Te Whāriki: An Early Childhood Curriculum in a Superdiverse New Zealand

Due to its large and diverse population of migrants, New Zealand is now considered to be a ‘superdiverse’ country (Royal Society of New Zealand in Languages in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2013), and its early childhood education settings are also increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse (Ministry of Education in Early childhood education me ngā kōhanga reo data summary report, 2015). Yet it has been pointed out that policies and practices of superdiverse countries may be slow in responding to their superdiverse demographics (Vertovec in Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6):1024–1054, https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701599465, 2007). In light of this concern, the concept of superdiversity (Vertovec 2007) and a process of document analysis were utilised to interrogate how the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, responds to complex and multifarious diversities. This paper describes the results of this interrogation. It also discusses possibilities for applying the superdiversity concept to interpreting and enacting the curriculum document in ways that address migration-driven inequality issues.