Vol. 7 No. 1 (2019): (New) Critical Readings of Aotearoa New Zealand Early Childhood Policy and Practice

Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue 7(1) by Gaches and Gunn, by Marianne Bloch and Kenya Wolff.

In this special issue, the special issue editors, Sonya Gaches and Alex Gunn draw on their own work, and the work of four post-graduate students from the University of Otago, New Zealand to discuss then proposed revisions to the Te Whāriki early childhood curriculum and policy document that were under debate at the time of the 2016 Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education conference held in New Zealand.  At that conference, keynote speakers spoke of the history of development of the world famous Te Whāriki curriculum policy.  In this issue, Gaches and Gunn introduce the key aspects of debate surrounding the then proposed reforms, as well as the political context shifts that have been affecting New Zealand’s early childhood (and educational) policies over the past decade.  Gaches and Gunn’s introductory article, as well as the articles that follow, focus on neoliberal political and economic perspectives that have constrained the full implementation of Te Whāriki.  In addition, the articles by different authors illustrate various ways in which alternative theoretical perspectives—drawing from theoretical framings by Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, and Simone Weill, help frame different ways to interrogate or reconstruct the policy and curriculum debates, opening new ways to imagine and to act.  These articles are important not only for the New Zealand context, but are significant to the journal’s global readership--as similar discursive and material forces have permeated most regional and country policy frameworks, affecting the funding and nature of program delivery, affordability, the ways in which curriculum is developed and promoted, as well as the promotion of diverse ways to assess children or evaluate programs. The presentation of the case from New Zealand, where strong actors in the early childhood sector, in collaboration with self-selected Maori elders and others from the Maori communities across the nation, have developed and maintained an exemplary bilingual/multicultural curriculum for families and children, highlights the importance of presenting the debates and issues in these articles. As suggested earlier, these issues are critically important to bring to the global community of scholars in our on-line open access journal, as they illustrate important issues and debates as well as challenges that impact the opportunities and experiences available to diverse families, children, and early childhood teachers in New Zealand, and around the globe.   

In addition to the importance of the collection of articles, we are excited to share this body of work from four post-graduate students from Aotearoa New Zealand who found that their work presented at the 2016 conference was significant not only to themselves, but to a larger audience.  Gaches and Gunn worked with the students to bring these articles from research to conference presentation to publication.    Drawing directly from Gaches and Gunn’s introductory article, “It is in these ways that the globally nomadic Reconceptualising Early Childhood Education (RECE) Conference affords scholars from around the globe regular opportunities to come together in diverse geographical locations and cultural contexts with an overall common purpose to “challenge and dismantle traditional assumptions about childhood and theory and/or feature new directions in research, policy and practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC)” (RECE 2014, 2015, 2016 Call for Proposals, p.1).  Conferencing in a diversity of global settings also provides the local researchers, practitioners, and critically minded early childhood education community members access to presentations, provocations, and an expanding reconceptualist conversation and community that may otherwise be limited or completely unattainable on this international scale” (Gaches & Gunn, this issue, p. 1).

We are excited to share this body of work from Gaches and Gunn, and their post-graduate students from Aotearoa New Zealand as the first issue of the International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal to be published in 2019.  Thank you to the many reviewers of the articles, as well as to the editorial team that has come together to bring this and other journal issues to publication.  A special thank you to Associate Professor, and Associate Editor, Dr. Lucy Heimer and Dr. Shirley Kessler, along with the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for a grant that has enabled editorial and copyediting assistance for the journal.  We invite you to submit articles to the journal, sign up as reader and reviewer, and to keep watch for the next exciting special issue that will be published in 2019, co-edited by I-Fang Lee and Michelle Salazar Perez, Foggy Futures in Education:  The Looming Storms of School-Choice and Voucher Programs.