Abstract
Belonging is a crucial construct in several early childhood curriculum documents and is visible in much contemporary writing about early childhood. Belonging is portrayed as a fundamental human need and a springboard for participation that develops through relationships with people, places and things, and within contexts of families and communities. Early childhood settings are key contexts for many young children and families. However, only recently have there been attempts to theorise and analyse constructs of belonging and to make connections with identity and participation. Shifts across place – a common event in the lives of young children – are an element that can include the affordance of creative learning opportunities, and opportunities for children to develop positive dispositions to deal with change and uncertainty. It can, however, also be a time of difficulty for families and children.
This special issue explores theories and practices of belonging in different early childhood settings from Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian researchers. It builds from discussions held by researchers from the University of Waikato and Charles Sturt University, who set out to undertake a collaborative examination of the phenomenon of belonging through diverse theoretical and cultural frames. Belonging is highlighted in the vision statement of Te Whāriki, New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, that children are ‘secure in their sense of belonging and in the knowledge that they make a valued contribution to society’ (Ministry of Education, 2017: 2). Belonging is one of five strands of Te Whāriki and, in the earlier 1996 curriculum, was described in its widest sense as contributing to ‘inner well-being, security and identity’ (Ministry of Education, 1996: 54). Australia foregrounds belonging in its curriculum title – Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia – describing it as ‘fundamental to human existence’ and to shaping who children are and who they can become (Department of Education, 2009: 7). Although not a focus in this special issue, identity and belonging feature together as one of four themes in the Irish curriculum framework, Aistear (National Council, 2009). This special issue offers an Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian perspective.
A focus on belonging is particularly relevant at a time when internationally standardised and benchmarked outcomes for early childhood education are being promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (Moss et al., 2016). Both Aotearoa New Zealand’s curriculum and Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework take a sociocultural perspective on learning. The OECD pays attention to measurable outcomes across a range of narrow domains, emphasising universality, which is blind to inequalities and the cultural and social contexts of children’s lives. The measures provide a ‘one-world’ view in an internationally standardised context (Carr et al., 2016). Moreover, the extreme market policies applied to the provision of early childhood education and care in both Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia have put at risk and are strikingly at odds with the curriculum ideals of early childhood education and care as a social good. These inconsistencies and tensions are explored in this issue, alongside articles from diverse contexts and perspectives that create new narratives on how belonging is conceptualised and put into practice.
This special issue opens with Press, Woodrow, Logan and Mitchell’s questioning of whether it is possible to ‘belong’ in a neo-liberal world. These authors problematise the effect of neo-liberalism on Australian and New Zealand early childhood policy and curriculum over time. They argue that it is incumbent on researchers, early childhood educators and academics alike to develop more robust understandings of belonging, resist neo-liberalism with its focus on individualism and reclaim the framing of early childhood education as a social good.
Sumsion, Harrison, Letsch, Bradley and Stapleton’s article similarly argues that for the potentially transformative power of belonging to be realised, beyond being a mere motif in early childhood policy documents, nuanced and rigorous understandings of belonging are required. The article offers insider knowledge of the historical positioning of belonging within Australian curriculum documents, and the potential opportunities and risks of positioning belonging front and centre in these policy documents. The authors argue for consideration of diverse, non-dominant western views of belonging. They demonstrate, by rereading a vignette captured in an empirical study, how looking through alternate lenses can bring into sharp focus the political and cultural influences on pedagogy and practices.
Delving deeper into the interrogation of belonging, Peers’ article is a rich philosophical explication of this concept. Peers draws attention to the impact of belonging not only on early childhood education, but also on the real and everyday lived reality of children. Peers makes a strong case for the important place of philosophy within education as a way of providing discursive spaces for rich and rigorous debate.
Rameka explores two interrelated aspects of being and belonging from a Māori perspective: genealogical connections and family relationships. Her article explores how each aspect has changed over time as a result of colonisation, urbanisation and western education. The article utilises narratives from participants in a recent early childhood teaching and learning research project to illuminate messages about the diverse ways of belonging and being in both traditional and contemporary contexts. Teachers’ understandings of the contexts of belonging and being for Māori, and the multiple and increasingly complex urban environments in which they are exhibited, are critical to further supporting the development of a sense of belonging for Māori children and families in early childhood.
Arndt’s article argues for rethinking notions around early childhood teachers’ cultural Otherness and their sense of belonging in their teaching teams. She maintains that this rethinking requires a movement away from notions of managing diversity through knowing useful strategies and practices to an openness to uncertainty and unpredictability. The article draws on Kristeva’s ideas of the foreigner lens, which positions teachers as foreigners to themselves with unknown or unrecognised aspects of self, and that the self is in a continual process of meaning-making and transformation. Recognising this foreigner within not only counters the reproduction of attitudes towards and constructs of the Other, but the Other also becomes less different, less threatening. Arndt’s article argues for ongoing enquiry into teacher Otherness and the constant meaning-making of the cultural and contextual realities within teaching teams.
Mitchell, Bateman and Myint explore belonging for refugee and immigrant families within Aotearoa New Zealand. They argue that early childhood pedagogies that encompass the key cultural constructs and values which refugee and immigrant families hold enable the development of a sense of belonging to Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as maintaining a connectedness to homelands. The article discusses a study that explored the ways teachers drew on the ‘funds of knowledge’ and cultural capital of their families by facilitating learning important to the families. The study stressed the importance of children and families experiencing an environment where key values – such as welcoming, hospitality, kindness, respect and taking responsibility for others – were constantly reinforced. A key point is the need to include teachers who not only centralise cultural values, but also have the appropriate cultural knowledge to engage in bilingual and multilingual interactions to ensure that belonging is supported as part of everyday practice.
Selby, Bradley, Sumsion, Stapleton and Harrison’s article rounds out this special issue by bringing into question the very notion that belonging is an observable phenomenon in infancy. Whilst acknowledging the strong appeal of belonging in early childhood policy documents, the authors identify political, semiotic and visibility problems when attempting to discern a child’s belongingness in everyday practice. Drawing on two contrasting views of belonging to examine two episodes in early years services, they demonstrate how a focus on infants’ inclusion and exclusion – marked belonging – can render invisible their ‘agentic comfort’ with others – unmarked belonging. They argue instead for a focus on infants participating in groups.