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Post-Te Whāriki Early Childhood Care and Education Policy and Practice in “Whitestream” Early Childhood Care and Education in Aotearoa

  • Chapter
Early Childhood Education in Aotearoa New Zealand: History, Pedagogy, and Liberation

Part of the book series: Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood ((CCSC))

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief context for the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki. He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa, which set in place the expectation of a radically different notion of curriculum, in its non-prescriptive philosophical, socio-cultural, holistic, and bicultural nature. Not the least of these challenges was the delivery of a curriculum inclusive of the Māori culture and language by a predominately non-Māori teacher workforce. The promulgation of Te Whāriki provoked the need for articulation of applied pedagogies in support of its bicultural expectations. A range of Ministry of Education documents that were subsequently promulgated, aimed at enhancing the delivery of the bicultural curriculum are overviewed. Acknowledgment is made that the aspirations of Te Whāriki are still in the process of becoming.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared in a special edition of Pacific-Asia Education entitled “Past, present and future: Conceptualisations of Early Childhood Education in the Pacific-Asian region” (vol. 24, issue 2, 2012). My chapter in that edition was entitled An overview of early childhood care and education provision in “mainstream” settings, in relation to kaupapa Māori curriculum and policy expectations. We thank the editors of this journal for granting us permission to base this chapter on the article.

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  1. Jenny Ritchie
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© 2014 Jenny Ritchie and Mere Skerrett

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Ritchie, J. (2014). Post-Te Whāriki Early Childhood Care and Education Policy and Practice in “Whitestream” Early Childhood Care and Education in Aotearoa. In: Early Childhood Education in Aotearoa New Zealand: History, Pedagogy, and Liberation. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375797_6

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