Supporting Education for All: The Role of Multicultural Creative Arts Curriculum in Addressing the Principles of Anti-Bias Education

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated how Multicultural Creative Arts Curricula (MCAC) can foster children's identities as part of anti-bias practice in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Although the Arts are widely used in ECEC, limited research has explored how Anti-Bias Education (ABE) principles are enacted through MCAC or how children make sense of identity through creative arts experiences. The study examined how Australian educators incorporated diverse identities and enacted ABE using MCAC, and how children expressed understandings of identity across artforms. It was informed by sociocultural and ecological systems theories, culturally responsive pedagogy, and ABE.

An ethnographic multiple-case study was employed across two Australian ECEC settings, with children's perspectives sought alongside educators' through participatory approaches within everyday activities. Data were collected through observations, focus group interviews, and curriculum documentation. Findings showed that teacher beliefs, pedagogical responsiveness, institutional conditions, and artform affordances shaped MCAC enactment. When the Arts functioned as open-ended and dialogic experiences, children transformed identity-related meanings across modes; event-based practices constrained deeper inquiry and multimodal expression. Children expressed identity and belonging diversely, though shaped by educators' confidence with cultural and linguistic diversity and institutional routines. The study advances understanding of how MCAC can move beyond symbolic multiculturalism to support identity, fairness, and empathetic action in everyday pedagogy. Findings highlight the need for professional learning, institutional support, and responsive pedagogy to ensure the Arts operate as a vehicle for culturally responsive and socially just ECEC.