Te Whariki, the first bicultural early childhood education curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, gained national and international attention. While there was widespread acceptance of its bicultural intent, Te Whariki was not well understood and implemented as a bicultural curriculum. Early childhood education teachers lacked confidence and struggled…

This article describes how young children and their families and community members came together with researchers to co-create books in children's languages about their worlds in Fiji, to foster children's multilingual literacies. The co-creation of these books in children's and families' Fijian homes and community settings connected with their…

The early years before compulsory schooling are crucial for children's identities, including their cultural identities. This article reports on a community-collaborative educational program that aimed to promote children's positive Samoan identities in a culturally safe environment. Data were collected through ethnographic methods, including…

This study proposes the application of trilingual learning model that employs Sundanese traditional playing as the learning strategy. This article is a part of a bigger ongoing research project investigating the establishment of trilingual learning model in kindergarten. It focuses on the development of lesson plans for the application of the…

This article emphasises some of the shifts highlighted by the Ministry of Education in the refreshed "Te Whariki: He Whariki Matauranga mo nga Mokopuna o Aotearoa--Early Childhood Curriculum" (Ministry of Education, 2017) ("Te Whariki 2017"). Some of those shifts include the ideas of "Te Whariki 2017" being a…

Over a period of 4 years (2012-15) the kaupapa Maori research project Ka Whanau mai te Reo focused on how whanau reo Maori development is, or could, be supported as whanau move into, within, and beyond the compulsory education sector. Transition practices that prioritise te reo Maori would be a positive step forward in schools' support for reo…

This 2-year collaborative research project focused on young children's working theories about identity, language, and culture, how early childhood teachers can nurture and encourage this learning, and how this in turn impacts on children's participation in early childhood education (ECE) communities. The project builds on a previous Teaching and…

The national bicultural early childhood curriculum in New Zealand, Te Whariki, and the Graduating Teacher Standards require that graduating teachers are competent in Maori language as well as English, and have an understanding of aspects of Maori knowledge. However, research shows that teachers are not yet proficient in the skills needed to…

Inspired by Joshua Fishman's lifetime dedication to the revitalisation of minority languages, especially Yiddish, this paper presents my personal story of the loss of the Maori language in my family in New Zealand/Aotearoa and our attempts to reverse this decline over several generations. The paper includes a description of several policy reforms…

This study investigated cross-linguistic influence in acquisition of a second lexicon, evaluating Samoan-English sequentially bilingual children (initial mean age 4 ; 9) during their first 18 months of school. Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary tasks evaluated acquisition of four word types: cognates, matched nouns, phrasal nouns and holonyms.…

The Kamehameha Schools (KS) is a private co-educational institution that was established under the terms of the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop in 1887. KS operates three campuses Kapalama (O'ahu), Pukalani (Maui), and Kea'au (Hawai'i island) that serves over 6,500 students from preschool through twelfth grade. KS recently adopted a…

The purpose of this article is to describe the New Zealand experience of second language acquisition as it applies to learning the Maori language and also to new immigrants learning English. The article describes the te kohanga reo movement and also outlines the government policy as it relates to the learning of English as an additional language…

At the Punana Leo everyone, "'Anakala", uncle--a male teacher, "'Anake," aunty--a female teacher, and the "keiki," children all play important roles in the educational program of the school. Each and all are responsible for the learning that takes place and the success of the program. In this article, the author…

The overarching aim of this research in the proposal was the following: In a number of early childhood centres and early years school classrooms that have already begun to explore in this area, to investigate effective pedagogy designed to develop five learning competencies over time. This project was developed in response to curriculum reform in…