This study, conducted in partnership with Hutt City Kindergartens, explores story sharing - a critical aspect of early literacy development. We studied the naturalistic story interactions of tamariki aged 2–5 years, kaiako, and whānau within six equity-funded kindergarten settings and family homes. Key themes evident in our findings were:
- that stories are diverse and multimodal;
- story sharing is embedded in cultural contexts;
- and story sharing takes place within multiple social relationships across settings.
Together these insights highlight the need to understand and sustain diverse and multimodal story-sharing practices within multiple social relationships across the cultural contexts of home and home and ECE.
Findings from this study contribute to our understandings of how tamariki experience story sharing in kindergarten communities that are becoming superdiverse. Additionally, the findings provide critical insights to the importance of drawing on diverse, multimodal conceptualisations of literacy(ies), creating space for whānau expertise, and respecting the agency of kaiako as curriculum makers in ways that promote positive learning outcomes for tamariki.
It is a matter of mana, equity and educational justice to ensure that tamariki see their cultures, languages, and experiences reflected in their ECE settings, providing opportunities for them to fully learn how to create and share meaning from their earliest educational interactions.