Recent policy developments and the "schoolification" of early childhood care and education in Aotearoa New Zealand

‘Investing’ in early childhood education and care in Aotearoa New Zealand: Noddings’ ethics of care and the politics of care within the Social Investment approach to governance

“…Problems arise when, as Alcock and Haggerty (2013) demonstrate, care is displaced by the construction of the child as the learner who must be continuously assessed to ensure this ‘learning is occurring’ in order to ascertain that the investment of the state is being actualised. The displacement of the discourses of care is accompanied by movements which seek increased and ‘reductive’ forms of consideration of the individual.…”

The changing roles of early childhood care and education in Aotearoa New Zealand: A shifting policy landscape

“…This examination took place in three phases, reflecting the journey of this article from a more pedagogical focus in the initial iteration as a conference presentation (November 2012) to a publication in 2013 with a stronger policy focus (Alcock and Haggerty, 2013). This article picks up on issues relating to the ‘schoolification’ of ECE, touched on in 2013, as well as on issues concerning the positioning of parents in recent government-initiated ECE participation initiatives and accountability measures.…”

“…As our previous 2013 article noted, while the draft document refers to ‘learning opportunities’ which offer ‘more than one possible strategy or outcome’ and include ‘expressive and creative activities (those which do not have a defined outcome)’ (MOE, 1993: 117), the final document referred to predetermined ‘learning outcomes’ (Alcock and Haggerty, 2013). Rather than highlighting the place of opportunities that do not predetermine outcomes – as part of the plurality of learning – the final document offers a closer specification of the ideal child as ECE product – framed as 118 learning outcomes.…”

Qualities for early childhood care and education in an age of increasing superdiversity and decreasing biodiversity

“…Meanwhile, early childhood scholars have critiqued the shift in ECCE discourse on the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s website, from a previous focus on supporting high-quality child-centred provision to one of ‘schoolification’, whereby previous terminologies such as ‘care’ and ‘development’ are now replaced by a narrowed focus on ‘learning’ (Alcock and Haggerty, 2013). In the primary education sector, ‘national standards’ for literacy and numeracy, imposed in 2007, have been demonstrated to be harmful to children’s education in numerous ways, which include, for example, increased teacher workload and stresses and tension amongst staff; the narrowing of the curriculum; the positioning and labelling of children, including visible wall displays of children’s ‘achievement’ generating negative self-images amongst children and parental concern in this regard; and parental fixation on ‘below/at/above the standard’, rather than a more holistic view of the child’s learning (Thrupp, 2014).…”