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This article reports findings from a study that used a process of document analysis to examine early childhood care and education responses to increasing superdiversity in the 'bicultural' legislative context of Aotearoa New Zealand. The New Zealand Education Review Office has described both Indigenous Maori children and 'children of migrants and refugees' as 'vulnerable' and 'priority learners'. This article uses the lenses of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Indigenous rights) and Steven Vertovec's superdiversity approach to examine the implications of representations of the Indigenous Maori and the settler population in early childhood care and education in Aotearoa New Zealand. It further applies Sara Ahmed's diversity work on a phenomenology of whiteness to scrutinise the New Zealand government's commitments to supporting its nation's 'priority learners'.

This paper highlights the complex relations between public and private spaces with regard to young children's bilingual learning, and the importance of developing a pedagogy that allows for the interaction of learning across the two spaces. It uses findings from a qualitative study to illustrate nuanced (mis)alignments between dominant language discourses in New Zealand early childhood education and Chinese immigrant families' aspirations regarding the languages they want their children to learn and use. The study involved analysing a range of institutional documents to identify early childhood education discourses promoted in New Zealand. Alongside this, individual interviews were conducted with a group of Chinese immigrant parents to investigate their involvement in children's early childhood education. Families' aspirations, experiences and practices regarding children's bilingual learning were frequently mentioned during the interviews, and these are valuable knowledge for teachers. This paper presents findings related to these dual language learning expectations. It uses theoretical constructs of social spaces to interpret the findings and their implications for a responsive pedagogy that embraces bi/multilingualism.

The exhibition Strange Weather took place at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, from April 14 to August 14, 2022. Strange Weather provides a survey of the relationship between history, bodies, and the environment through artworks that span from 1970 to 2020. This exhibition showcases a range of mediums, from painting to installation, to draw attention to the impact of trauma on humans and land. This review explores how the MAH’s recent exhibition acknowledges hard truths within history through art and forces viewers to consider moments that have shaped our current social and political environment.

Service-learning (S-L) was adopted as a signature pedagogy in Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2016. The present study investigated students' civic and academic learning, personal growth, and career preparation in S-L at the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, using mixed methods. The scales and subscales used in this study had acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.71 to 0.93). Results showed that students perceived significant improvement to their civic outcomes when they participated in S-L compared to when they did not (n = 351), strong academic connection and career preparation development through the S-L experience (n = 832), and growth in interpersonal and personal development. Significant relationships were found between the student outcomes and S-L design and delivery features, such as perceived impact of S-L, preparedness for S-L, quality of reflection prompts, and amount of interaction with community. Frequency of reflection activities was significantly related to academic connection and career preparation but not civic outcomes. The findings suggest that student outcomes can be optimized through improvements in S-L course design and hold implications for faculty training and development.

Pedagogical documentation has been regarded as an important practice in early childhood education (ECE) settings because it provides an opportunity to observe children's learning and help teachers plan for learning experiences. This article focuses on teachers' use of information and communication technology (ICT) in pedagogical documentation in an under-researched context. A qualitative study was conducted in three kindergartens in Nanjing, China, over five months. The Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) model was adopted to understand participants' decision-making about pedagogical documentation. Findings indicate that ICT-supported pedagogical documentation aimed to help children learn from peers' experiences and reflect on their own learning. Participants considered pedagogical documentation as a tool for initiating discussion with children, though few used it to plan for future learning experiences. A gap between practice and policy in relation to pedagogical documentation was found in the study, and implications for both areas are discussed.

International social unrest in recent years has resulted in many people choosing or being forced to leave their home countries to seek better lives elsewhere, causing drastic demographic shifts. Yet, it has been pointed out that institutional policies and practices in many countries have not caught up with such changing demographics, which have contributed to concerns highlighted via the notion of 'superdiversity' (Vertovec, 2007). Due to the large influx of migrants over the past few decades, New Zealand and its early childhood education settings have become increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse. The country is now being described as a 'superdiverse New Zealand' and is facing challenges emerging from 'a level of cultural complexity surpassing anything previously experienced' (Royal Society of New Zealand, 2013: 1). Furthermore, population projections (Statistics New Zealand, 2015) indicate that superdiversity will be a long-term phenomenon in New Zealand. Te Whariki, the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, embraces diversity, recognising that the country 'is increasingly multicultural' (Ministry of Education, 2017: 1). In light of these concerns, this article considers the frameworks of superdiversity and critical multiculturalism with regard to transforming and developing policies and pedagogies that support working with superdiverse migrant children and their families by responding to migration-related equity and inclusion issues. This discussion has implications and relevance for both present and future early childhood education settings in New Zealand and in other countries with a large population of migrants.

Adult stem cells demonstrate metabolic flexibility that is regulated by cell adhesion status. The authors demonstrate that adherent cells primarily utilize glycolysis, whereas suspended cells rely on oxidative phosphorylation for their ATP needs. Akt phosphorylation transduces adhesion-mediated regulation of energy metabolism, by regulating translocation of glucose transporters (GLUT1) to the cell membrane and thus, cellular glucose uptake and glycolysis. Cell dissociation, a pre-requisite for cell transplantation, leads to energetic stress, which is mediated by Akt dephosphorylation, downregulation of glucose uptake, and glycolysis. They designed hydrogels that promote rapid cell adhesion of encapsulated cells, Akt phosphorylation, restore glycolysis, and cellular ATP levels.

