Session Information
26 SES 13 A, Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field (Part 2)
Symposium continued from 26 SES 12 A
Contribution
Early childhood care and education is recognised as being a context for emergent, collaborative leadership, particularly by women. This chapter acknowledges Aotearoa (New Zealand) as a site of two centuries of colonial encroachment on the rights, resources and wellbeing of Māori, the Indigenous people, via Euro-Western patriarchal authoritarian models of leadership imposed through the assumption of sovereignty. Since the 1840 signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi | The Treaty of Waitangi, that had allowed for British settlement whilst undertaking to preserve Māori authority over their lands and resources, Māori have sought redress for ongoing treaty breaches. Meanwhile, the diverse early childhood education sector in Aotearoa has grown in response to community concerns and despite a lack of government provision. This positioning outside of the compulsory education sector has inherently enabled the sector to be a site of progressive resistance to ongoing colonisation. The first early childhood curriculum for Aotearoa, Te Whāriki 1996 (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 1996), was written immediately after the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Treaty, a moment of national reflection on Treaty related concerns. Te Whāriki 1996 was furthermore strongly reflective of the influence of Te Kōhanga Reo, the early childhood Māori language revitalisation movement, that sought to protect the Māori language. Te Whāriki 1996 both recognised the obligations contained within Te Tiriti o Waitangi and positioned Māori language and values as centrally important to early childhood care and education pedagogy in Aotearoa. The argument of this chapter relates to a solidarity of concern that united the early childhood sector in demonstrating leadership in the decolonisation project underpinned by a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a decolonisation agenda that has now, twenty-five years later, been taken up more widely.
References
Giroux, H. A. (2021). The public imagination and the dictatorship of ignorance. Social Identities, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2021.1931089 Jackson, M. (2020). Where to next? Decolonisation and the stories in the land. In R. Kiddle (Ed.), Imagining Decolonisation (pp. 133-155). Bridget Williams Books. Manning, S., Woodhams, M., & Howsan, S. (2011). Emergent leadership in Playcentre. Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice, 26(2), 3–13. May, H. (2013). The discovery of early childhood (2nd ed.). NZCER Press. Ministry of Education. (1996/2017). Te Whāriki. He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Mitchell, L. (2019). Democratic policies and practices in early childhood education. An Aotearoa New Zealand case study. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1793-4 New Zealand Parliament. (2020). Education and Training Act. Te Tiriti o Waitangi. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0038/latest/LMS280244.html Orange, C. (2021). The Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi: An illustrated history. Bridget Williams Books. Skerrett, M., & Ritchie, J. (2021). Te Rangatiratanga o te Reo: Sovereignty in Indigenous languages in early childhood education in Aotearoa. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 16(2), 250-264. Westbrook, F., & White, J. (2021). One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum. Policy Futures in Education, 19(4), 424-437.
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