Cultural Safety in Early Childhood Teaching Teams: Fostering Intercultural Wellbeing and Relationships

What does it mean to feel culturally safe within a teaching team? This article reports on an Australian Research Council (ARC) project aimed at strengthening anti-racist orientations and practices in ECE teaching teams in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. While the rich and diverse cultural contexts of children and families are outlined in curriculum and policy mandates, existing research in Australasia largely disregards teachers’ cultural realities and relationships. Teachers and educators have an enormous influence on young children’s emerging attitudes, and thus also on (re)shaping future orientations and behaviours towards diverse identities and racial injustices within Australasian communities and society. This article outlines some of the insights and nuances emerging in this project. Grounded in a feminist, poststructural approach it illustrates the critical importance of paying ongoing attention to diversities amongst teachers in their teaching teams, as a crucial factor in promoting more just treatments of diversities in ECE settings and wider communities.