Abnormal speech prosody has been widely reported in individuals with autism. Many studies on children and adults with autism spectrum disorder speaking a non-tonal language showed deficits in using prosodic cues to mark focus. However, focus marking by autistic children speaking a tonal language is rarely examined. Cantonese-speaking children may face additional difficulties because tonal languages require them to use prosodic cues to achieve multiple functions simultaneously such as lexical contrasting and focus marking. This study bridges this research gap by acoustically evaluating the use of Cantonese speech prosody to mark information structure by Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. We designed speech production tasks to elicit natural broad and narrow focus production among these children in sentences with different tone combinations. Acoustic correlates of prosodic focus marking like f0, duration and intensity of each syllable were analyzed to examine the effect of participant group, focus condition and lexical tones. Our results showed differences in focus marking patterns between Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorder. The autistic children not only showed insufficient on-focus expansion in terms of f0 range and duration when marking focus, but also produced less distinctive tone shapes in general. There was no evidence that the prosodic complexity (i.e. sentences with single tones or combinations of tones) significantly affected focus marking in these autistic children and their typically-developing (TD) peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Nonword repetition (NWR) has been described as a clinical marker of developmental language disorder (DLD), as NWR tasks consistently discriminate between DLD and typical development (TD) cross-linguistically, with Cantonese as the only reported exception. This study reexamines whether NWR is able to generate TD/DLD group differences in Cantonese-speaking children by reporting on a novel set of NWR stimuli that take into account factors known to affect NWR performance and group differentiation, including lexicality, sublexicality, length, and syllable complexity. Method: Sixteen Cantonese-speaking children with DLD and 16 age-matched children with TD repeated two sets of high-lexicality nonwords, where all constituent syllables are morphemic in Cantonese but meaningless when combined, and one set of low-lexicality nonwords, where all constituent syllables are nonmorphemic. Low-lexicality nonwords were further classified on sublexicality in terms of consonant–vowel (CV) combination attestedness (whether or not CV combinations in nonword syllables occur in real Cantonese words). Results: Children with DLD scored significantly below their peers with TD. Effect sizes showed that high-lexicality nonwords and nonword syllables with attested CV combinations offered the greatest TD/DLD group differentiation. Nonword length and syllable complexity did not affect TD/DLD group differentiation. Conclusions: NWR can capture TD/DLD group differences in Cantonese speaking children. Lexicality and sublexicality effects must be considered in designing NWR stimuli for TD/DLD group differentiation. Future studies should replicate the present study on a larger sample size and a younger population as well as examine the diagnostic accuracy of this NWR test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As early childhood settings in many English speaking countries are becoming increasingly multi-ethnic due to global migration, this poses challenges for many early childhood teachers who work with diverse immigrant children and families. In an effort to include all families, curriculum developers and teachers often suggest and incorporate teaching strategies that are commonly considered as culturally inclusive. While these strategies may be well intended, they may be promoting and reinforcing essentialist views of immigrants and their ethnicities, and also perpetuating social inequity. This article applies theoretical perspectives and research findings from literature relating to immigrant families' parental practices and expectations to problematise some of the dominant discourses that prevail in New Zealand early childhood education. It discusses the possible application of some theoretical concepts from the domains of critical multiculturalism to assist early childhood teachers to develop better understandings of the needs of immigrant children and families, and to generate critical pedagogies that are culturally sensitive and equitable.

This article advocates for fluid pedagogies that align with the transnational parenting practices of immigrant families. New Zealand is now considered to be a superdiverse country with a large population of immigrants. This superdiversity phenomenon can therefore also be found in its early childhood education settings. Research has indicated that many contemporary immigrants are transnationals who maintain close connections with their home countries and frequently engage in border-crossing activities. Transnational immigrants are mobile, and their parenting strategies may be similarly fluid. This article uses findings from a research project which involved Chinese immigrant families to illustrate transnational perspectives of early childhood education and parenting practices. Narrative excerpts are presented and analysed using key theoretical constructs of transnationalism to illustrate the participants' cultural dilemmas in their parenting, their preparedness to adapt their heritage practices and to adopt early childhood education discourses of the host country, and their agency in choosing parenting strategies that they believed best support their children's learning. It highlights the importance of parent--teacher dialogue and of enacting a curriculum with fluid pedagogies that are responsive to heterogeneous parental aspirations.

