ABSTRACT. I suggest that Mikhail Bakhtin’s language theories offer early childhood education (ECE) teachers a provocation to move beyond any monologic understandings, as supported by authorial policy documents, to reflect on the complexity of cultures. After engaging with the concepts of heterologism and monologism, the paper gives example of dialogic language that can strengthen teachers resolve to move beyond the merely authorial purposes of policy texts. Several possible positions are posited, before suggesting a stronger pedagogical understanding of the purposes of the concept of biculturalism would support ECE teachers to utilize their professional energies in more nuanced ways when teaching Te Reo Maori. The examples from New Zealand are offered to support the arguments. pp. 66–80

Keywords: early childhood education; Bakhtin; dialogic; heteroglossial; biculturalism

doi:10.22381/KC5420175