Equity,inclusion and belonging for teachers in early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This article troubles themes of equity, inclusion and belonging for early childhood teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. The authors argue that relationships between teachers matter and, in pursuit of transformative teaching praxis, can be considered as a site for restorative justice, leading to increased solidarity and collective action. While much debate has focused on the counter-colonial, bicultural and transformative potential of the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki, research has also focused on the complexities of requiring a largely monocultural (Pākeha/of European descent) and underprepared workforce to meet its complex aspirations in the context of a neo-liberal policy landscape. An under-recognised aspect of this challenge is how the same contexts give rise to inequitable and divisive relationships between teachers, diminishing opportunities for transformative justice for children and families. This article brings these two matters into dialogue: first, it is a critical examination of teachers’ narratives about their work and the complex and overlapping discourses that influence them and, second, it considers the transformative potential of inter-teacher groups as sites for restorative justice between teachers, leading to critical engagement with issues of inequity and collective advocacy.

Introduction

This article troubles themes of equity, inclusion and belonging for early childhood teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa). We argue that relationships between teachers matter and, in pursuit of transformative teaching praxis, can be considered as a site for restorative justice, leading to increased solidarity and collective action (Winn and Winn, 2021). While much debate has focused on the counter-colonial, bicultural and transformative potential of the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa (Gunn and Nuttall, 2019; Ritchie and Skerrett, 2014), research has also focused on the complexities of requiring a largely monocultural (Pākeha/of European descent) and underprepared workforce to meet its complex aspirations in the context of a neo-liberal policy landscape. An under-recognised aspect of this challenge is how the same contexts give rise to inequitable and divisive relationships between teachers, diminishing opportunities for transformative justice for children and families. This article brings these two matters into dialogue: first, it is a critical examination of teachers’ narratives about their work and the complex and overlapping discourses that influence them (Arndt, 2018; Souto-Manning, 2014) and, second, it considers the transformative potential of inter-teacher groups as sites for restorative justice between teachers, leading to critical engagement with issues of inequity and collective advocacy.

Premised on the understanding that ‘naming and problematizing issues of injustice are prerequisites for movement building and transformation’ (Souto-Manning and Winn, 2019: 311), we first illuminate and problematise examples of inequity, discrimination and exclusion between teachers. The data comes from a qualitative and narrative-based project on teacher identities that included individual interviews and focus groups with early childhood centre leaders and teachers, who were invited to talk about their work, priorities and commitments in what is a complex national early childhood education and care (ECEC) landscape. A complex weaving of individual and collective concerns emerged that resist, adapt and recycle historical, institutional and policy discourses. These include Eurocentric assumptions about what languages, identities and cultures of teachers are accepted and a pecking order, in which some teachers are perceived to be more valuable than others. Such findings correspond with Arndt's (2014) narrations and are paradoxical in a sector that aspires to transformative education. We recognise that divisions between teachers are intensified and called to the surface more readily by the individualising and competitive neo-liberal discourses that permeate the sector. However, the teacher focus groups offered an unexpected pedagogical space (Souto-Manning, 2014) with opportunities for dialogical engagement in ways that supported teachers’ exploration of their individual and collective situations and perspectives. The article culminates with the ways in which focus groups with teachers have the potential to be sites of restorative justice – fostering relationships, and equal well-being between teachers (Winn and Winn, 2021) through the process of hui whakatika, an indigenous restorative justice process that has the potential to create momentum towards a larger social movement as teachers build relationships, repair harm, identify common goals and express a collective desire for change.

Historical and contemporary contexts

The settler colonialism of colonisation plays out in all research projects (Pacini-Ketachabaw and Taylor, 2015) and in all local ECEC policies and landscapes, and individual early childhood centres. Teachers are situated at the centre of these complexities and connect their experiences to flows and relations of power in the wider context. The key features of this complex milieu are discussed below.

