The look of love

Don’t you love having your thinking challenged?
Lately, Michelle and I have been facilitating multiple Ministry of Education-funded professional learning contracts focused on infants and toddlers across Auckland and the Waikato—something we are both deeply passionate about. These spaces have not only allowed us to support kaiako but have also given us precious time to reflect, research, and challenge our own thinking around infant and toddler pedagogy.

As part of this ongoing journey, we’ve encountered ideas and readings that have both inspired and stretched us. One outcome of this reflection is an article I’ve written: The Look of Love.

In this piece, I explore a pedagogy of aroha—an approach rooted in love, attunement, and collective care. Drawing from personal experience, Māori values, and cross-cultural research, this article gently invites kaiako to reconsider how relationships are held within early childhood settings. It celebrates the power of the loving gaze, the role of the touchstone kaiako, and the wisdom of raising mokopuna within a village. It’s a timely reminder that our deepest teaching lies not in what we do, but in how we are—with the eyes that see and the heart that listens.

Here’s a snippet from the article:

“This collective caregiving model doesn’t diminish attachment security; it redefines it. Mokopuna still form strong, stable bonds, but they are distributed across many rather than focused on one.”

To read the full article, click here.