Natural Disasters, Evacuation and Separation Effects on Children

FULL REFERENCE: Harper-Hooper, W. (2025). Advocating anti-bias practices in early childhood education.  NZ International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 27, pp. 43-55.

ABSTRACT:
This article examines the integration of anti-bias education, multicultural pedagogy, and Social Learning Theory within early childhood education, with a focus on fostering inclusive, equitable, and socially just learning environments. Grounded in the view that bias is socially constructed and learned, anti-bias education offers a critical framework for supporting children’s identity development, empathy, and engagement with diversity from the early years. Informed by Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, the paper explores how young children internalise inclusive values through observation, modelling, and guided interaction. Play-based learning is identified as a developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive approach for embedding these values within everyday practice. Through intentional role-play, storytelling, and collaborative exploration, children are supported to examine difference, challenge stereotypes, and develop inclusive ways of thinking and relating. The paper outlines practical strategies, including inclusive curriculum design, culturally sustaining resources, family and community engagement, and educator reflection, that contribute to equitable learning experiences. It also presents assessment approaches that capture children’s understanding of diversity and inclusion through observation, artefacts, and caregiver input. In the Aotearoa New Zealand context and globally, where increasing diversity and persistent inequities shape the early childhood education landscape, this article underscores the educator’s role as a reflective, relational, and intentional agent of change. It concludes by advocating for ongoing professional learning and collaboration to advance transformative early childhood education practices rooted in equity, belonging, and social justice.

KEY WORDS: Anti-bias education, pedagogy, play-based learning, multicultural education, social learning theory.

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INTRODUCTION

Anti-bias education is a dynamic, intentional pedagogical approach aimed at addressing the systemic roots of prejudice, discrimination, and social inequity. Rather than promoting passive notions of tolerance, it encourages critical reflection, sustained dialogue, and transformative action, all directed toward dismantling structural bias and advancing social justice. At the heart of anti-bias education is the understanding that biases are socially constructed and learned, thus, they can be consciously unlearned through deliberate and reflective educational practices.

Derman-Sparks and Edwards (2020) emphasise the critical role of early childhood education in shaping young children’s developing attitudes toward identity, diversity, and inclusion. When early childhood education environments actively affirm children’s diverse backgrounds and challenge stereotypes, they support the development of positive self-identities and foster empathy and respect for others (Murray & Nakkula, 2021). Embedding anti-bias principles into curriculum design and daily practice enables educators to create inclusive spaces where all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, ability, or socioeconomic status, feel a sense of belonging, affirmation, and agency.

FULL REFERENCE: Jenkin, C. (2022). Editorial NZIRECE Special Issue on Parents as Partners in Early Childhood Education and Care.  NZ International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 24, pp.  1-3.

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EDITORIAL: NZIRECE Special Issue on Parents as Partners in Early Childhood Education and Care

I was delighted to be invited as guest editor of the special edition of The New Zealand International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal on parents as partners in early childhood education, because the importance of partnering with parents has been integral to my life and career. 

Throughout my life and career, the importance of partnerships with parents has been evident. My parents both had challenging upbringings with my father in 1920 being abandoned by his mother at five years old, then ending up in an orphanage, and my mother as the daughter of divorced parents in 1927. Nevertheless, they took an active interest in my schooling, hobbies, and the intermittent and short-lasting dabbling into sport.

In my initial career as a primary teacher, in the late 1960s I started out in Kawakawa Primary School, where for the most part parents were evident and involved in the school community. The same was apparent in the small three teacher rural school in Maraetai where I later taught. It was less obvious at Avondale Intermediate in the early 1970s as mothers began to join the paid workforce. I recall going to students’ homes after school with the aim of sharing the children’s end of the year report when whanau were unable to attend the parent interview sessions. My lasting impression was reactions of uncertainty and discomfort and I felt as though I had intruded. In hindsight, I lacked the skill of building relations with cultures other than my own.

I had taken some months of maternity leave before returning to teaching, in 1974. With the rise of long day childcare around the 1970s and 1980s and the push for women to return to work, a sea change occurred throughout the sector. There were growing numbers of full day care and education centres, though ‘back yard’ or unregulated homecare was also available, especially early on. One of the key changes in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1986 was early childhood education and care centres moving from the Department of Social Welfare to the Department of Education. I felt at the time that there was recognition of the importance of education in the early years.

With my first child turning nearly 2 years old in 1976, and pregnant with my second, I discovered Playcentre – a parent cooperative where I also found my ‘educational home’. The free selection of activities and experiences were what I had been searching for (rather unsuccessfully) in my primary teaching. It matched my belief that children would learn better if they had some control in selecting what they wanted to learn.

During the 1990s and increasingly in the early 2000s, the sector was professionalised within nationally determined guidelines. By 1995, all early childhood teachers in kindergarten and childcare settings were only seen as ‘qualified’ by completing a 3-year diploma (with a short time later, a degree). In the meantime, Playcentre fought for government funding alongside kindergarten and long-day childcare and continued to refine the parent education programme. Parents in Playcentre must meet all government requirements in order to receive funding, but they continue to be the educators of their own children. It was those values of parent partnerships that were refined and shaped as I took them into my developing career as a lecturer in initial teacher education.

Currently, appreciation of parent partnerships is woven through the different courses I teach. The value of parent involvement in early childhood education cannot be underestimated. It was recognised in Aotearoa New Zealand in the national early childhood education curriculum Te Whāriki first published in 1996, and Principle 3 Whānau tangata/Family and community is described as “The wider world of family and community is an integral part of the early childhood curriculum” (Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 20).