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Excessive noise levels in early childhood centres have a direct impact on the learning of young children, as well as on the wellbeing of teachers. Psycho-acoustic studies show that noise is a key factor contributing to elevated adult stress levels and annoyance, leading to lower levels of adult sensitivity to children’s needs and fewer direct interactions with them. Longer term, local and international research indicates correlations between excessive noise in early childhood education (ECE) centres and health problems, such as to hearing loss, voice strain, obesity, diabetes, and cardiac conditions. Noise as a chaos factor in early childhood settings undermines wellbeing of both adults and children. Because noise negatively impacts on quality relationship and communication, children’s language development is also impacted. Yet noise within New Zealand early childhood settings is under-researched, under-regulated, and under-monitored. Drawing on local and international research and on a survey of New Zealand early childhood teachers, this article recommends regulating for the creation of quieter environments for the benefit of teachers and learners, the adults and children in early childhood settings.

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.

Narrative assessments are widely used in Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood services, especially in the form of ‘Learning Stories’. This sociocultural approach to assessment foregrounds the importance of identifying what is valued learning within a particular context. What does this look like within the context of the parent co-operative Playcentre? A small-scale qualitative study brought together focus groups of Playcentre parents to share what Learning Stories are being written, to explore their experiences in writing and using Learning Stories, and to consider what underlying values shape narrative assessment in Playcentres. A major finding is that adult learning and relationship building are key aspects of Learning Stories in Playcentres. The authors argue that because of the positioning of parents as both learners and Kaiako in Playcentre, assessment in Playcentre is fundamentally different to that in teacher-led services.

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.

The question of ‘how hard should you try?’ to control accidents introduces a quixotic question which is grappled with daily by early childhood teachers. In the context of contemporary early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand, young children are expected to be kept ‘safe’ and yet also to take risks through active play. When considered historically, ‘safety’ becomes evident as a socially constructed concept that holds paradoxes and ethical dilemmas. Both ‘play’ and ‘safety’ are difficult to closely define and their meanings shift with context. Drawing on oral history interviews with historic leaders of the early childhood sector in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explores how, with the presence of very young children increasingly in institutional settings, ideas about ‘safety’ have shifted. This is evident in how those settings are regulated, and in what is understood as ‘normal’ activities for children, and for adults – parents and teachers. Three overlapping discourses of ‘safety’ are suggested which reflect the sociocultural context, the professional status of early childhood teachers, and existential concerns.

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.

Complexes of boron trifluoride with a series of substituted pyridines have been studied using a direct, low-temperature 13C and 19F n.m.r. technique. At temperatures from 0 to –40 °C, ligand exchange is slow enough to permit the observation of separate 13C n.m.r. signals for bulk and co-ordinated pyridine molecules. The co-ordinated pyridine shift displacements are interpreted in terms of ligand polarization and a paramagnetic effect at the nitrogen atom. The BF319F n.m.r. chemical shifts were correlated with calorimetric data in several cases, and in general provide a measure of the strength of the interaction but not of ligand basicity. Comparative complexing abilities were evaluated by studying several pyridine mixtures.