How do teachers use their interests to support teaching and learning episodes with children? How is the national early childhood curriculum,  Te Whāriki, implemented by teachers? This article uses the conversation analysis of video and audio recordings of three teachers in their day-to-day interactions with children to further ...

Recent demographic changes create new challenges for teachers in English-medium settings in early years education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Increases in the number of children learning in more than one language demand an urgent review of teachers’ pedagogies. This article draws on findings from a study that examined ways five ...

This article is based on a small-scale qualitative study that explored children’s and teachers’ responses to a selection of picture books about family diversity. The picture books all featured same-gender parented families and are in keeping with Te Whāriki where it is maintained that children and their families should see ...

What constitutes a quality centre or an effective teacher cannot be assumed to be globally the same and beliefs about quality invariably support dominant ideologies. For example, in the New Zealand early childhood education context, teacher-child ratios and group size are seen as two of the criteria used to ...

When children in Aotearoa New Zealand begin school at 5 years of age they take with them a wealth of learning. For the majority of children transitioning from early childhood education to school this learning has been documented in portfolios. In many cases, and for many reasons, these portfolios are ...

The significance of experiences in nature for children’s learning and development has been expounded by philosophers and educationalists for centuries. In many contemporary early childhood education (ECE) settings, such experiences are highly valued. Nowadays, Froebel’s notion of kindergartens as “children’s gardens” is likely to be complemented by ideas from Steiner ...

This is one of a series about researchers whose work has made a difference in the area of early years education. Sarah Boyd interviews Geraldine McDonald.

This article examines findings from an action research project by three early childhood teachers and one researcher in an Early Learning Centre in a private school setting in Australia. Early in the project the teachers identified the presence of an “invisible barrier” between them and their school colleagues. Choosing ...

Children’s participation rights are articulated in articles 12 and 13 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. They are at the core of the theory that underpins the framework of Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum framework for Aotearoa New Zealand, and its effective ...

"E kore au e ngaro; he kākano i ruiruia mai i Rangiātea." I will never be lost; the seed was sown in Rangiātea. This traditional Māori proverb emphasises that the speaker knows his or her whakapapa links to the Māori spiritual homeland of Rangiātea, so is confident and ...