This is one of a series about researchers whose work has made a difference in early years education. Jane Blaikie writes about the work of Marie Bell (19 February 1922–3 November 2012).

How might ways of engaging with families set Pasifika children up for learning success? Early childhood education in New Zealand is commonly play-based and builds on teachers’ understandings about children’s interests and abilities. Teachers are encouraged to collaborate with families in their assessment and planning. However, there is little research ...

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 ...

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In a self-managing school system where localised curriculum decision-making prevails, this study asks the question “How were the geography and science senior secondary school curricula influenced by the Canterbury earthquake series?” Drawing on an ecological framework of teacher agency, the study ...

The changing media landscape of the Internet has created a diverse environment for learning about global and national current events. Keeping up with the news is difficult and can result in students feeling overwhelmed by having to absorb so much information from so many sources. The argument is presented ...

This article relates Korean parents’ stories of their children’s transition from primary to secondary school and identity struggles on entering secondary school. Mystified by the loss of a characteristically invitational culture at primary school, and without salient role models to provide ideas of who they might become, some students ...