Early Childhood Folio vol. 25 no. 2 (2021)

Young children learn how to communicate with others through their everyday interactions and social relationships. In this article, we argue that stories about personal experiences are a valuable context for exploring how 1-year-old toddlers learn to engage with others across their family homes and early childhood settings. We demonstrate how Lexie, aged 16 months, communicated multimodally as she contributed to a personal story about her experience of eating lunch. Lexie’s competence as a… Read more

This article focuses on the powerful role of Samoan women sustaining the language and culture in Aotearoa. It presents findings from my Master’s thesis that explored the experiences of seven Samoan women who were involved in the establishment of three a’oga amata (Samoan early childhood centres) in Christchurch (Togiaso, 2017). This qualitative study had a conceptual framework of Pacific epistemologies including fa’a Samoa (a Samoan way of life) and teu le vā (to look after spaces).… Read more

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… Read more

Despite more than a century of academic scrutiny on parental discipline of children, parents’ use of positive discipline practices is not well understood. This article draws from a larger study (Southey, 2020) aimed at understanding the prosocial practices parents use to guide their children’s social, emotional, and behavioural development, and how they are informed in their practices. Findings suggest parents used positive discipline strategies at higher rates than coercive strategies. In… Read more

He Taonga te Tamaiti, Every Child a Taonga: Early Learning Action Plan 2019–2029 (Ministry of Education, 2019) presents goals directed towards strengthening quality provision in early childhood education (ECE) in Aotearoa New Zealand, including actions needed to attract and retain a diverse range of kaiako in the sector. Because “Kaiako are the key resource in any ECE service” (Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 59), they must feel safe, included, valued, and respected within early learning… Read more

He Taonga te Tamaiti, Every Child a Taonga: Early Learning Action Plan 2019–2029 (Ministry of Education, 2019) presents goals directed towards strengthening quality provision in early childhood education (ECE) in Aotearoa New Zealand, including actions needed to attract and retain a diverse range of kaiako in the sector. Because “Kaiako are the key resource in any ECE service” (Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 59), they must feel safe, included, valued, and respected within early… Read more

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… Read more