The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic rapidly impacted the education sector both in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. Most research has focused on the impacts within the primary, secondary, and tertiary education sectors. This article brings attention to the challenges faced by early learning kaiako while providing learning opportunities during…

Stories are a way that children under 3 years of age learn to share meaning with others. Most research with this age group has focused on 1:1 parent-child story relationships at home, largely book reading. These studies have positioned children in the role of story listeners rather than story tellers. Here, I explore new possibilities about the…

This article is one component of a doctoral study that explored six early childhood teachers' experiences of working with culturally diverse refugee children and their families in an urban district of New Zealand. Specifically, this article focuses on how teachers supported the transition of refugee children from home to centres. Data were…

Parents have the option of enrolling their children in the first stage of early childhood education (from 0 to 3 years of age). However, not all parents decide to do so, waiting until the second stage of early childhood education to enrol them in the education system (from 3 to 5 years of age), or even until compulsory education when their…

The New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whariki, encourages teachers to intentionally implement learning experiences so children learn about and through the visual arts. Acknowledging the tensions between intentional teaching and play-based learning, teachers are urged to be neither hands-off nor very structured in designing visual arts…

The involvement of whanau in the teaching and learning process is important at every juncture of a child's educational journey. Rich understanding of the curriculum enables whanau to make deep and meaningful contributions to discussions about their child's development. It also presents an interesting challenge for educational settings to create…

Excursions (field trips) can provide new and exciting learning opportunities outside schools and early childhood education (ECE) centres, adding new dimensions to an education programme. This article presents the findings from two doctoral studies by Terreni (2017) and Ryder (2019). Terreni, as part of a mixed-method approach, undertook a…

Belonging has long been conceptualised as a fundamental human need, essential for the good health of individuals and communities. In relation to young children, belonging may be linked to their developing sense of identity, as well as the way they perceive and respond to others. Belonging is emerging as an important aspect of contemporary early…

This study investigated the emergent literacy and language skills of four-year-old children in New Zealand during their kindergarten year prior to school-entry. A total of 92 four-year-old children from a range of socio-economic areas were seen individually at their local kindergarten and were assessed on code-related measures (letter name…

Over a two-year teacher-researcher project in New Zealand we used a mosaic of research methods (Clark, 2010) to capture the perspectives of staff, parents and children. As a team of teachers and academic researchers, we recorded and documented reconceptualised pedagogical practices that included active adult participation in a cluster of early…

In this paper we describe a method for exploring young children's views of illness causality in social context. Studies of children's conceptualisation of illness have predominantly focused on the nature of children's knowledge rather than locating that knowledge within socio-cultural contexts. Adopting a socio-constructivist perspective we sought…

PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) was inaugurated in 2001 as a follow-up to International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's 1991 Reading Literacy Study. Conducted every five years, PIRLS assesses the reading achievement of young students in their fourth year of schooling--an important transition…

What assumptions about children and childhood are held by government officials and organisation representatives who are influential in policy formation in early childhood education (ECE) in New Zealand? How are assumptions manifested in policy? This article draws on a study carried out from 2001 to 2003, a time of radical ECE policy change in New…