Introduction

Abstract

Political interest in early childhood education and care (ECEC) has grown in recent times, with governments and international organisations claiming benefits of ECEC to justify particular policy approaches. But increasingly, a narrow view of the purposes of ECEC is held and conveyed in policy texts as a means to address social problems, to prepare children for later academic success and as an economic investment for the good of the country. Missing in these views is an understanding of childhood as socially constructed and an important phase in its own right and of children as citizens who contribute to society. In parallel, neoliberal commitment to the market has swept countries worldwide, including the UK, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the African continent and the Asia Pacific region. Marketisation has had a profound effect on education and accountability systems and particularly ECEC where in many of these countries, private owners of ECEC centres have set up to produce profits for themselves and their investors from their business undertaking. Within this model, resources intended for education have been siphoned off for individual business owner and shareholder profits. Competition between ECEC centres for children has led to a highly inequitable distribution of ECEC provision, where economically richer communities and families who can pay more have been best served. A very old idea and at the same time a new idea for contemporary times are the ideas of education for democracy as an alternative and valuable way to reconceptualise ECEC. The purpose of a democratic education is directed to the good of each person and the common good for society; these purposes are mutually connected and reinforcing. Aotearoa New Zealand is offered as an interesting case study, set within these global trends, because of its extreme adoption of neoliberal principles during the 1980s and 1990s and, in contradiction, its early social justice foundations and its renowned early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki. The curriculum is an inspiration worldwide for the centrality of the concept of whakamana (empowerment or agency) and commitment to biculturalism that originates from the 1840 Tiriti o Waitangi, a treaty between Māori (indigenous people) and the British crown. Te Whāriki sets conditions for democracy to flourish. In this book, I provide examples of political advocacy, policy formulation and pedagogical practice in Aotearoa New Zealand that have resisted neoliberalism and progressed democratic ideals. At the same time, I offer examples from other countries, from which Aotearoa New Zealand has much to learn. These examples are offered, not as blueprints for others to follow, for it is not that we can copy policies and practices from one country to our own. But it gives opportunity to think differently and therefore critically, to enable us to see what we take for granted – these things are of mutual benefit in helping push forward thinking and practice.