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

Abstract

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.

What does being Australian mean? Does that [mean] you have the citizenship? Does that mean you have the PR (permanent residence?)(Ling)

Introduction: What About Me?

This article is an investigation of what it might mean for teachers and educators to feel culturally safe, nurtured and cared for in an early childhood education (ECE) teaching team. Does it mean being, or feeling Australian, as Ling asks in the opening quote? In this article I outline aspects of an Australian Research Council (ARC) project being undertaken in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, that is aimed at strengthening teachers’ sense of cultural wellbeing, safety and belonging in ECE teaching teams, and in ECE settings overall. The project responds to these two countries’ rich and multicultural contexts, where children and families from diverse backgrounds are commonly recognised in curriculum and policy mandates. Existing research in Australasia largely disregards teachers’ and educators’ cultural realities and sense of belonging, however, leading to them asking, ‘what about me, who nurtures my cultural wellbeing’? The research this article draws on is a response to their question.

The importance of cultural safety, wellbeing and belonging in ECE teaching teams lies in the critical influence that teachers and educators have on young children’s learning and on their emerging attitudes. It places teachers and educators at a crucial juncture for (re)shaping future attitudes and behaviours towards diversities and cultural in/justices within Australasian communities and society. In addition, the importance of this research arises from fresh calls for reframing and rearticulating interculturalism (Dervin et al., 2025). Interculturalism is seen here as the ways that we conduct ourselves and interact across cultures. It is differentiated from multiculturalism, which reflects the presence of multiple cultures. Indeed, in response to teachers’ storying in this project, we might refer rather to interculturalisms, than interculturalism in the singular (Dix, 2025), as a recognition of the various perspectives arising in their reflections on their teaching teams. Further, given the diverse terminology used across Aotearoa and Australia, I use the word ‘teacher’ to refer to all adults who teach young children in ECE settings, regardless of their level of qualification. This article draws on the stories shared in the first year of the research, and emphasises some of the complexities and nuances that they elevate, as well as to further illustrate the critical need for paying attention to teachers’ cultural identities, relationships and diversities in ECE teaching teams. Through this article I argue that teachers’ experiences in their teaching teams crucially affect their intercultural relationships in the early education of young children in ECE settings, and thus also in the wider ECE community.

Ling’s questioning in the opening quote is emblematic of some of the complexities and connections in teachers’ relationships with themselves and each other. Speaking about singing the song “I am Australian” (Woodley & Newton, 1987) with children in the ECE setting, Ling outlines how her participation in the first year of this project has prompted her to question

… am I the person … that has the right to say that sentence, I am Australian? …Who am I in this saying, when I say or think I am Australian, does that actually mean that I am? It’s a bit tricky for me to really say … (Ling)

Such questionings have become common in this project. In the following sections I first situate the research and myself in the Australasian context and emphasise the urgency of the topic. I then give an overview of the theoretical and methodological framing through the feminist poststructuralist lens of Julia Kristeva’s notion of the foreigner and the subject in process (Kristeva, 1991, 1998) and an overview of the methods that this philosophical grounding leads to in the project.

Next, I offer insights into some of the stories shared by the teachers to date. These are followed by some early analyses and further provocations arising for investigation in the second year of the project, and in teaching teams in the future. Finally, I reiterate my argument for elevating all teachers’ voices as critical to strengthening cultural safety, equity and care within teaching teams, and thus throughout ECE settings and communities, through opportunities to engage in decision making and ongoing questioning, both alone and with each other.

Situating the Research

This project is situated in the Australian and Aotearoa ECE contexts. Foregrounding the challenge of engaging with teachers’ cultural safety and wellbeing involves considering their positioning within both the early childhood sector and the wider cultural contexts. Australia and Aotearoa attract immigrants from around the world. Both are vastly diverse, colonized countries, engaged in various ways with the crucial task of elevating and integrating Indigenous Māori, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in ECE pedagogies and practices. The research I draw on stems from earlier research – both philosophical and empirical (Arndt, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018; Arndt & Bartholomaeus, 2022) – on the still very much under-researched area of teachers’ cultural safety, wellbeing and belonging in early childhood teaching teams. It is shaped by my own experiences, as a settler woman of German heritage, born in Australia. The experiences and discomforts leading to this research arise from my life growing up as the other, non-Indigenous, first generation Australian born, in Australia and Aotearoa. I became an ECE teacher in Aotearoa, and then a teacher educator, first in Aotearoa and now back in Australia. It is during my time as a teacher educator that immigrant teachers seeking to ‘fill the gaps’ of massive teacher shortages in both countries led me to confront their question: but what about me?

