Rainbows, sameness, and other working theories about identity, language, and culture

The focus of this article is on the findings emerging from a cross-cultural research project exploring children’s working theories about identity, language, and culture in two diverse early childhood education centres in Christchurch: one Samoan immersion, and the other English-medium. The project team believes that by nurturing children’s identity, language, and culture through a lens of children’s working theories, they will provide new perspectives of how teachers can work with young children to influence their thinking, actions, and attitudes. The project is still in progress, but in this article the research leaders share some emerging findings, including examples of how children are making sense of cultural values and practices; how they are making (and making sense of ) connections; how they are making sense of their cultural selves; and how they are making sense of others.