{"title":"Understanding disability as socially and culturally constructed – what does this mean for inclusive early childhood education?","authors":"Shi Li, Justine O’Hara-Gregan, J. Macarthur","doi":"10.18296/ecf.1108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.1108","url":null,"abstract":"In New Zealand, every child has the right to participate in inclusive, quality early childhood education (ECE), as outlined in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC). However, research reveals both the struggles children with disabilities and their families experience to have their rights recognised and upheld, and the lack of confidence early childhood (EC) teachers report related to working with diverse groups of children. Drawing on an appreciative case study, this article uses a framework of disability studies in education and sociocultural theory to illustrate how understanding disability as socially constructed can contribute to inclusive ECE practice. The findings from this case study provide EC teachers with approaches to inclusive practice, and may generate further dialogue about inclusion.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"81 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129273282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teachers’ views of young children’s citizenship in Aotearoa: Discourses and power complexities","authors":"Peng Xu, J. Ritchie","doi":"10.18296/ecf.1109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.1109","url":null,"abstract":"Children’s citizenship in early childhood education and care is the root of democracy, equity, and sustainability. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Whāriki has a strong aspiration for children as competent and active citizens. Early childhood settings are sites where children may have opportunities to act as powerful citizens. Employing Foucault’s theory of discourse and power, this article analyses interviews from 12 kindergarten teachers in Aotearoa. This article reveals multiple discourses underpinning power dynamics regarding children’s citizenship in selected Aotearoa kindergartens and offers insight into children’s citizenship as a power-sharing pedagogy.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125319494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring the positive discipline practices of parents of children aged 1–5 years in Aotearoa New Zealand","authors":"Jacqui Southey","doi":"10.18296/ecf.0098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.0098","url":null,"abstract":"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 terms of information and support, early childhood education (ECE) teachers were found to be the leading source of professional support for parents. This article recommends further research to understand the supporting role of ECE teachers.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130136752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Japanese children’s experiences in New Zealand early childhood education settings","authors":"Madoka Takemoto","doi":"10.18296/ecf.0097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.0097","url":null,"abstract":"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 tensions he experienced negotiating his self-identity as a Japanese child are described and their impact on his sense of belonging to the group of children at the centre is considered. The findings revealed that, despite the good intentions of teachers, the child’s Japanese cultural identity, and his attempts to share it, were frequently challenged by his teachers’ lack of cultural knowledge about Japan. I argue that these experiences resulted in complex situations for both the Japanese child and his teachers.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122429815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Supporting toddlers as competent story navigators across home and early childhood contexts","authors":"Amanda White, Irene Padtoc","doi":"10.18296/ecf.0095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.0095","url":null,"abstract":"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 storyteller was supported by a teacher who shared her cultural background and home language. Lexie’s story highlights the critical role of teachers in supporting story interactions in attuned and reciprocal ways that allow the competencies of 1-year-old toddlers as learners and communicators to be recognised and extended.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"51 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120873839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Working theories: Current understandings and future directions","authors":"Helen Hedges","doi":"10.18296/ecf.0093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.0093","url":null,"abstract":"Working theories form an overarching learning outcome interdependent with learning dispositions in Te Whāriki. Working theories encompass children’s embodied, communicative, and social efforts to learn, think, and develop knowledge that enables children to participate effectively in their families, communities, and cultures. To support children’s learning and participation, kaiako are expected to engage with children’s working theories in respectful, reciprocal, and responsive interactions. This article brings together current understandings about working theories to support kaiako knowledge and practice.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"232 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122623998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of noise in early childhood settings: A New Zealand perspective","authors":"Susan Bates, W. Page, S. Stover","doi":"10.18296/ECF.0088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ECF.0088","url":null,"abstract":"Excessive noise levels in early childhood centres have a direct impact on the learning of young children, as well as on the wellbeing of teachers. Psycho-acoustic studies show that noise is a key factor contributing to elevated adult stress levels and annoyance, leading to lower levels of adult sensitivity to children’s needs and fewer direct interactions with them. Longer term, local and international research indicates correlations between excessive noise in early childhood education (ECE) centres and health problems, such as to hearing loss, voice strain, obesity, diabetes, and cardiac conditions. Noise as a chaos factor in early childhood settings undermines wellbeing of both adults and children. Because noise negatively impacts on quality relationship and communication, children’s language development is also impacted. Yet noise within New Zealand early childhood settings is under-researched, under-regulated, and under-monitored. Drawing on local and international research and on a survey of New Zealand early childhood teachers, this article recommends regulating for the creation of quieter environments for the benefit of teachers and learners, the adults and children in early childhood settings.","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129495192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Negotiating wellbeing and belonging in an early childhood centre: What children’s conflicts can teach us","authors":"Carmen Dalli, A. Strycharz-Banaś, M. Meyerhoff","doi":"10.18296/ecf.0073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ecf.0073","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Early childhood (EC) teachers and kaiako in Aotearoa New Zealand are very familiar with the terms belonging and wellbeing—they are two of the five strands of the early learning curriculum, Te Whāriki, introduced into everyday EC pedagogical discourse with the launch of Te Whāriki in the mid-1990s. Each strand is described in a preamble followed by a set of goals and learning outcomes which elaborate how teachers might interpret the strand pedagogically. The 1996 version of the curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1996) also provided examples of “questions for reflection” to help teachers know if the learning outcomes had been achieved; in the refreshed 2017 version (Ministry of Education, 2017), the questions were replaced with statements of what “evidence of learning and development” might look like. Despite this profile, however, until relatively recently, belonging and wellbeing remained under-researched as pedagogical concepts in EC settings. Wellbeing and belonging","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115587032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who am I as an early childhood teacher? Who would I like to be?","authors":"Olivera Kamenarac","doi":"10.18296/ECF.0060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18296/ECF.0060","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":361497,"journal":{"name":"Early Childhood Folio","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130599271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}