What Does Place Do in Bicultural Teaching and Learning in an ECE Setting in Aotearoa New Zealand? Engaging with Posthumanist and Māori Perspectives

In Aotearoa New Zealand, place underpins key concepts in Indigenous Māori worldview, while from a posthumanist perspective, the concept of place incorporates networks of relations among human and more-than-human bodies, including materialities, histories, and memories. Taking a critical posthumanist perspective combining critique with creativity, two vignettes from research in one early childhood setting in Aotearoa are entangled with te ao Māori and posthumanist perspectives to explore what place does and might do. Theoretical ideas and concepts are woven with data drawn from written observations, videoclips, focus group discussions, and research conversations. The resulting cartographies map ecologies of material, social, emotional, and cultural aspects of the early childhood setting and of Aotearoa; past, present, and future; influences of colonisation; aspirations, expectations, and possibilities for bicultural teaching and learning; and implications of the author’s positioning as a researcher and teacher educator of non-Māori colonizer heritage.