Colonisation, biculturalism and superdiversity

The aspirations of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi; hereafter, Te Tiriti) forefront educational politics and practices in Aotearoa (e.g. see Education Council Aotearoa New Zealand, 2017; Ministry of Education, 2020). Te Tiriti is the founding document of Aotearoa, outlining the partnership arrangement between tangata whenua (people of the land or Māori) and tangata Tiriti (people of the Treaty or everyone who is not Māori but who has citizenship in Aotearoa under Crown policies). Signed in 1840, Te Tiriti acknowledges and guarantees Māori self-determination and first nation status whilst legitimating the governance of the British Crown (later transferred to the New Zealand parliament). This arrangement affirms Aotearoa as a ‘bicultural nation’ – a notion that has been problematised by a painful history of almost immediate and ongoing treaty breaches, resulting in the imposition of a dominant colonial system, large-scale land loss for Māori, and the loss of Māori language and culture. Ritchie and Skerrett (2014: 4) write that ‘these historical colonial impositions have left an ongoing legacy of resentment and anger, and thus need to be foregrounded in any discussion of contemporary education in Aotearoa New Zealand’. Māori face an ongoing challenge to have treaty breaches redressed and rights upheld, while tangata Tiriti struggle to acknowledge the ongoing legacy of colonisation and how to enact their responsibilities as Tiriti partners within contemporary neocolonial realities.

In education, historical responses to Māori have included enforced assimilation, integration and separatism (Lourie, 2016). More recently, education policy increasingly references Te Tiriti partnerships and seeks to redress the marginalisation of Māori people and world views through the integration of Māori pedagogical frameworks and values (Ministry of Education, 2021). Current educational discourse asserts a bicultural imaginary where tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti actively share the obligation to protect and promote Māori language and culture so that ‘Māori can enjoy educational success as Māori’ and all children can access Te Reo and tikanga Māori (the Māori language and cultural ways of doing) as part of their everyday curriculum experiences (Ministry of Education, 2017: 6). The national early childhood curriculum framework Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017) is a key expression of bicultural discourse in education. Te Whāriki, underpinned by a Māori philosophical and conceptual framework, weaves together Māori and western principles of learning and teaching with strong messages about children's rights to educational experiences that forefront their cultures, languages and identities (Tesar, 2015a). Ritchie and Skerrett (2014) refer to Te Whāriki as symbolic of an ethical vision and source of hope for the realisation of partnerships that recognise Māori people, language, culture and self-determination. Similarly, Tesar (2015b) has positioned Te Whāriki as an important site of resistance to continued colonising and neo-liberal ideologies.

Tensions between the aspirations and realities of Te Whāriki have been addressed in scholarship since the curriculum's inception (e.g. see Farquhar, 2010). This has included recognition that many teachers struggle to move beyond bicultural tokenism (Education Review Office, 2012). A contributing factor is the predominantly Pākeha make-up of the ECEC workforce: in 2022, 74% of qualified ECEC teachers and 62% of the ECEC workforce overall identified as Pākeha (Education Counts, 2022).¹ This situation has allowed, as Chan and Ritchie (2016: 2902021 2]) argue, ‘a majority of teachers to enact static and predominately Western, monocultural ECEC discourses’. Post Te Tiriti, Pākeha rapidly became the dominant or majority cultural group in Aotearoa. Some Pākeha families can trace their genealogies in Aotearoa to the time that predates Te Tiriti while others can trace their roots back to the influx of settlers the treaty facilitated, which exposes inequities in claims about ‘biculturalism’ in Aotearoa.

Tangata Tiriti contribute to Aotearoa's ‘superdiverse’ status – a term associated not only with ethnic and linguistic diversity, but also with additional complexities and interlinkages of migration-related diversity (such as the differing status and migration patterns of migrants) and new inequalities and patterns of prejudice in each country (Vertovec, 2007). Contemporary Aotearoa is shaped by waves of immigration, recently particularly from Asian countries (Chan and Ritchie, 2019). As a result, the ECEC teaching population is also becoming more diverse. Illustrative of the changing demographics are the government data and statistics: the number of early childhood teachers identifying as part of an Asian ethnic group increased from 16% to 19% between 2019 and 2022, while the 2018 national census data shows 15% of the population identifies with this ethnic categorisation (Education Counts, 2022).

The notion of superdiversity is reflected in policy documents. The revision of the curriculum framework Te Whāriki, for example, includes statements that welcome immigrant children and families as part of Te Tiriti agreements (Ministry of Education, 2017). Teachers are expected to welcome, value and support the diversities of immigrant families and, through engagement with critical theories, attend to issues of equity and fairness in their practice (Arndt, 2018). Aotearoa has joined a global community seeking cross-cultural practices that sustain the languages, cultures and identities of each ECEC community and avoid perpetuating the marginalisation of the traditional multicultural curriculum (Robinson and Jones-Diaz, 2016; Yang et al., 2022; Yelland et al., 2021) while at the same time trying to avoid the conflation of bicultural and multicultural discourses and practices.

Some scholars have attended to the cultural and linguistic diversity of teachers. Arndt (2018: 401) has argued that for teachers to be able to create space for, nurture and foster the cultural identities of children and families, they ‘need to feel a sense of belonging within themselves and within their early childhood setting’. The alienation and the delegitimisation of difference for teachers from minority cultures is also evident in research nationally (Cherrington and Shuker, 2012) and internationally (Arndt et al., 2018). Contradictory policymaking contributes to this situation. There are policy incentives for ECEC teachers to immigrate – ECEC teaching is included in the skills-shortage category (New Zealand Immigration, 2022) – and universities actively recruit international students into teaching qualifications. At the same time, the ECEC workforce is increasingly governed in ways that fail to attend to increased diversity in the teacher population (Chan and Ritchie, 2020). Over the last two decades, a raft of guiding documents – including best-evidence syntheses, competency standards and documents focusing on internal and external review – have worked together to marshal ideas about what makes a good ECEC teacher in Aotearoa. These include an image of a bicultural, qualified, quality-focused and highly accountable individual (Gould, 2021). Such policy moves make space for Māori and western perspectives about teaching and teachers, but an unintentional consequence could be that they ultimately limit space for other perspectives, diminishing messages that purport to value diversity.

Neocolonial, neo-liberal and market-orientated landscapes

Neo-liberal discourses shape the experiences and narratives of teachers. Neo-liberalism has had a profound impact on the nature and provision of ECEC globally. The most visible signpost of neo-liberal economic discourse in Aotearoa is the continued leveraging of market logic as a response to provision. This has resulted in a wide range of diverse service types – including privately owned (for-profit) and community-based (not-for-profit) services – resulting in the dominance of the private sector. Privately owned centres now make up 71% of ECEC provision (Education Counts, 2021). Neo-liberal economic discourse has influenced the commodification of what was once an explicit community response for children and an ECEC system that was previously thought of as a public good (Press et al., 2018). The impacts of neo-liberalism are not just limited to arrangements for provision and private centres, but have altered the discourses that surround ECEC and have implications for ‘social relations, social space, family responsibilities, citizenry and democracy’, including an impact on the relationships between colleagues in all ECEC settings (Ball, 2007: 14). Press et al. provide a summary of the interrelated impacts of the marketisation of ECEC provision in Australia and Aotearoa, seeing these as

the atomisation of ECEC provision; the loss of the universalist ideal in education; the erosion of the bridging ties so important to the creation of social capital that cultivate connection and belonging across social, cultural and economic divides; and the devaluing of care work. (Press et al., 2018: 334)

In Aotearoa, a worsening of work conditions (including a lack of government commitment to professional development and learning), decreased non-contact time, increasing disparities in pay and work conditions, a rise in individual employment contracts, and the weakening of the collective bargaining power of the teachers’ union are some of the visible results of market-based discourse across the sector. Together, these factors reduce opportunities for cross-sector relationships and dialogue on shared issues of concern (Gibbons et al. 2016).

Adding to the above list of concerns, issues with bullying and teacher burnout are also evident (Gibbons et al. 2016), including the occurrence of horizontal violence in ECEC organisations beset with structural tensions arising from neo-liberal and managerial systems. Horizontal violence is defined as ‘hostile, aggressive, or harmful behaviour’ by an individual or group towards co-workers via ‘attitudes, actions, words, and/or other behaviours’ (Taylor, 2016), and includes bullying, unwarranted criticism, indifference and unnecessarily withholding information (Brooker and Cumming, 2019). The psychological harassment of horizontal violence ‘can directly impact upon EC [early childhood] educators’ self-esteem and autonomy’ (Hard, 2006: 44) and, as we argue below, their relationships with each other.

Relevant to this research, the experiences of micro and macro racism towards teachers from minority cultures have been explored in the local (Arndt, 2018; Nayar, 2009) and international literature as a factor contributing to well-being and retention issues (Bradbury et al., 2022; Souto-Manning and Cheruvu, 2016). Nayar (2009), for example, reports how micro aggressions by colleagues towards new immigrant teachers often manifested subtly – as questions about local knowledge or experience (or lack thereof), for example – but had serious exclusionary effects. Pizarro and Kohli (2018) suggest that the constant experience of racism and combating its effects has a profound cost for teacher well-being, resulting in doubt, anxiety and exhaustion. The research reported in this article found evidence of divisive and strained relationships between teachers arising from an uneven sector shaped by intersecting historical and contemporary contexts, and includes acts of micro and macro racism.

Methodology: critical narrative inquiry

This article draws on a set of findings from a larger research project examining early childhood teacher identities in Aotearoa (Gould, 2021). The research included individual semi-structured interviews with 17 early childhood centre owners and leaders and focus groups with 8 qualified teachers. Different kinds of early ECEC services were represented in both participant groups. The intention of diverse representation from across the sector, including from corporate, private and community-based ECEC services, was to provide space for a plurality of voices and accounts of working in ECEC and being a teacher. In each interview and focus group, the participants were invited to share their experiences of working in ECEC and their perspectives about teachers and teaching. The intention was not to compare between services, or to uncover a coherent and agreed narrative about what it means to be a teacher in Aotearoa, but to juxtapose and counterpose accounts, uncover a range of perspectives and issues, and extend collective understandings about ECEC teachers and their identities, experiences and work. While this work was conducted in Aotearoa, it has a wide transnational resonance and implications (Karmenarac and Gould, 2021).

Some of the narratives from the interviews and focus groups are revisited in this article via critical narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry includes a central focus on stories and is grounded in the understanding that ‘people shape their daily lives by stories of who they are, and others are … and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made meaningful’ (Pino Gavidia and Adu, 2022). The participants’ narratives are more than just stories; they are retellings and interpretations of experiences embedded in sociopolitical and historical moments. As such, each narrative is mediated within power relations that forge the creation of practices, systems and situations of marginalisation (Pino Gavidia and Adu, 2022). In critical narrative inquiry, each shared story is understood to be purposefully selected and retold as an opportunity to make sense of the past, promote a particular representation of reality, and engage in social action. Pitre et al. (2013) argue that shared stories can be sites of reproduction or can challenge and resist metanarratives as they emerge. These aspects of storytelling are evident in the analysed narratives, which both reproduce and resist discrimination and division between teachers, and emerge from the social, historical and political landscapes that constitute ECEC in Aotearoa

Findings: troubling stories of inequity and exclusion amongst teachers

The teachers were asked in their focus groups and interviews to share ideas about what impacts their work. The narratives revealed divisions and strained relationships between teachers, intensified by the socio-historical, policy and political terrain. This section problematises examples of inequity, discrimination and exclusion between teachers that emerged from the teacher narratives. On the basis of the research cited above, we argue that these are under-recognised issues and that acknowledging them is a crucial prerequisite to addressing them and realising transformative teaching praxis for children and families (Souto-Manning and Winn, 2019).

Ideas about the growing numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse teachers surface in several of the teacher-narrative examples below, and these ideas are woven together with notions of quality, language, immigration, socio-economic status, care, work conditions and professionalism. Each example reveals how macro-political issues permeate relationships between teachers and produce normative images of the ideal ECEC teacher. The narratives are also individualising and demonstrate a lack of collective advocacy and critical engagement with the wider politics that shape teachers’ work. They reveal a significant dissonance between expectations of culturally sustaining practices with children and families and how these translate into relationships with sector colleagues. Without attention to this dissonance, the inclusionary philosophical discourse of Te Whāriki may become just an idealistic rhetoric, deepening the gap between policy and practice. Psuedynoms are used for all participant quotes.

The example that follows is illustrative of these complexities. Lucy (the owner/manager of a private centre) discusses her views on infant-toddler education and unexpectedly says:

You’ll see teachers with English as a second or third language in a baby room and, in fact, all the international literature tells us that the best speakers of the native tongue should be there … four-year-olds might be able to cope with a heavily accented Indian or Asian or whatever accent. Polish or whatever. But babies shouldn’t have to … There seems to be an increasing amount of Indian and Asian teachers that seem to be registered that many find unemployable.

Lucy discounts both the qualifications and potential contributions that bilingual or multilingual Indian, Asian, ‘Polish or whatever’ teachers might make, despite policy and curriculum expectations that ECEC leadership and teachers support children's home literacies, languages and cultures, and their encounters with each other (Ministry of Education, 2017). She assumes that the ‘native tongue’ of all babies is English, revealing a belief that having English as a first language is the normal and desirable way to be a teacher. In contrast, having an accent (ignoring that all teachers have some sort of accent) is seen as a negative reference point and pathologised as undesirable. In this example, as well as in the example below, an accent becomes a way to exclude – to define and defend the border of who can be considered a legitimate teacher in Aotearoa.

In a related example, Christie (a kindergarten teacher) relays the same concern in relation to an infant-toddler room she had recently visited: ‘There were seven Indian teachers in there! And the children in that room spoke with an Indian accent’. She goes on to connect accents and ‘what teachers look like’ to other issues in the sector – specifically, issues with quality and the undervaluing of care work:

So, I wonder if some of the perceptions of quality is to do with what teachers look like and sound like as well … because people come in and they see the accent and they see these people wiping their [children's] noses and doing those kinds of roles.

Returning to this theme later in her interview, Christie continues:

I do wonder if that is part of the reason why kindy [kindergarten] is so esteemed, is that they [families] look and see that they [kindergarten teachers] are white middle-aged ladies who are generally well dressed. Look at [name of a large kindergarten association] … it's all middle-aged white ladies … everyone is European.

Comments suggesting a difference in status between kindergartens and other ECEC services are not surprising. This positioning emerges from the distinct histories of kindergarten and childcare services, and the problematic discourses of care and education that continue to create a bifurcated workforce and inflect teaching work. In Aotearoa, kindergarten has historically (and arguably in present times) been positioned as the ‘flagship’ ECEC organisation because it has maintained its reputation as an accessible and high-quality early education service, and because strong collective advocacy through the union has resulted in pay and work conditions that are better than other parts of the sector (May, 2019). Kindergartens were consistently perceived across the participant groups as ‘sitting at the top of the hierarchy’ (Tom, a kindergarten teacher) of ECEC service types. One contributing factor to this distinction is an ongoing commitment to a fully qualified teacher workforce in kindergarten, despite the government only requiring 50% of teachers to be qualified. What becomes apparent in Christie's narrative is how differences in status between services also become negatively associated with particular groups of teachers, who, regardless of their qualifications, are singled out as ‘other’ due to their ethnicity, accent and markers of status, such as dress. Such markers make these groups of teachers not only ‘hyper visible’ but also undesirable (Arndt, 2014; Bradbury et al., 2022) and excluded from being seen as professional by some of their colleagues.

For some of the participants, the image of a typical kindergarten teacher was Pākeha, middle class and university-educated. Issues of who could or could not become a kindergarten teacher arose in the focus group discussion when Aadilla (a community-based teacher) told the group that, despite having a university degree, she had never applied for a kindergarten job because ‘I felt like I would not be accepted … they are biased I feel … they already have a teacher in mind’. Although Aadilla did not mention ethnicity explicitly, Georgia (an ex-kindergarten teacher and now a private-centre teacher) responded by agreeing that ‘many teachers feel their profile doesn’t fit … predominately the teachers [at kindergarten] are Pākeha … the culture of kindergarten is a lot of white faces’. Such comments suggest an awareness of and passive resistance to the ways that privilege and status are constructed and afforded across the sector. Feeling that she did not belong, Aadilla opted out of kindergarten and pursued work in spaces she felt she could contribute. Such narratives demonstrate that teachers navigate their understandings of their place in the sector and their relationships to each other through complex webs of societal power relations, which they resist and perpetuate simultaneously and interchangeably. In each example, power materialises at both the institutional and personal levels through ideas about ethnicity and diversity, images of teachers and professional status.

In other narratives, ethnic, cultural and language differences between teachers were connected to issues of immigration and economic status, and poor work conditions in the sector. The problematic intersection of these issues creates a concoction of bias in which the motivations and legitimacy of teachers from minority cultures are questioned and particular groups of teachers are blamed for perpetuating sector issues. In one focus group, the conversation turned to the issue of work conditions. Each participant had a story about their experiences in problematic ECEC centres, and about their inevitable escape from them as they negotiated work elsewhere. Contemplating the group’s shared experiences, Aadilla asked: ‘Who stays in these centres then?’ She then suggested: ‘Immigrants. Indians and could be the Chinese as well’. She assumed that these groups of teachers are driven by economic rather than pedagogical priorities. They are ‘looking to get support for immigration’, are ‘hesitant with the language’ and ‘have difficulty speaking English’, and ‘haven’t explored what being in New Zealand means and what rights they have’.

In another interview that related to poor work conditions, Stella (the manager of a community-based centre) pointed to the ‘high immigrant population in Auckland’ as one of the contributing factors, and argued that new immigrant teachers are ‘understandably frightened, they don’t want to lose their jobs’. She asked: ‘Are they ever going to fight?’ In these conversations, concerns about the exploitation of their teaching colleagues were complicated by assumptions of compliance and a tone of blame for what are complex sector issues. The responsibility for poor work conditions and exploitative organisational arrangements was shifted away from the ECEC businesses, and from ECEC policy, towards individual teachers, who were perceived as not being invested in the right priorities, and were not counted as legitimate teachers and colleagues (Arndt, 2014, 2015).

Implications: confronting issues of diversity between teachers

The findings highlighted above suggest that perceived differences between teachers powerfully shape experiences and relationships in the sector and expose tensions, resentments and hierarchies unpinning claims to professionalism. Teachers from minority cultures, particularly those who were new immigrants, were frequently portrayed as less professional, with different priorities and easily exploited. Concerningly, and reflecting Arndt's (2015, 2018) research, rather than rendering any sense of solidarity and commitment to these groups, they were further marked out as ‘other’. Andrew (2015: 307) points to a habitual silence in the literature in addressing differences between teachers in early childhood education, and suggests that research should be directed to understanding ‘historical schemes of value that operate to classify some sorts of people as less valuable than others, whatever the work they do’.

Expectations that teachers attend to belonging and inclusion in their practice have ignored how the same social issues that impact children and families also impact teachers. In Te Whāriki and other related educational policy in Aotearoa, strong messages about biculturalism, inclusion, culture, identity and belonging omit references to teachers’ cultural otherness, suggesting that this is a ‘non-issue’. A key responsibility for teachers in Te Whāriki is to be ‘able to support the cultural and linguistic diversity of all children as part of promoting an inclusive environment’ (Ministry of Education, 2017: 59). However, recognition of how cultural and linguistic diversity within teaching teams can contribute positively to (or challenge) this aspiration is not addressed. The most recent strategic plan for the sector includes the objective that ‘children and whānau [families] experience environments which promote their wellbeing and support identity, language and culture’ (Ministry of Education, 2019). Considering the findings discussed above, these policy goals might be adapted to aspire to environments that promote the well-being and support the identities, languages and cultures of all children, families and teachers. Thus, including teachers in these policy goals would be a step towards acknowledging the exclusionary experiences and positioning of them, opening up spaces for conversations about identities, stories and contributions, and could lead to further strategies for change.

This article visibilises and problematises some of the ways in which ‘cultural otherness’ is employed between teaching colleagues. Seeking to address the marginalisation of teachers from minority cultures, Arndt (2018: 394) calls for closer critical attention to ‘teachers’ attitudes and orientations towards not only children, but also their own and their colleagues’ cultural Otherness’, including towards notions of ethics of care in culturally diverse early childhood settings (Kamenarac and Gould, 2021). The ways in which these divisions are intensified by the intersection of neo-liberal and market-based discourse have also been pointed to. Scholars such as Andrew and Newman (2012) and Osgood (2011) call for critical conversations about how differences between teachers are mobilised as a strategy to exclude some teachers from claims to professionalism, including differences in ethnicity and class. The importance and urgency of such discussion, in a sector that aspires to equitable and even transformational practice, is evidenced in the narratives highlighted here. The final section draws on the experience of teacher focus groups and suggests that these have considerable potential to be spaces for critical conversations between teachers, leading to more collective experiences of advocacy.

Conclusion: teacher focus groups as restorative spaces

The concluding section, following the naming of the injustices, explores hopeful spaces for fostering transformative commitments and actions (Souto-Manning and Winn, 2019). Critical engagement with the politics of the early childhood education is an important aspect of teachers’ responsibilities not only to children and families, but also to each other, and is necessary for confronting the inequities in the sector, including between teachers (Fenech and Lotz, 2018). Opportunities for cross-sector engagement can be restricted for teachers working in the privatised and regulated landscape of early childhood in Aotearoa. The lack of professional development funding, poor work conditions and the weakening of collective forums contribute to this situation. The need for spaces where teachers can ‘build community by acknowledging the diverse identities, histories, stories, joys, and pains of its members’ (Souto-Manning and Winn, 2019: 314) emphasises calling for transformative teaching practices using restorative justice processes.

The focus groups played a productive role in supporting teachers to grapple with the complexities of their work and relationships with each other. The teachers in each group, despite their differences, built rapport and affiliations with each other quickly, and seemed relieved to have a place to talk. Their interactions were respectful, empathetic, thoughtful and inquiring. When inequities and differences emerged, they could also be confronting and uncomfortable. For example, the privileging of kindergarten and the normalisation of kindergarten teacher identities as Pākeha was challenged by teachers who felt excluded by it. Such challenges left the kindergarten teachers in the group to consider the ways they had been privileged by such discourses and to acknowledge their exclusionary effect. These interactions allowed for growing solidarity and the potential to provide the foundations for collective political engagement. This kind of environment is in line with the community consciousness that formed the foundations of ECEC in Aotearoa, but has been diminished by neocolonial and neo-liberal events, as evidenced earlier.

The original intention of the focus groups was not restorative but to bring together teachers from different ECEC service types to talk about their work for research purposes. Teacher diversity beyond service type was not attended to in the recruitment process, and the focus groups lacked representation – with only a few exceptions, the groups were primarily Pākeha and, unintentionally, this allowed for the perpetuation of Eurocentric ideas that were only sometimes contested by the group. Having a wider representation of voices and experiences was needed. However, focus groups can serve as productive temporal ecosystems and ethical knowledge-production sites (Farquhar and Tesar, 2016). Regardless of this, more robust processes to support inter-teacher relationships and the intention to repair harm between teachers could have led to increased understanding and more powerful spaces of belonging and repair (O’Brien and Kysa, 2020).

A future challenge, then, is how to further the potential of teacher focus groups in this research. An important consideration for this challenge includes avoiding recreating (and reproducing) the inequities perpetuated by dominant colonial paradigms by attending to the specific histories and politics of Aotearoa. Berryman et al. (2009) have long advocated for kaupapa (a set of principles or ideas that set the basis for action) Māori constructs as the platform for ‘facilitating greater understandings of the world, to claim space and to work for change’ (5). One such kaupapa is the practice of hui whakatika, a traditional form of meeting that seeks to resolve issues and restore harmony. During hui whakatika, ‘building relationships is the core work, as it constitutes the foundation for allowing people from a range of cultural backgrounds to interact, learn from each other and participate in more productive and effective ways’ (10). Key to hui whakatika is the process of whakawhanaungatanga – the ways in which we actively seek to reconnect, maintain and extend relationships, and, in doing so, better understand our ‘responsibility to care for and contribute to others’ (8). Hui whakatika requires a skilled facilitator to guide the group process and includes four key concepts underpinned by Māori principles and processes: consensus (through collaborative decision-making), reconciliation (rather than punishment), examining the wider reason for the wrong, and an overall focus on the restoration of harmony (Berryman et al., 2009). These processes align with restorative justice paradigms traced back to First Nations in other contexts, in which justice is also conceptualised as the healing of relationships such as those described by O’Brien and Kysa (2020). They suggest that restorative justice frameworks emanating out of indigenous paradigms have in common the idea that ‘while healing is deeply personal and interpersonal work, it also requires the transformation of society to create conditions that sustain well-being and wholeness. Individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural transformation are so deeply interconnected that they must be pursued together’ (O’Brien and Kysa, 2020: 523). Berryman et al. (2009) advocate that hui whakatika can be widely useful for responding to issues of conflict or concern, and this article argues for its potential to be useful for building and restoring relationships between teachers as an important first step to the understanding of, critical engagement with and transformation of the wider structural issues in the sector.