FULL REFERENCE: Glasgow, A. (2021). The wellbeing of pacific children and families: foregrounding culture, language, and identity formation in early childhood education. NZ International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 23(2), 20 – 35.
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ABSTRACT: Optimum health and wellbeing are essential to children’s lives. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), increasing attention is paid to strategies which strengthen practice within early childhood education. Furthermore, Aotearoa is increasingly culturally, and socially diverse, and the Pacific community contributes to the rich cultural composition of Aotearoa New Zealand society. Closer inspection is needed to enable Pacific children to flourish within an education system that is primarily bound by Western theory and pedagogy. This article reports on research on Pacific cultural practices and values supporting Pacific identity and wellbeing. It examines documentation promoting greater understandings of health and wellbeing for Pacific children. Findings show pedagogical practices, processes and structures can enable or impede health and wellbeing for Pacific children and families in Early Childhood Education. Further it contends that addressing inequality in education, designed to enhance health and wellbeing, must be bounded, and foregrounded by aspirations and cultural values of the Pacific community.
Key words: Pacific children, cultural inequality, health, wellbeing, Pacific identity.
