Quality in early childhood development was barely mentioned in government policy four decades ago. But this has changed. Using discourses and gazes as analytical tools, and by examining the recent past (1972-2009), this article traces how and why "quality" has become a key component of the current Council of Australian Governments' agenda. We…

Increased national and international attention towards early childhood education has resulted in the development of an Australian "Early Years Learning Framework" (EYLF) called "Belonging, Being and Becoming" (DEEWR, 2009) for realising agreed practice, principles and outcomes. The EYLF highlights the importance of educators using "intentional…

A corpus of literature has argued the fundamental importance of learner engagement in early years' classrooms and identified the association between engagement and academic and social success. In the current education policy, educational theories typically influence curriculum development which, in turn, guides pedagogical practice. In the case of…

Global childhood as a concept privileges western ideals of how young children experience growing up, how adults educate them, and how priorities are set for them. Ways of knowing and doing early childhood are backed by Euro-American knowledge, international conventions and scientific evidence which gives a semblance of the truths for intervening…

At the start of the first formal year of schooling in New South Wales, teachers gather information on a number of aspects of children's numeracy to guide their teaching program. This information is essential to planning teaching activities to meet the needs of all students. This paper reports on some key aspects of number knowledge held by 65,000…

This article describes the evaluation outcomes of an innovative, community based educational initiative to enhance and promote the awareness of literacy and numeracy in young children in two regional communities in Moorabool Shire, Victoria. With the support of committed educational and community partners (through the Moorabool Best Start…

The "National Quality Framework" (NQF) has been heralded by the Australian Government as a significant reform that will raise the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC) across the country. Drawing on Foucault's (1991) conceptualisation of governmentality this article critically analyses the NQF. From this analysis we conclude that…

In this paper we report some initial findings from our investigations into the Australian Government's Longitudinal Study of Australian Children dataset. It is revealed that the majority of Australian children are exceeding the government's Screen Time recommendations and that most of their screen time is spent as TV viewing, as opposed to video…

Evidence concerning the impact of child care on child development suggests that higher-quality environments, particularly those that are more responsive, predict more favourable social and behavioural outcomes. However, the extent of this effect is not as great as might be expected. Impacts on child outcomes are, at best, modest. One recent…

By engaging poststructural, postmodern and indigenous lenses, this article explores challenges associated with recently developed "postmodern" early childhood education curricula. The authors propose that curricula should not be seen as neutral, but rather as historically and politically situated documents that require dynamic and critical…

This paper examines curriculum debates, particularly those that influence an understanding of the nature and purpose of curriculum, in providing teacher education and in influencing teaching practice. The work of Martin Heidegger provides a framework for questioning the early childhood teacher education curriculum. Central to this analysis are…

The development of early literacy knowledge is generally seen as an important aspect of early childhood education. The way early literacy learning is promoted, however, varies greatly in different national curriculum frameworks. This article compares the approach taken in the New Zealand early childhood curriculum ("Te Whariki") with the approach…

The view that children should have a say in and participate in the decision making of matters that affect them is now an accepted position when considering research and policy in the early years. This paper reviews the field of child participation in the Australian context to show that, despite growing evidence of support within policy and…

Much research on early measurement learning is small-scale and dependent on the items used. While such research is helpful for indicating the key aspects of learning length, it does not give teachers a clear indication of the expectations for student learning of them. This paper presents substantial data from a large project that used individual…

New Zealand has an internationally unique approach to early childhood education, which includes a bicultural early childhood curriculum, a robust infrastructure of organisation and management overseen by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, and a growing reputation for innovation in early childhood teaching and learning. This paper examines how…