Bicultural Early Childhood Curriculum

Introduction/Context

With internationalization and globalization, educational services – early childhood through to secondary schools – reflect increasingly multicultural and multilingual communities. Alongside these international changes, since the 1970s, there has been a resurgence in Indigenous peoples claiming recognition of their language and culture. This has been particularly the case in early childhood settings which have been incorporating Indigenous language and culture into their curriculum. For example, the Indigenous Welsh language is encouraged in early childhood services but on a voluntary basis. In Australia, there have been moves to ensure that education programs support all students to understand and acknowledge the Indigenous cultures. In counties such as Canada, Belgium, and Finland, there are bicultural and bilingual curricula.

However, the focus here is on the one country with a compulsory bicultural curriculum foregrounding its Indigenous people’s language and...