This article troubles themes of equity, inclusion and belonging for early childhood teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. The authors argue that relationships between teachers matter and, in pursuit of transformative teaching praxis, can be considered as a site for restorative justice, leading to increased solidarity and collective action. While much…

This study examined the impact of an intensive professional development series on early childhood educators' content knowledge of engineering and their self-efficacy towards teaching engineering. Seventeen early childhood teachers participated and responded to questionnaires, surveys, and focus-group interviews before and after the professional…

This article focuses on the methodological experiences that emerged from a study investigating how teachers valued their daily encounters with children in early childhood education. Early childhood teachers often balance the demands of documentation with time spent with children, so have little time to reflect on their practice. Furthermore,…

Racism is pervasive in education in Aotearoa New Zealand, including in early childhood education. The preparedness of early childhood teachers to respond to the Ministry of Education's current anti-racism policy direction is a pressing concern. This is particularly the case, given the early childhood curriculum "Te Whariki: He whariki…

In this article, the author forwards the importance of mad autobiographical poetic writing to challenge and disrupt epistemic injustice within pre-service early childhood education and care. They explore their own mad autobiographical poetic writing as a queer, non-binary, mad early childhood educator and pre-service early childhood education and…

In this paper, we ponder the ecologies of spacetimematterings folded into resistance practices and their relationality with figurations of agency outside and beyond datafication agendas. Accountability cultures bound up with datafication have consequences that include a diminished agency for both children and educators. We take inspiration from…

This qualitative case study aims to explore the ways in which communities of practice support teacher learning, decision-making, and the purposeful infusion of social justice topics that are important to children within project work. The authors draw from transformative learning theory and critical pedagogy to guide their work in supporting early…

Objects in early childhood education (ECEC) experiences have begun to receive a great deal more attention than ever before. Although much of this attention has emerged recently from new materialism, in this paper we turn to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concern with the (in)visibility of 'things' to illuminate the presence of objects within…

This article shows how two Latina bilingual teachers provided opportunities for their Latinx students from immigrant families to enact their agency in a highly regulated Head Start bilingual preschool classroom in ways that aligned with culturally sustaining pedagogy. Using video-cued ethnography and data from the Blinded Study, the authors center…

At a time when national discourse in the USA centers the need for professionalization, regulation, and surveillance, this article emphasizes the ways in which neoliberal logics harm those working in early childhood education in the USA. While stakeholders at every level debate proposed solutions to the early childhood education crisis, largely…

The impacts of neo-liberal education reforms on the early childhood education sector have been a focal point of scholarly critiques in New Zealand. Interestingly, only a few studies have addressed how teacher professional identities and professionalism have changed in response to the neo-liberal context of New Zealand early childhood education. It…

The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education…

Children's engagement in risk-taking has been on the agenda for early childhood education for the past 10-15 years. At a time when some say the minority world has become overly risk averse, early childhood education aims to support confident, competent and resilient children through the inclusion of beneficial risk in early childhood education.…

Open conversations regarding sexuality education and gender and sexual diversity with young children in early childhood education settings are still highly constrained. Educators report lacking professional training and fearing parental and community pushback when explicitly addressing these topics in their professional practices. As such, gender…

What does it mean to be an early childhood teacher in a time of pandemic? Which stories remain constant in our profession and which are lost to the hand of physical distance? This narrative inquiry explores the persistent role of story in the creation of the body of the classroom community, and the sustaining of a practice of an early childhood…