PLAYGROUPS BEGAN IN AUSTRALIA in the early 1970s, at the same time as significant changes in early childhood education and care (ECEC) began taking place. This paper explores how early playgroups were positioned in the ECEC policy, and the experiences of playgroup organisers in New South Wales. Methods used were documentary analysis of Project Care (Social Welfare Commission, 1974) and interviews with key players. Findings were that playgroups grew rapidly in response to grassroots demand from mothers wanting their children to learn through quality play, besides the demand for adult social support. Since Project Care was strongly influenced by feminist lobbying and the objective of enabling women to engage in paid work—and playgroups relied on mothers to deliver the service—playgroups were an uneasy fit in the ECEC policy. Although Project Care integrated playgroups into its recommendations for ECEC services, subsequent funding was at a low level. Today, ECEC services would benefit from a strengthening of the community playgroups model.

This article explores the practices of ‘Acknowledgement to Country’ in Australian early childhood education contexts. Acknowledgement is a process of seeking out and honouring local Aboriginal Country and knowledge and investing in local resources of language, art, stories, nature and songs. Twenty educators across six early learning centres participated in semi-structured interviews to explore the experience, processes and resources that supported the implementation of Acknowledgement practices. Acknowledgement practices were not limited to a daily protocol but embedded in each centre’s physical place and programming. Wanting to be respectful yet fearing offending Aboriginal people, most educators expressed feelings of uncertainty and under-confidence about what to do. Developing relationships with local Aboriginal people and identifying resources were also concerns. Acting from the heart with good intentions was regarded as a way forward together, with commitment, resources and a strong distributed pedagogical leadership culture, where educators felt supported to take small yet foundational steps.

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This paper examines the ways in which current affairs related to diversity and difference, nationally and globally, are represented to Australian children in children’s digital news media and through family discussions. The discussion is based on qualitative research that explores parents’ views and practices in addressing news media and diversity and difference issues with their children. In addition, this project includes a discursive analysis of stories found in Behind The News ( BTN), the primary digital news media source for Australian children, aged 8–13 years, from 2015–2018. The news stories are related to three significant topics: the marriage equality debate, refugees and terrorism. Within feminist post-structuralist, post-developmentalist and critical theorist frameworks, a focus is given to examining the dominant discourses that prevail in the stories, which provide insight into how childhood and children’s access to certain types of knowledge is viewed and regulated through media and family practices. Drawing on thematic and Foucaultian discursive analyses, the pilot study findings demonstrate that children’s news media is closely scrutinised and regulated, with major news stories framed within dominant discourses of childhood innocence, as well as the agenda and particular interests of the producers of children’s new media. These topics, which have dominated news in recent years, are frequently considered by some adults as inappropriate or difficult topics to discuss with children.