Early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy reflects ideas about childhood, labour force participation, education, the economy and the role of the state. This article spans a period of political change in New Zealand from a left of centre government during the first decade of the twenty-first century to a right of centre government from 2009.…

This article addresses the question: how can lifelong education contribute to subjective well-being by engaging learners and fostering active citizenship? The question arises due to the fact that governments in the western world have identified well-being as an important policy driver. Well-being research suggests that subjective well-being,…

This think piece by Carolyn Alexander-Bennett is a reflection of her keynote speech at DEANZ2016 conference, which was held from 17-20th April at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. In her speech Carolyn revisits the issues, developments, and technology trends that led to the birth of FarNet (an online cluster of schools catering for the…

Through an exploration of two experimental schools, Oruaiti (1950s) and Discovery 1 (2000s), we aim to understand the socio-political contexts that create spaces for experimentation and examine their impact on mainstream schooling. Caught between competing, often contradictory, discourses such experiments struggle between the…

The first New Zealand early childhood curriculum framework, "Te Whariki", was published in 1996. "Te Whariki" presents quality in early childhood education as productive of a particular type of child. In this article the author argues that "Te Whariki" is not about "best practice" but about producing the…

States that the Education Forum and Enterprise New Zealand Trust took exception to the lack of instruction on New Zealand's European heritage, expressing the curriculum lacked an explanation of capitalism. Reports the New Zealand Federation of Social Studies Associations complained about the lack of emphasis on decision making and critical…

This book, which is designed primarily for undergraduate and graduate students of education, contains 12 papers devoted the New Labour's policies for schools in the United Kingdom. "Introduction" (Jim Docking) presents an overview of the book's contents and lists questions to help evaluate the effectiveness of New Labour's educational…