On a very different topic, we turn to India and look at the efforts by central and local government to improve the status of early childhood education in the rural areas of the country. Tasneem Motiwala discusses historical and current status of early childhood education in India and what improvements are needed to progress early childhood education in rural India.

A subject that frequently arises in student discussion is positive guidance in early childhood. Mandeep Kaur’s paper discusses teachers’ perceptions of positive child guidance and the theories that guide the values and beliefs of child guidance.

Moving away from India and further north of the globe comes an article from contributors in Sweden about mother tongue language maintenance. The contributors - Susanne Kjällander of Stockholom University, Farzaneh Moinian from Uppsala University and Patrick Dorls of Umeå University report on mother tongue language teachers in Sweden. This study is an account of the work undertaken in one municipality where specialist teachers discuss their strategies for encouraging children to maintain the language of their home culture. This article reports on changing conceptions of literacy and what it means for mother tongue teaching by exploring why, how and when mother tongue teachers in preschools use digital technologies.

The Special Edition section brings us back to New Zealand and contains a number of papers that discusses how the contributors used theory to inform their practices.

Randy Alingalan, develops a narrative around a young girl drawing a picture for her teacher. As we learn more of the process that the child engages in, we start to see new aspects of the encounter. Going beyond the categorisation of the child and her drawing as a representation, the author discusses how we might see the young girl’s engagement with the world.  

Barbara Scanlan reflects on the conceptual formulation of the child, asking if representation, confines the way we might understand art and the art-work. This paper explores how children’s engagement with art can become so much more than representation of what already is.

Slavica Jovanovic and John Roder’s contribution is a narrative journey that shares their thoughts as educators about the separation of adult and child worlds, multiple identities and influences on how identities are formed. They discuss aspects of our philosophy and pedagogy that have been emerging as a form of learning potentiality and dialogue around practice. At the heart of teachers’ discussions about children, are issues of power and identity formation, especially in respect to scrutinising how their image of the child is socially constructed. Slavica Jovanovic and John Roder draw attention to issues of identity, social justice and power through analysis of narratives from New Zealand practice and pedagogical documentation.

The paper by Keri Gould and Jacoba Matapo goes back to the philosophy statements made by centres. Their findings focus on bi-culturalism and inclusion.

In the Book Review section three books have been selected for review in this edition: The Te Reo Māori: He taonga mō ā tātou mokopuna (2015) edited by Roimata Rokx, The Autonomous Child (2015) by Ivar Frønes and The Beautiful Risk of Education (2013) by Gert Biesta.

The Te Reo Māori: He taonga mō ā tātou mokopuna was designed as a learning resource to support teachers in the early childhood sector. The book is a 118 page colour resource that features basic learning like numbers and colours, as well as additional ideas and practices that can be used to promote and assist te reo Māori learning.

The second review, The Autonomous Child (2015) is a wide ranging examination of children’s socialisation process. The book offers a number of ideas and reflections on the complexity of the socialisation process for the child.

The third review is a book by Gert Biesta. The Beautiful Risk of Education (2013) is seen as an ideal book for teachers wishing to engage in innovative ideas in their practice. The book is a slim volume that opens up often unspoken aspects of education, such as how do we understand knowledge, teaching and learning.

In closing this edition brings together a number of national and international perspectives that not only offer ideas for practice in the early childhood sector but raises a number of topical issues for continued debate and dialogue.