The aim of the research is to rupture the assumption that teachers are necessarily well equipped and ready to nurture others’ cultural wellbeing. In particular it points to the diversities in early childhood settings, and requirements in curriculum frameworks and documents (Australian Government Department of Education (AGDE), 2023; Ministry of Education, 2017) and associated local policies. Curriculum frameworks and policies in both countries refer to the diversities of children and families. In Australia the national Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (AGDE, 2023) focuses on the need for teachers to nurture culturally diverse ways of understanding and being in the world of children and families. This is, of course, critical, since according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2024), over 29% of the Australian population were born overseas, and 48% of Australians have a parent who was born overseas. Languages other than English are spoken by at least 1 in 5 members of the Australian population. In Aotearoa the early childhood curriculum framework Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017) strongly foregrounds the Indigenous Māori, by presenting its contents in both English and te reo Māori (the Māori language).

Beyond the frameworks, much research has been conducted on the importance of teachers fostering young children’s cultural acceptance, settling, transitions, and wellbeing when they are engaged with or come from diverse cultural backgrounds (Mitchell & Kamenarac, 2022; Nuttall et al., 2022; Robinson & Jones Díaz, 2016; Srinivasan, 2017). What is much less often the topic of research is the cultural sense of belonging and wellbeing of the teachers who are tasked with facilitating children’s (and families’) cultural sense of belonging in ECE settings. This is a largely neglected area of research (Cherrington & Shuker, 2012; Guo, 2015; Loveridge et al., 2012) and policy focus. The issue that this research addresses, therefore, is teachers’ cultural otherness, sense of cultural safety and ability to be themselves, in their intercultural relationships in their teaching teams. At the forefront of the research is the importance that these factors have for nurturing children’s belonging in ECE settings.

Urgency of the Research

With diversities spanning Indigenous, geographical, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and ways of being, this research focuses on teachers’ realities, histories and cultures, as something they wittingly or unwittingly bring with them to their ECE settings. While recognising that concerns with wellbeing, quality and retention of the ECE workforce can be seen across the world (White, 2023), this research focuses on the Australasian context. In this article I refer mainly to the Australian context. In Australia, the urgency of this research is underpinned by concerns around teacher retention in ECE (Crabb, 2021), and ECE teachers feeling undervalued, badly treated and burnt out (Fenech et al., 2022; United Workers Union, 2021). Recent experiences in Australia and around the world during the Covid 19 pandemic have demonstrated the importance of ECE teacher wellbeing (Arndt et al., 2020), and, as a largely feminised workforce, recently migrated teachers can experience a lack of cultural safety in their workplace (Segrave et al., 2024; Srinivasan, 2017). Whilst prior research has been conducted with teachers in the school sector (Watkins et al., 2015), the stories shared in this research demonstrate the importance of paying attention to the specific nuances of ECE teachers’ cultural realities and relationships as their contexts, teaching teams and arrangements are different and unique from other sectors.

Concerns With Diversity

Contextual concerns that arise in ECE settings include that diversity is commonly (still) seen as a problem (Baldock, 2010; Gide et al., 2022; Rivalland & Nuttall, 2010). This raises the concern that, where there is a problem, there is expected to be a solution, rather than deep consideration of potential treatments of differences. Difference in such instances might be assumed to add beauty or richness to the ECE curriculum (for instance, during cultural celebrations), which can also appear and feel superficial, rather than be an authentic engagement with deeper meanings and traditions (Papastephanou, 2015). In this vein we might consider the complexities arising in Australia, for instance, where celebrations of “the wonderful message that everyone belongs,” are common in ECE settings on Harmony Day. They celebrate the idea that “living, working and learning in vibrant, vital and diverse communities is harmony in practice” (Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, 2025). Harmony Day is the same day as the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21. Noting that 76% of Australians still see Australia as a racist country (Crabb, 2021), we might rethink how racial and cultural diversity impact on ‘harmony’, in findings in recent reports. ‘Workload and coping’ (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2020, p. 23), for instance, are key reasons for teachers to leave the workforce, and attraction, retention, and the wellbeing of ECE teachers and educators, are just some of the factors highlighted in the National Workforce Strategy (Shaping Our Future, a ten-year strategy to ensure a sustainable, high-quality children’s education and care workforce 2022–2031) (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), 2021). Further, the Big Steps United Workers Union Report: Early Education in Crisis (United Workers Union, 2021) identifies multiple issues concerning wellbeing, retention as related to the sense of commitment and belonging of teachers in the early childhood sector (Jackson, 2021), as does further research in these areas (Fenech et al., 2022). These concerns are further complicated by tensions arising in research on the elevation of economic versus educational issues, which place a well, cared for, highly qualified and motivated workforce at their core (Smith & Campbell, 2018).

Given the above concerns, questions emerge about what cultural inclusion really means in an early childhood teaching team. Who decides, and who does it apply to? Whilst Sky, another of the teachers, claims that her centre

is very, very, very inclusive in every aspects. If you ask me how it’s sometimes impossible to make you understand how, from the poster to the food menu, to talking to the children to welcome to their grandparents in their language, multiple ways. And diversities means um in language in abilities in every way.

…it seems that in terms of teacher wellbeing, the early childhood sector has some way to go in achieving the aspirations of raising teacher retention and wellbeing. This means critically reflecting on, for instance, whether ECE settings – and teaching teams in particular – perhaps aren’t always places of community, togetherness and belonging. Perhaps individuals’ sense of identity, place or belonging clash, do not fit or, worse, repel or offend (in intended or unintended ways)? And perhaps teachers themselves might just not feel culturally safe, cared for or even recognised in their ECE setting or teaching team. Perhaps, then, not all settings are as ‘very, very, inclusive’ as in Sky’s situation, or maybe they’re just not felt in that way by everyone? These questions can be delicate and sensitive, and they call for an appropriate philosophical grounding and approach to the research.

Philosophical and Methodological Grounding

Recognising the importance of the above and wider concerns has, over the years, prompted calls for increasingly philosophical engagements with ECE contexts, nuances, pedagogies and teachers’ cultures (Arndt, 2017; Farquhar & White, 2013; Peters, 2007; Peters & Tesar, 2016). The feminist poststructural framing of this research supports its concerns with equitable and just treatments of teachers in their teaching teams through its strongly philosophical grounding (Tesar, 2021). Braidotti (2022) reminds us that a feminist stance embodies “the struggle to empower those who live along multiple axes of inequality” (p. 3). To explore such axes of inequality, means hearing teachers’ voices, foregrounding their complex identity formations, with a view to strengthening their relationships with themselves and each other. Lizzie (another teacher) recognises this idea, reflecting on her team, where sometimes ‘educators that were in there, … would be very, you know, very quiet, wouldn't say anything in a meeting’, but would open up more in their own individual ways, once relationships developed. Philosophically, this research is framed by Kristeva’s (1991) notion of the foreigner, and the idea that subjects (here, the teachers, and myself as the researcher) are always in construction. Kristeva argues that all of our identities are always in formation, that is, we are unable to know not only others around us, but also ourselves (Arndt, 2016, 2018). This orientation informs the research methods and analysis, as stories shared by the teachers, of their histories, realities, and intercultural relationships are seen as fluid, shifting and changing from one day to the next. The idea of subjects as always in process includes what Kristeva calls revolt (Kristeva, 2014; Stone, 2004).

Revolt

Revolt in this sense is not to be considered as a major revolution or overthrow of any particular regime. Rather it is an attitude of ongoing questioning. It is this ongoing questioning that underlies and drives the depth and openness to fluctuations and nuances in teacher perceptions and experiences throughout this research, to unpacking the porosities and tangents that emerge through teachers’ storying. The notion of revolt as an ongoing questioning underpins the methodological framing of this research, which draws on the idea of multimodal storying, of writing the self (Galea, 2014), to rethink conventional narrative methodologies (Arndt & Tesar, 2019). It places at its centre an emphasis on the depth and vulnerability of stories, especially when they are about teachers’ own intimate realities. In critically engaging with teachers’ inter and intra relationships, the fluidity and ongoing construction of the stories themselves matters. Revolt as a methodological framing informs the methods followed.

Methods

This project is ongoing. It uses intercultural narrative research methods and analysis, reconceptualised through the philosophical framing above (Arndt & Tesar, 2019). 25 ECE teachers from any cultural background were recruited from three cities in Australia and one city in Aotearoa to engage in explorations of their own cultures, histories and realities over a period of three years. The Human Research Ethics Review Committee at Melbourne University approved the project (approval: 2023-28112-46477) on March 8, 2024. Respondents gave written consent for review and signature before starting focus groups and selected their own pseudonyms which are used in this article.

Research Questions

Based on the contextual and philosophical background outlined above, this article addresses the first research question:

How do teachers experience their own culture stories, identities, and sense of cultural belonging in their early childhood setting and teaching team?

Focus Groups

Focus groups are held in each year of the project. In the first two years they are online dialogues offering a key opportunity to share teacher stories. In the first year these dialogues were organized by locality giving teachers an opportunity to tell stories and experiences, and for me to introduce the ways forward. The second-year focus groups are in process as I write this article. They have not been organized by locality, giving teachers a different range of participants to share their stories with. In the third year we will meet in person to workshop at a local, grass roots level, a teacher-led design of a potential framework to support teachers’ and their teaching teams.

Culture Stories

In between focus groups teachers continue their personal storying. Using a range of multimodal formats, through oral recordings, written text, images or artwork, they engage in what Galea (2014) might see as a writing of the self, opening up to diverse forms of critical reflections on and in themselves. Their storying reflects their realities as constantly shifting, over time, as a number of the teachers have re-sent, re-engaged with, and re-thought their (always interim) stories.

Teacher Storying

Teachers’ storying of their experiences, of their own realities and sense of belonging in their teaching teams emerge out of their wider experiences of culture, its intersections with communities and histories. The stories complicate ECE teacher relationships, and understandings of what it means to be an ECE professional. Akin to what Moxnes and Osgood (2018) outline as sticky stories, the storying of the teachers in this study reveal non-linear twists and turns, and many uncertainties. Importantly they shift and adjust in response to unexpected notions that bubble up only through what another teacher may have said. Moxnes and Osgood (2018) outline such a diffractive process as one where the concern moves away from the concern with one, or even any, human subject (individual teachers, for example). Instead, attention “to emotion, affect, materiality, space and place, and how they become entangled (and what they diffractively produce), is central” (p. 299). These are factors that affect teachers’ cultural safety. Teacher stories intra-act with their settings, their teams, each other, myself and themselves, as is illustrated through the examples included in the discussion in the following sections.

Twists, Turns and Uncertainties

Multiple uncertainties emerge in considering teachers’ storying in a process of intensive readings (MacLure, 2024). As Lizzie sees it, ‘cultural diversity of our workforce [is] a really strong asset [Laughs] that is often under-utilized’, that requires strong relationships to develop connections. Flash Soprano (another teacher) ponders, considering recent immigrant teachers in their setting, how it involves readings of the self and the other, as, ‘you know, they can talk to families in different languages, or they can, you know, support the child that might be unsettled or talking to a grandmother that’s, you know, come to pick up. But apart from that, you know, that’s where it’s probably really tricky’. Intense reading, following MacLure’s (2024) Deleuzian lens, is an exploration, where the act of reading does not seek particular linear representations. Rather it opens the reader up to the flow of the concepts and material (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). It is an engagement then by all teachers in a teaching team with an always emerging and heterogeneous flow of their own and other teachers’ storying, in whichever direction this takes them. The humbling encounters above allude to the notion that we don’t and can’t know all about the other teachers in our team, and how they might be experiencing the dynamics and power relationships in the team. They further allude to the idea that we are all always strangers, to others, and even to ourselves (Kristeva, 1991). The unfolding of teachers’ storying exposes an uncertainty and discomfort – evident in Flash Soprano’s sharing above - in this process of unknowing even the self (Arndt, 2016).

