculum”. As well as considering how health and safety issues are understood and managed, it also considers the role/s of early childhood teachers during children’s tree climbing, alongside the relevance of folk wisdom about tree climbing offered by historic leaders of the early childhood sector. The capacity to offer very young children access to trees for climbing reflects a… Read more

All workers in New Zealand can expect to have their rights to health implemented in their workplaces. For early childhood teachers, health risks extend to the children they care for, as well as their own offspring. Teachers and carers in daycare and kindergarten are exposed to a range of diseases and sustain various injuries through work practices and environments. Pregnant teachers and those with pre-existing medical conditions are at particular risk of environmental factors such as… Read more