Editorial

Abstract

In the first issue of 2023, we publish six articles, a colloquium and a book review that reflect the range and diversity of the field. The articles consider superdiversity and gender diversity, a review of research regarding the Anthropocene, experiences with the more-than-human, and children’s rights. Since we entered the global pandemic in 2020, it seems paradoxically inevitable that time has both stopped and moved with unstoppable speed. At the time of writing, the numbers of people contracting and being hospitalised with COVID-19 seem to be on the rise as the northern hemisphere progresses through winter, and in the south we welcome visitors from all over the globe seeking respite from the cold, as well as from the pandemic. Everyone seems to be craving a return to ‘normal’ that is being characterised with the term ‘the new normal’, while many of us regard normal as being irrelevant, or non-existent, and seek just to live fulfilling and sustainable lives. The articles in this issue seek new and alternative ways of reflecting on children’s lives as we move slowly on from the identification of the global pandemic, with the hope that the schism created offers us hope for doing things differently, to obtain more equitable and just childhoods for all children and their families and communities. In the first article, Chan and Ritchie ask us to participate in ‘Exploring a Tiriti-based superdiversity paradigm within early childhood care and education in Aotearoa New Zealand’. The article uses the lens of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi, on Indigenous rights) to report the findings of their study, which ‘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 authors consider official documents that privilege the settler population’s view of Indigenous and migrant populations, which they deem to be ‘vulnerable’. They then use the lens of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Vertovec’s (2007, 2019) superdiversity approach to explore these representations in an attempt to reconceptualise ways in which the nation’s priority learners might be supported. Next, Merewether interrogates one aspect of Piaget’s original works related to young children’s animism in ‘Enchanted animism: A matter of care’. Piaget maintained that young children can be characterised as being at a stage of ‘primitive thought’ prior to becoming more rational at a later stage. Merewether’s article calls for us to rethink this notion and suggests that ‘children’s animism, or “enchanted animism”’, is a ‘matter of care’, which then enables ‘an ethic of living more responsively and attentively with more-than-human others’. In her article, Merewether maintains that young children’s playful and enchanted animism enables them to experience their lifeworlds, including the more-than-human, in new and dynamic ways, and that adults should be attuned to this new way of thinking. Timmons and Airton also interrogate official documents in their article, ‘Welcoming gender diversity in the early years: Interpreting professional guiding documents for gender-expansive practice’. In this article, the documents pertain to human rights protection across Canada – in particular Editorial