Effective partnerships between parents, teachers and the community have universally been heralded as crucial to improving young Indigenous Australians' participation in early childhood education and their literacy development. This study of one remote preschool setting identifies the features that successfully framed family-school and…

Child care for indigenous children provides an important site for early health and wellbeing interventions, and smooths the transition to school. It is demonstrably protective for children vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Furthermore, employment in child care and/or having access to child care in order to take up other employment provides a…

This paper focuses on very young students' ability to engage in repeating pattern tasks and identifying strategies that assist them to ascertain the structure of the pattern. It describes results of a study which is part of the Early Years Generalising Project (EYGP) and involves Australian students in Years 1 to 4 (ages 5-10). This paper reports…

This paper presents the findings from semi-structured interviews with six Indigenous Australian early childhood workers who were asked about how Indigenous families might be better supported to engage with early childhood education and care services. The workers identified three key barriers to family participation: transport difficulties, family…

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 article is concerned with the under-representation of Indigenous workers in mainstream childcare services and the associated problem of the under-representation of Indigenous children in such services. Specifically, it focuses on workforce issues that serve as barriers to both attracting and/or retaining Indigenous staff. The research methods…

The Australian Government has recently committed to the development of an integrated system of assuring national quality standards for Australian childcare and preschool services (Australian Government, 2008). This article addresses two fundamental issues relating to the development of an integrated system as it applies to Indigenous children's…

Developing successful schooling sites in multiracial regional town contexts can often be quite challenging. This paper examines the work done in one such pre-schooling context in a medium-sized regional town where racial and ethnic tensions are high and where many families struggle with social/emotional/economic challenges. This pre-school setting…

Many myths occur regarding the inherent abilities young Indigenous students possess when they enter a Western school environment. One such myth in early numeracy is Indigenous students' innate ability to instantly recognise the number of objects in a small group without counting them; that is, their ability to subitise. Willis (2000) reports that…