One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum

Abstract

Early childhood scholars in New Zealand have long lamented a rising dominance of neoliberalism. Correspondingly they suggest that there has been a lessening of socialist ideals and principles of Te Ao Māori after years of a right-wing government. With the ‘refresh’ of New Zealand’s national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki under the Fifth National Government we sought to investigate the location of these discourses in Te Whāriki. Borrowing from Tolkien this paper draws on the metaphor of a ruling, in this case neoliberal, discourse as ‘one ring to rule them all’. We investigate the governmentality of the Fifth National Government through their Four Year Plan 2016–2020 and its permeation of the revised curriculum. Seeking to better understand the location and dominance of neoliberalism within the updated Te Whāriki, the paper analyses both the 1996 curriculum and the 2017 revision for socialist, neoliberal and Te Ao Māori discourses, and their status within the document. A post-structuralist conceptual framework is employed for this study, bringing to bear Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva in conversation. Analysis across both Te Whāriki and the Four Year Plan found that while neoliberalism was certainly a pervasive discourse, it was, in fact, accompanied by discourses of socialism, neoliberalism and Te Ao Māori. The paper concludes by suggesting that, while neoliberalism may appear to dominate texts, there are complex interanimations between a number of discourses. This multitude potentially ameliorates any one discourse’s domination or, conversely, compromises others. With these findings come important implications concerning the pervasive discourse of neoliberalism and its shaping potential. However, there are also concerns for a new form of colonisation within early childhood curriculum and policy reform.

Discourses of children's citizenship in early childhood settings: A cross-national perspective in the global context

“…Whilst Indigenous Māori values have been increasingly recognised and emphasised in the Aotearoa context, the discursive turns recognised in Chapter 6 have shown that, compared with Te Whāriki 1996, the 2017 iteration strengthens the human capital and developmentalist discourses to some extent (see Section 6.3). This finding is in line with several recent studies(Ritchie, 2018;Ritchie & Skerrett, 2019;Westbrook & White, 2021), which have considered that the previous positioning of te ao Māori in Te Whāriki 1996 is undermined in Te Whāriki 2017. For example, racism and social justice are not major issues in Te Whāriki 2017, compared with other issues such as dispositions and core competencies.…”

“…One of these limits is the lack of continuous support from teachers for children's participation. As mentioned previously, there are several roles that children can choose to take responsibility for caring for and helping others, such as The above discussion also reveals the tension between child-centred individualistic pedagogies and collective and community-based pedagogies in the Aotearoa context (Phillips, Ritchie, & Dynevor, et al, 2020;Westbrook and White, 2021). Compared with the Chinese kindergartens, fewer large group activities were arranged in the selected Aotearoa kindergartens, and children had a wider range of freedom to make choices based on their individual needs and opinions.…”

“…These private services, through which the government intended to expand provision and participation, become tools for profit rather than for the delivery of high-quality ECEC programmes (Mitchell, 2019(Mitchell, , 2020. The subjects are constructed within the human capital theory and market ideology, whereby children are valued for their future economic productivity (Westbrook & White, 2021). Another result of this market-driven reform is that many low-income families or marginalised ethnic groups such as Māori and Pacific Islands fail to gain equal access to ECEC services (Ritchie & Johnson, 2011).…”

“…Nevertheless, it is still necessary to consider and explore what a deeper understanding of mana could bring to children and their citizenship in Aotearoa. Westbrook and White (2021) worried that mana is used in the curriculum to encapsulate children's future potential which aligns with the neoliberalism and human capital theory, indicating "subjugated war waged against essential elements that comprise the Māori worldview" (p. 9). Further considerations could be paid to the way that mana is emphasised.…”