Negotiating fairness and diversity: What can stories from one kindergarten teach us?

Abstract

I am delighted to be presenting here today. It is lovely to be among friends, and to have had great visits to a number of Inspired Kindergartens this year. I saw Year Ones on Practicum, and then took Year Two students to look at functional and aesthetic kindergarten environments near the Polytech - many students had never seen such amazing quality environments before. Today, I am here to share stories from my recently submitted PhD. The ‘data generation’ phase of the action research took place over seven months in a kindergarten community (known by the pseudonym of Beech Kindergarten) in 2014. The research was concerned with diversity and fairness and we all learnt a great deal about the children, families, each other and ourselves during the process. I was particularly interested in how fairness and various aspects of diversity were being negotiated between teachers, children, parents and whānau, and the researcher (participant/ observer). And I have had the past 3.5 years to view and review the data over and over alongside lots of literature in the process of writing up the 94,000 371 page thesis.