In Australasia there is great enthusiasm if little understanding of the ontology of Reggio Emilia preschools. The ontology of both Reggio Emilia schools and the New Zealand Early Childhood Education (ECE) bi-cultural curriculum emerge from invasive experiences of military violence, of framing ECE as social justice. In this paper I tell three tales of ‘quality’. Two are contexted, local, where the quality draws on the ontology of resisting violence. The third, with a veneer of neutrality, does a violence to these, through decontextualized econometric claims to universality.
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