Both/And: Reflections on Recent Anglo/Western Early Childhood Curriculum Statements

Abstract

This paper identifies innovative work on curriculum undertaken in New Zealand in the 1990s as inspirational for recently developed frameworks in Australia and parts of Canada. The paper argues that the form this incorporation has taken in Canada and Australia is, almost literally, an opening of ‘some space’ — as the more established modernist and technical understandings have not been entirely transformed or removed, but rather joined by perspectives that emphasize the need for a more complex, reflective and contextually situated practitioner — creating a contemporary policy landscape of ‘both/and’. The paper describes and analyzes in detail the processes and dynamics of the ‘both/and’ landscape achieved in British Columbia, Canada.