Ngaroma Williams

Few would deny the increasing effects of climate change on society today. Clear signals warn of the inevitable impacts for future society if further actions are not taken seriously. As a consequenc...

Kaitiakitanga: Turning the Tides is a documentary exploring the restoration of Waitarakao (Washdyke Lagoon) through research grounded in Māori knowledge, values, relationships, and responsibilities. The film documents how environmental knowledge, informed by maramataka (≈ a Māori lunar, seasonal, and ecological system of time) and intergenerational learning, guides collective engagement with the lagoon. Historically an important food-gathering area for Ngāi Tahu, Waitarakao has experienced significant ecological degradation, prompting collective efforts to restore the health of its waters and reconnect people with place. Through the voices and experiences of Indigenous knowledge holders, educators, children, young people and community members, the documentary shows how participants enact kaitiakitanga (≈ culturally grounded and intergenerational responsibilities of care, protection, and restoration) through environmental action and shared responsibility. The film foregrounds storytelling and visual media as ways of communicating research beyond conventional academic contexts. It invites reflection on how collective action, intergenerational knowledge transmission and sustained relationships with place can contribute to the restoration of ecosystems and the renewal of human relationships with the natural world.

This article examines Indigenous children’s rights and early learning through a framework grounded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, mātauranga Māori, and international Indigenous education policy. Drawing on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, it argues that children’s rights cannot be meaningfully realised without Indigenous authority over language, culture, and education. Situated in Aotearoa New Zealand, the paper critiques the dominance of Western developmental models in early learning and positions Māori concepts of relationality and kaitiakitanga (guardianship) as foundational to rights-based pedagogy. Comparative examples from Hawai‘i, Canada, and Australia illustrate how Indigenous-led governance and language frameworks operationalise children’s rights through community authority rather than institutional inclusion. The article concludes that genuine transformation requires structural change beyond symbolic recognition, including shared governance with Indigenous communities, mandated professional learning in Indigenous pedagogies, and policy frameworks that centre Indigenous knowledge systems as foundational rather than supplementary.

This polyvocal article is an anecdotal narrative from the author researchers, supported by a photographic essay, presenting the methodological and contextual experience of image-making and contemplation undertaken in three early childhood education centres (ECEs) in Christchurch, Lyttleton and Timaru. The research was positioned through a key research question: How might we better understand engagement with local conditions for children’s access to water through the application of visual methods – in Aotearoa, New Zealand? The experience for the team was transformative, leading us to reflect upon our time in the centres, our collaborations and interactions with the children and teachers, and, primarily for the purpose of this article, how the act of image-making shaped our encounters while at the ECEs. A critical research method in the project involved photography of the lived experiences of the children in the centres, as lensed through representations of water by children in their daily lives. The shifting gaze of the photograph and the daily narrative afforded to the wai (water) transmitted is not simply about the physical properties of water but about the whakapapa (or origins) of wai as a life force that changes the flow of direction or activity. The researchers took a ‘walking with’ immersive approach to access the world of the children that simultaneously relied on the subjectivity of the photographers as an unfolding method in action. Central to the interests of this article is what we learned from the image-making experience. Lensing our research through visual methods transformed how we encountered our subjects. Invisible moments were rendered visible in the contemplative act of taking and then thinking about the photos. The photographic text, collected and reflected upon (by researchers spanning distinctly different practices), shaped a nascent transdisciplinary methodological approach to build into our future inquiries.

Based on Sustainable Development Goals, a recent flurry of activity has begun concerning the responsibilities of teachers to support young children in recognising and responding to aspects of climate change. Less, however, is understood about the emotional impact of these interventions on children themselves, or the extent to which the way they are framed can impact on the actions that follow. The extent to which children are encouraged to worry about water and their responsibilities concerning its sustainability is of relevance to the children of Aotearoa New Zealand and orients the focus of this paper. Walking with 3–4-year-old children over several days across three early childhood education and care sites located near waterways in the South Island, researchers share examples of worrying that took place for these children as we walked together with water. Utilising Bilandzic et al. (Sci Commun 39:466–491, 2017) goal frames to analyse their significance, the ways children worried are explored in a series of narratives that identify as series of positive and negative frames and their consequences. The paper concludes by highlighting the considerable effects of worrying and their consequences for activating children towards climate action. Teachers are invited to take a nuanced view that ameliorates the counter-productive outcomes of negative frames that can immobilise action, in contemplation of positive frames with water as a relational encounter with potential for empowerment and change. As such, a shift from emphasising activities for climate change to the framings that orient their significance through children’s worrying encounters with and about water.

Te Whāriki, the first bicultural early childhood education curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, gained national and international attention. While there was widespread acceptance of its bicultural intent, Te Whāriki was not well understood and implemented as a bicultural curriculum. Early childhood education teachers lacked confidence and struggled to integrate te reo me ngā tikanga Māori into their daily practices. This article gives voice to the wisdom of three mature stalwarts of te ao Māori and the unique community-based lens of tangata whenua from five marae across the country. It provides pathways into how te ao Māori can be implemented into daily practices, programmes, and pedagogies of teachers in the early childhood sector. An Indigenous framework was used to explore what needs to happen to have a bicultural early childhood education sector. These included knowing and understanding how whakapapa can be the key to engaging in te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori.

While much has been done to advance narrative assessment practice in the early years, less attention has been granted to the role of the image in this pursuit. As a consequence, the purposes, value and strategic use of images (photographs, videos, visual metaphors etc.) in foregrounding learning of young children are not well understood. This paper reports on the results of a short pilot survey, sent to the early childhood education (ECE) sector Aotearoa New Zelaand in early February 2022, asking a series of exploratory questions about the status and utility of the image in ECE assessment. Images were not only viewed by many respondents as central to assessment and the co-production of knowledge about children’s learning, but they were also considered to be significant in terms of the trustworthiness and credibility of assessment information. Images represented young children’s learning in accessible ways and provided for reinterpretation, negotiation of meaning, and ongoing conversations about children’s changing experiences, capabilities, relationships, and community in ECE. As entry points to assessment dialogues with whānau and children, images provided a shared source of evidence about valued learning. We conclude with a provocation arising from understanding images as central to assessment that calls for more critical literacy concerning the placement and status of the image in ECE assessment practice – especially in light of assessment in the bicultural curriculum context of Te Whāriki (MoE, 2017).