Even if you say it three ways, it still doesn't mean it's true: The pervasiveness of heteronormativity in early childhood education

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Constructing the problem of initial teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand: policy formation and risk, 2010-2018

This paper reports findings from an interpretive policy and discourse analysis of documents informing contemporary initial teacher education (ITE) policy development in Aotearoa New Zealand. The study first asks: what is the problem of teacher education as constituted in policy and associated documents in the period 2010-2018? We then compare the problems, suggested solutions, and recent evidence about the work of teacher education in New Zealand, to discuss the policy discourse, and theorise about the potential utility of solutions to address the problems raised. Our comparative analysis of the problems of ITE and proposed policy solutions with research evidence of teacher education work underscores the imperative of engagement with local and relevant evidence-based knowledge as a basis for informed policy decision making. &nbsp

Constructing the problem of initial teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand: policy formation and risk, 2010-2018

This paper reports findings from an interpretive policy and discourse analysis of documents informing contemporary initial teacher education (ITE) policy development in Aotearoa New Zealand. The study first asks: what is the problem of teacher education as constituted in policy and associated documents in the period 2010-2018? We then compare the problems, suggested solutions, and recent evidence about the work of teacher education in New Zealand, to discuss the policy discourse, and theorise about the potential utility of solutions to address the problems raised. Our comparative analysis of the problems of ITE and proposed policy solutions with research evidence of teacher education work underscores the imperative of engagement with local and relevant evidence-based knowledge as a basis for informed policy decision making. &nbsp

Introduction to the Special Issue: How to educate a nation’s teachers. Debating quality initial teacher education for today and for the future

The Teacher Education Forum Aotearoa New Zealand (TEFANZ) was officially launched on 12 July 1999—17 years ago—as the national voice for teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand. TEFANZ members represent New Zealand Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers who offer programmes at degree or graduate level. Members span the University, Polytechnic, Wānanga, and private sector across ECE, primary, and secondary. This broad constituency provides a rich picture of ITE in Aotearoa New Zealand

The potential of queer theorising in early childhood education: Disrupting heteronormativity and practising for inclusion

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Foucauldian discourse analysis in early childhood education.

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Shaping gender relations in early childhood education: Children's interactions and learning about gender

There are many theories about how one gets their gender and what this may mean for how people live their lives. Developmental texts typically present a range of psychological theories for sex differences, gender, or sex stereotyping and are replete with explanations for why children do the gendered things they do. In the West and until the late twentieth century and the rise of feminism, psychologists regarded the development of quite strictly governed gender roles and beliefs in children as a healthy expression of the so-called normal gender development. With renewed interest in the study of genders however and an increased awareness that in fact, at the extremes of the so-called gender appropriateness, social expectations are not necessarily healthy and supportive of an individual’s development, views on concepts of gender roles and gender development have begun to change. A diversity of explanations for why children do their gender the ways they do now sits alongside each other and gives rise to people’s conceptions of gender and its development in early childhood.Peer Reviewe

Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and Early Childhood Education: Tools for Understanding Inequity and The Pursuit of Social Justice

This version of the article is a pre-proof revision to the blind peer reviewed submission which is indicated as accepted for publication subject to minor revision.Formal early childhood education is a relatively modern institution to which increasing numbers of children are routinely exposed. Since the modern invention of childhood, the early childhood years have been increasingly established as a site for public and private investment in the name of individual and community development, the achievement of educational success, increased human productivity, and ultimately labour market productivity and excellence. As various forms of early childhood education have developed around the world, each has been imbued with values, perspectives, norms, and standards of its pioneers. They have also drawn upon and reinforced certain truths, knowledges, practices, and expectations about children, childhood, education and society. As microcosms of society whose inhabitants are largely novice members of the communities of which they are part, teachers in early childhood education are routinely addressing issues of exclusion, injustice, and inequity with children and families. This article illustrates how such issues manifest in knowledge and practice within the early years by drawing upon education research that engages with the methods and tools of French historian and poststructural philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Foucault’s interests in the nexus of power-knowledge-truth and its consequences for life, offers avenues for comprehending how modern institutions, such as systems of early childhood education, invest in and bring about certain forms of knowledge and practice. His methods of genealogical inquiry and discourse analysis make visible the workings of power as it moves on, in, and through human bodies. The perspectives made visible by Foucauldian analyses show how techniques, developed and applied within institutions, form humans in particular ways. Thus it is possible to see the interplay between power-truth-knowledge, how things come to be, and how they may change

Using Insights from Interactions Research to Improve Policy and Practice in Early Childhood Education

Uncorrected, pre-publication proof.The study of human development and learning in the West has broadened its focus across the twentieth century from a position that largely privileged the individual human subject as separated from the world and effected by its influences, to one where human subjectivity and the world are mutually constitutive; where experience is mediated by cultural tools; and through which over time, we can see the expansion of human learning and activity as interdependent (Bronfenbrenner and Ceci 1994; Rogoff 2003; Vygotsky 1978). It is no longer possible or desirable to view people as separate from culture and to ignore the reciprocal influences of people and culture. This is a major factor in why studies into interactions between children and their worlds are of growing interest to researchers, educators and policy makers alike. In the context of early childhood education in New Zealand for instance, we see this in the view of children as children increasingly capable of and competent to direct their own learning as they draw from and shape what happens in the early childhood service (Ministry of Education 2004/2009). Concurrently, formal learning theories have expanded across the late twentieth century to account more clearly for the ways interactions between people, places, and things within an education setting invite and sustain learning (for example, the shift from individual cognitive constructivism to social-constructivism, and social- situated views of learning and associated theories like for instance, community of practice, (Snyder and Wenger 2010)). From a sociocultural perspective learning experiences lead developmental growth and change; communication between people, in deliberately constructed places, with particular things is of paramount importance to learning. As educators in early childhood education have begun to take up these ideas with more vigour around the world, understanding interactions and the learning that comes from them grows in importance. Hence the critical need for research and scholarship into learning interactions and educational practice.Peer Reviewe

Children's Use of Objects in Their Storytelling

Uncorrected Pre-Publication ProofChildren’s academic achievements are often measured by their levels of literacy and numeracy where a considerable amount of interest has been given to these specific learning domains. Narrative skills feature prominently in children’s later literacy in American and New Zealand research (Griffin et al. 2004; Reese et al. 2010). For instance, Reese et al. (2010) demonstrated that the quality of children’s oral narrative expression in the first 2 years of reading instruction uniquely predicted their later reading, over and above the role of their vocabulary knowledge and decoding skill. Stuart McNaughton’s research in South Auckland (McNaughton 2002) has also emphasised the value of narrative competence for future literacy practice while illustrating the different styles of storytelling and reading across different cultural communities. When children narrate experiences and story-tell, they engage in cognitive, affective and social experiences and explorations that extend beyond simple conversation – opportunities to understand the social world – and one’s place within it arises (Bruner 1991). Narratives are recognised as essential to both autobiographical memory and identity (Wertsch 2002; Bruner 2002; Szenberg et al. 2012). Classic studies remind us of the autonomy of children in developing their own cultural routines through mutual negotiations and storying (Sutton-Smith 1997 p.171) and the powerful combination of adding affect to cognition using story (Egan 1997; Vivian Gussin Paley 2004). In short, narrative competence is a valuable outcome in its own right.Peer Reviewe