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The complex and fluid nature of knowledge is a key dimension of the early childhood curriculum and of early childhood teaching and learning. Such complexity adds to the already complex and dynamic work of an early childhood teacher. With a dynamic view of knowledge in mind, this article reports on research with a team of early childhood teachers to explore the ways in which knowledge is experienced for the teaching team. We explore formulations and debates on knowledge that engage with the complexity of knowledge relationships in an early childhood teaching team. The data provides an insight into the importance of leadership and interpersonal relationships in determining how knowledge moves within the ecology of a teaching team. The benefits of critical dialogue are explored in terms of supporting the work, and well-being, of early childhood teachers and teaching teams.

In this study, the focus is on five Associate Teachers’ remembered experiences of working with early childhood Student Teachers nearing graduation who were at risk of failing practicum. Using Rogoff’s overlapping ‘planes of analysis’, the subjective experiences of the Associate Teachers are analysed, bringing into focus the personal, interpersonal and institutional complexities involved in attempting to assess the Student Teacher on practicum. Ethical and philosophical issues become apparent, particularly in the clash between protecting a Student Teacher’s privacy and the open communication valued in the relationship, between Associate Teachers and the Initial Teacher Education provider.

Geographically isolated in the south-west Pacific but intellectually and culturally connected to Western Europe, Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood education sector is a unique mix of influences. The imprint of progressive education is evident in a legacy of “free play” programmes, yet its national curriculum is built on the construct of “mana”, reflecting the cosmology and aspirations of the indigenous Māori people. These influences are held in tension with contemporary economic drivers to expand the sector and to focus on politically approved “learning outcomes”. Within this dynamic tension, the place of play and of “free play” is paradoxically both visible and invisible both in the education of very young children, and also in teacher education. This study draws on oral history interviews that focused on “free play” across 60+ years. The analysis of these indicates a process of “educationalisation” evident across three “reform agendas”: Play, Unity, and Education.

WHAT HAPPENS TO CHILDREN'S free play when learning outcomes are required? What happens when safety is foregrounded over exploration? When does accountability become surveillance? When does visualising children as an investment opportunity make children ‘too precious’? Based on the analysis of oral history interviews with historic leaders of Aotearoa, New Zealand's early childhood sector, this paper examines some unintended consequences of the sector's professionalisation. It draws on contemporary, feminist and classical sociological theory (Bunkle, 1995; Foucault, 1970/2001; Merton, 1934; Moss, 2010) to support a discursive model that focuses on how ‘odd’ alliances can push the sector in unanticipated directions.

This paper adopts a Foucaldian analytical framework to identify emerging discourses that shape the play of under three-year-old children, as described by families, researchers-as-film editors, and children-as-protagonists in play Drawing on video footage, interviews and analysis from the Aotearoa New Zealand contribution to an International Play Project for Organisation Mondiale for l’Education Prescholaire (OMEP) (Samuelson-Pramling & Fleer, in press), the authors argue for a reconstructuralist view of play within the cultural and historical context of society, and suggest that for Aotearoa New Zealand, such a view must Incorporate the aspirations of family, culture and society — beyond the exclusive gaze of professionals.