Abstract
New Zealand was the first country in the world to locate under 3-year-olds in curriculum (White EJ, Mika C, Coming of age? Infants and toddlers In: ECE, Nuttall J (eds) Weaving Te Whāriki: Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice. NZCER Press, Wellington, pp 93–114, 2013). The positioning of under 3-year-olds as ngā mokopuna kei te hāereere in the founding document (Ministry of Education, Te Whāriki: He whāriki matauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa: early childhood curriculum. Learning Media, Wellington, p 20, 1996) foregrounds notions of movement rather than any static developmental premise or goal. In this chapter we deliberately wield a theoretical lens to explore this and related concepts in contemplation of bicultural understandings of becoming. We will suggest a biculturally inspired orientation towards very young children as fellow world travellers who are mysterious explorers in their collective learning journey, as evident in the 1996 and 2017 curriculum texts. In the following chapter, we sometimes speak of the collective nature of the two – Māori and English – versions of the Te Whāriki document, but we also refer to them specifically when necessary. Implications for adults who seek to understand their worlds are examined in consideration of related concepts concerning Papatūānuku (Mother Earth), whakapapa (to layer broader meaning) and mauri (life force) which, together, orient towards the connected, holistic nature of becoming as a reconstituted phenomenon of uncertainty, bringing with it some serious implications for teachers of the very young.
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- 1.
Here we refer to a post-treaty NZ history of racism and colonisation which only recently fully recognised the Crown’s obligation to Māori in legislation in 1985, with te reo Māori becoming a recognised language only in 1987.
- 2.
The people of the land with indigenous rights to self-determination
- 3.
Te Kōhanga Reo translates loosely to ‘language nest’. The Trust operate early years immersion programmes throughout Aotearoa as a source of language and, by association, cultural revival and maintenance for Māori.
- 4.
Kaupapa Māori aligns to the notion of tino rangatiratanga or self-determination. It refers to Māori ways of knowing, doing and being according to agendas that are important to Māori and for Māori.
- 5.
This term is very contentious at the time of writing this chapter: White (in Various commentators, 2017) suggests that the use of the term kaiako presents ‘… an exciting twist in the way we might conceptualise the role of adults as pedagogues…’ (p. 24), while Dalli, in the same article, cautions its potential for de-professionalising the sector.
- 6.
Ritchie (Various commentators, 2017) sees the term kaitiaki (loosely translated as guardianship for the planet) as an important addition in the refreshed curriculum ‘a curriculum for our age needs to prepare children to have empathy for our planet and threatened fellow children of Tāne-Mahuta, all plants, insects, fish and animals’ (p. 23).
- 7.
A recent example has been the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study tracing 7000 NZ children from pre-birth to adulthood comprising 1700 children who identify primarily as Māori (24%), 1200 who identify as Pacific (21%) and 1000 (16%) as Asian, in addition to 66% who identify as European or others. Nearly half of all the children identify with more than one ethnic group. [See http://www.growingup.co.nz/en.html]
- 8.
We should also point out that while a cursory nod towards ‘critical theories’ is evident in the refreshed curriculum, associated implications of such thought are strangely absent from the text. As Arndt (Various commentators, 2017) points out, this absence ‘seems to play down the importance of theoretical thought in early childhood teaching and learning’ (p. 20).
- 9.
Exceptions are noted in the terms ‘becoming much more aware of cultural expectations’ (p. 14) and ‘becoming competent bilingual or multicultural speakers’ (p. 15) – both oriented towards the notion of moving towards cultural competence and identity formation (Ministry of Education, 2017a).
- 10.
For a further interrogation of this paradox, see White, in press.
- 11.
Occam’s razor exists when there are more than one set of explanations for the same occurrence.
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Mika, C., White, E.J. (2019). Ngā mokopuna kei te hāereere: Becoming in Aotearoa Curriculum – The First 1000 Days. In: The First 1000 Days of Early Childhood. Policy and Pedagogy with Under-three Year Olds: Cross-disciplinary Insights and Innovations, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9656-5_4
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