supporting tiriti-based curriculum delivery in mainstream early ...

explicitly, children brought up in a new country may retain the culture of the
parents but may choose not to retain their home language.
Two simple points flow from the above categorisations: first, it is evident
that the whole issue of mono, bi and multi culturalism and the associated repertoire
of language/s an individual does, or does not, have command of is fraught with
complexity. Second, with respect to this study, it becomes clear that early
childhood education teachers who are seeking to facilitate biculturalism also need
to be aware of the imperatives of seeking to become bilingual. However, this is
also a highly complex matter if only because of the difficulties for adults in second
language acquisition (Scheffler, 2008).
When considering the implementation of Tiriti-based aspects of Te
Whāriki teachers may, therefore, focus on becoming bilingual as a step toward
progressing to becoming bicultural. Thus, because the early childhood sector is
committed to Tiriti-based curriculum, successful language acquisition for early
childhood teachers must be encouraged. But it is important for children to begin at
an early age. A survey of Māori by Statistics New Zealand (2002) found that
“those with higher speaking proficiency skills were more likely to have been
exposed to Māori language during childhood” (para 12). On the other hand,
Scheffler (2008) notes that in second language acquisition:
What has to be stressed is that an adult learner needs to master this very
complex system under various constraints. These external and internal
constraints relate … to the time that a learner can devote to the process of
learning, the amount of exposure that he or she gets, the quality of
teaching that he or she receives, the level of motivation that is present
and the strength of the affective barriers that need to be overcome. (pp.
293-294)
I have observed that many early childhood teachers experience both these
internal and external constraints; as new learners to te reo Māori they grapple with
their developing skills and so begin with greetings and farewells, commands,
colours and numbers. This can then have te reo Māori usage seen as tokenism and
have te reo Māori appear as a “bossy language” (Ritchie, 2007).
It is clear that bilingual programmes described within international
literature can be used to identify and adapt suggested strategies which can then be
used by early childhood teachers, particularly those encouraging the acquisition of
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