Te tirohanga whakamuri, te anga whakamua - Past locus, future focus
The project was designed so as to explore, from the perspectives of key people instrumental to the change, the rapid expansion and growth of early childhood education in New Zealand during the period 1985-2005. This paper focuses on the methodology for the study: a key premise of which was to produce data for analysis that would generate complex, multi-layered and thick description of key moments in this twenty-year period. Our approach sought to document varied and multiple accounts of important factors that have worked to produce the early childhood field as it is presently found. The problems and possibilities of this approach is what will be fore-grounded in this paper.
