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 ...

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)). ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...