The New Zealand Draft Curriculum Guidelines for Early Childhood Education, ‘Te Whariki’, introduced in 1993, are discussed in relation to the historical and cultural contexts which underlie their development, and aspects of the bicultural focus of the document are highlighted. The document addresses the aspirations of the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, for their language and culture to be protected and sustained. Early childhood is the primary site for the transmission of language and culture, and this places the onus on all early childhood educators in New Zealand to address these issues in an integrated way within the early childhood curriculum.
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