We report on an eye-tracking study that investigated four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of subject and object relative clauses (RCs). Children's eye-movements were recorded as they listened to RC structures identifying a unique referent (e.g. "Can you pick up the horse that pushed the pig?"). Two RC types, classifier (CL) and "ge3" RCs, were tested in a between-participants design. The two RC types differ in their syntactic analyses and frequency of occurrence, providing an important point of comparison for theories of RC acquisition and processing. A permutation analysis showed that the two structures were processed differently: CL RCs showed a significant object-over-subject advantage, whereas "ge3" RCs showed the opposite effect. This study shows that children can have different preferences even for two very similar RC structures within the same language, suggesting that syntactic processing preferences are shaped by the unique features of particular constructions both within and across different linguistic typologies.

AbstractPurposeMethodResultConclusionA long-standing issue in identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in multilingual children is differentiating between effects of language experience and genuine impairment when clinicians often lack suitable norm-referenced assessments. In this tutorial we demonstrate, via a case study, that it is feasible to identify DLD in a multilingual child using the CATALISE diagnostic criteria, Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) assessment tools, and telepractice.This tutorial features a case study of one 6-year-old Urdu-Cantonese multilingual ethnic minority child, and seven age- and grade-matched multilinguals. They were tested via Zoom using Urdu versions of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN), the Crosslinguistic Lexical Task (LITMUS-CLT), the Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test (LITMUS-CL-NWR), and the Sentence Repetition Task (LITMUS-SRep).The child scored significantly lower in the LITMUS tests compared to her peers in her best/first language of Urdu. Together with the presence of negative functional impact and poor prognostic features, and absence of associated biomedical conditions, the findings suggest this participant could be identified as having DLD using the CATALISE diagnostic criteria.The result demonstrates the promise of this approach to collect reference data and identify DLD in multilingual children. The online LITMUS battery has the potential to support identification of multilingual DLD in any target language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper performs a critical qualitative inquiry exploring supervision pedagogies utilising duoethnography as both methodology and conceptual framing. We begin the inquiry by reflecting upon our social and cultural identities and our evolving supervisor/supervisee-colleague-friend relationship. Our critical dialogue then shifts to scrutinising our supervision experiences. Topics of relationships, ethics, power effects, cultural differences, students' anxieties and self-doubt, and institutional protocols emerged during our conversations. We analyse our narratives in light of literature on supervision pedagogy, duoethnography, and some theoretical notions drawn from critical multiculturalism and the work of Foucault and Bourdieu. In the current context of neoliberal incursions into university modalities, it is our intention that our dialogue might promote a refocusing on the need for critical socially-just supervision pedagogies, and we invite you to join us in this critical dialogic inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The current study investigated English prosodic focus marking by autistic and typically developing (TD) Cantonese trilingual children, and examined the potential differences in this regard compared to native English-speaking children. Method: Forty-eight participants were recruited with 16 speakers for each of the three groups (Cantonese-speaking autistic [CASD], Cantonese-speaking TD [CTD], and English-speaking TD [ETD] children), and prompt questions were designed to elicit desired focus type (i.e., broad, narrow, and contrastive focus). Mean duration, mean fundamental frequency (F0), F0 range, mean intensity, and F0 curves were used as the acoustic correlates for linear mixed-effects model fitting and functional data analyses in relation to groups and focus conditions (i.e., broad, narrow, and contrastive pre-, on-, and post-focus). Results: The CTD group had post-focus compression (PFC) patterns via reducing mean duration, narrowing F0 range, and lowering mean F0, F0 curve, and mean intensity for words under both narrow and contrastive post-focus conditions, while the CASD group only had shortened mean duration and lowered F0 curves. However, neither the CTD group nor CASD group showed much of onfocus expansion (OFE) patterns. The ETD group marked OFE by increasing mean duration, mean F0, mean intensity, and higher F0 curve for words under on-focus conditions. Conclusions: The CTD group utilized more acoustic cues than the CASD group when it comes to PFC. The ETD group differed from the CASD and CTD groups in the use of OFE. Furthermore, both the CASD and CTD groups showed positive first language transfer in the use of duration and intensity and, potentially, successful acquisition in the use of F0 for prosodic focus marking. Meanwhile, the differences in the use of OFE between the Cantonese-speaking and English-speaking groups, not PFC, might indicate that Cantonese-speaking children acquire PFC prior to OFE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diverse immigrants have significantly transformed the ethnic make-up of New Zealand, and they have brought with them diverse identities to this country. Findings from a doctoral research project which involved exploring Chinese immigrant parents' identity choices for themselves and their children highlight the complex politics of identity. Within the field of education, children's acquisition of a positive identity is closely related to valued self-worth, and a sense of shared identity is further believed to promote beneficial relationships, sense of belonging and social cohesion. Identity theories, nonetheless, argue that contemporary individual identities are fluid and hybrid, and an over-emphasis on collective identity creates boundaries, exclusion and tension. This article applies some of these theoretical frames to critically examine the identity choices of Chinese immigrant parent participants and argues for the need to re-examine the notion of identity. The implications of these identity choices on their children's childhood and social and education practices are also analysed.

The article explores the use of remote online language assessments to evaluate discourse skills in both children and adults, highlighting their feasibility and effectiveness. Topics discussed include the comparison of remote and in-person testing methods, the impact of digital tools on data collection, and the benefits and challenges of using online platforms for eliciting narrative and conversational skills.