FULL REFERENCE: Afrin, T. (2023). Cultural components of early childhood teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand. NZ International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 25, pp. 1 – 16.
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ABSTRACT: A number of Tertiary Education Organisations (TEOs) deliver early childhood teacher education programmes, where teaching and learning takes place between student-teachers and lecturers. Although several research reports aim to explore cultural diversity and inclusive practice with young children, very few do so from the perspective of teacher education. It is important that the tertiary sector is studied so that the student-teachers’ classroom encounter aligns with the placement experience. This study aims to address this gap. Within a socio-cultural framework, the research objectives were to ascertain the cultural components of early childhood teacher education programmes and to explore how the identified components impact on teaching and learning. Twelve lecturers from three TEOs and three cohorts of student-teachers participated via interviews and focus group discussions. Using manual thematic coding, nine broad areas of emerged. These are bicultural contexts of Aotearoa, multi-culturalism, individual identities, cross-cultural interactions, comfort zone, female majority, socio-economic struggles, spirituality, and technology. Student-teachers reported feeling empowered when they shared components from their culture. Lecturers acknowledged these components and affirmed that they contributed to their own emotional and professional growth. The findings led to the development of a reusable reflection framework for the lecturers of early childhood teacher education programmes to promote cultural competence.
KEY WORDS: Culture, teacher education, early childhood, reflection, teaching as inquiry.
INTRODUCTION
If we believe in the quote “We teach who we are” (Palmer, 1998, p. 1), curiosity about cultural components arises. Our own cultural contexts influence us as individuals and as educators. As an immigrant early childhood teacher educator from Bangladesh, working in Aotearoa New Zealand for the last twelve years, my curiosity led me to explore how lecturers relate to the student-teachers within the diverse cultural context. This query led to a Master of Philosophy study where I aimed to understand the cultural components of early childhood teacher education classrooms and the possible impact they may have on lecturers and student-teachers. In this study, I have condensed the infinite components of culture present in early childhood teacher education classrooms. Culture itself is polysemous. This is because culture is influenced by multiple variables such social and political contexts, as well as individual aspects such as, age, gender, and ethnicities (Eberly, Joshi, & Konzal, 2007). Anthropologically, people may denote artefacts from many different identities even within the same individual. For the study, I have narrowed down the investigation to the following subjects:
