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Announcement: I am excited to announce that our team’s desktop review is scheduled for release on January 21, 2025. In our next blog post, we will link to our full report and provide some exciting project updates. Stay tuned!

Our upcoming desktop review features literature from all around the world (see our last blog post to learn more about the geographical distribution of our work). While there were lots of similarities across the countries, New Zealand stood out with some key points of learning. New Zealand’s approach to quality provision for babies is grounded in a shared vision that unites and drives their early years professionals, ensuring that they move towards agreed-upon goals together. Throughout the curriculum, there is a specific focus on what quality provision looks like for infants that brings together the following ideas:

• The key principles, which act as the foundation of the curriculum, are empowerment, holistic development, family and community, and relationships. The 5 strands which detail the areas of learning and development are wellbeing, belonging, contribution, communication, and exploration (Ministry of Education, 2017).
• Relationships are at the heart of this curriculum, attuning closely to babies’ connections within the school, but also with families, community, places and things (Hargraves, 2018). Babies are cherished as inextricably intertwined with the wider world.
• Early childhood professionals value babies as they are in the present moment, encouraging them to embrace their childhood and develop in their own time, at their own pace (Ministry of Education, 2017).

New Zealand’s shared sense of purpose resonates through every aspect of their approach, including how they measure quality. According to the Ministry of Education (2017:64), assessing progress against learning outcomes involves all the people who are active in educating and caring for the baby; additionally, babies’ unique development is honored through this approach by acknowledging that the people who know the baby are best equipped ‘to recognise significant learning over time.’

The case of New Zealand offers several points of reflection and learning for England:

• A clear vision of quality provision for babies that is grounded in a shared purpose, holding the wellbeing of children, family, and community at the centre, is powerful and can offer a clear idea of what should occur in practice.
• The sector can create innovative ways to measure quality that align with this purpose. If we acknowledge that quality is, as Dalli (2014:1) describes, ‘multi-perspectival, contestable and multi-dimensional,’ the measures we use need to meet this dynamic, influx conceptualization by honoring multiple voices and using varied methods.
• We must put supports in place that align with our shared purpose, moving beyond ‘the iron triangle’ of structural supports discussed by Dalli (2014:1). Support for quality should also encompass supporting the workforce, ensuring excellent work conditions, and gathering in family and community.

Over to you!

• What excites you about the shared vision for ECEC in New Zealand?
• What else do you think we can learn from New Zealand as we create a shared vision of quality in English baby rooms?
• What could be difficult to implement in the English context?

References

Dalli, C. (2014) Quality for babies and toddlers in early years settings. TACTYC Occasional paper 4. https://f5399c09-650a-4610-a190-ee23b0ba1b36.usrfiles.com/ugd/f5399c_e6bcc6b3e44242c5a5429dca43ab8f9a.pdf

Hargraves, V. (2018) What matters in infant and toddler pedagogy? The Education Hub https://theeducationhub.org.nz/what-matters-in-infant-and-toddler-pedagogy/ Retrieved on 12 August 2024

Ministry of Education, Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga (2017) Te Whāriki. He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa. Early childhood curriculum. Ministry of Education, Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, New Zealand.