When discussing notions of how culture is seen, teacher stories reveal the difficulty arising from making assumptions, for instance that led to Ling ‘sometimes feeling as though I were representing all non-Anglo cultures’, or Elizabeth, sharing that she ‘feels like because I am the Asian looking person the other staff members think it is easy for me. Of course, I did not directly come from China so there are still things that I am not one hundred percent sure. I would also research or ask my family and Chinese friends’.

Teachers shared experiences of revelation and insights into their own always evolving cultural selves and their cultural safety. In some further instances, teachers’ cultural safety showed how complicated relationships emerge in terms of understandings of difference and considering what might or might not be tokenistic approaches - adding beauty or richness – but not caring about the ‘full’ story (Papastephanou, 2015). Some of these arise in key comments related to celebrations, as Elizabeth continues to reflect on practicing authenticity and the burden of responsibility it puts on one or a few, for example, as ‘being the only non-Anglo teacher, having responsibility for certain cultural ceremonies or practices’. In a strongly Anglo-Australian ‘(and more affluent) area’ Ling notes, ‘coming from a minority culture can make it feel like I’m the multicultural watcher – responsible for addressing cultural diversity’.

Elizabeth, whose parents are Chinese, continues to reflect on the Chinese culture and how it is treated amongst the teaching team,

I have been contributing Chinese culture into the early childhood program. For example, creating the home corner filled with Chinese decorations and cups, chopsticks, dishes etc and books. Or create a learning experience with Chinese activities for the educators and children… I would say that inclusive with Chinese culture in my centre specifically happens when an up-coming event is around the corner like Lunar New Year’.

Furthermore, as she had researched celebrations in an attempt to ‘get it right’, she continues,

what I found upsetting and frustrating in previous years is that once Chinese New Year was over, staff would pack up the Chinese decorations or children’s artwork related to Chinese New Year and cleared the spaces without any consultation with me. This usually happens on my non-working day. For instance, the Chinese decorations were taken down from the hanging strings and then put quietly into the corner in the staff room until I notice them’.

In her mind then, it

looks like no trace of what we did at the centre is visibly seen unless you read the previous program. The remaining Chinese resources … being moved around and taken down are then discovered after my next shift at work.

When the dominant focus is on keeping all parents happy (as an economic goal) this can detract from focusing on the educational value of fostering and sharing multiple languages and cultures with children (Smith & Campbell, 2018). Through the notion of revolt, and a deep and critical questioning this raises further tensions about what is really needed to be “future ready” (ACEQA, 2022). In a dialogue on the value of multiple languages in a setting, teachers related to each other’s input, questioning whether being from a different country means it is easier to connect with families about migration, cultural histories, languages or beliefs, for example, and about the value of Flash Soprano’s idea above about speaking the families’ languages, supporting children’s settling, and exchanging ideas. Importantly, not all teachers’ stories were concerned with recent immigration, reinforcing the point that all teachers have a culture and all teachers should feel culturally safe.

In our online dialogues Ruby considered how ‘it took me a long time to do my cultural story, because it was very like, I’d never thought about what my culture looked or sounded or felt like, because it was kind of in the calendar, and it was what we all did’. She continues

it made me sitting down and unpacking, and I felt really weird about and really strange about it, because I grew up Catholic and everyone I knew, like, for me, the idea of culture has been a big milestone coming out of it, because it just wasn’t talked about in Australia, especially where I grew up, like, I'm from regional, rural Australia [laughs]. Um, all my friends were the same. All the families were the same.

After a pause, she carries on

So, this sense, for me, was like kind of this was probably the first time that I reflected personally on culture as it attains to me, rather than just as like a thing we do because we do it, because we’re inclusive, or … do Harmony Day, or because we … um, share ... it has been a really deep journey for me.

First Nations Knowledges

Embedding Indigenous perspectives and knowledges is crucial in learning frameworks and policies, as outlined earlier. It is foundational to this research and emerged from different angles in some of the teacher dialogues. Kate, for instance, introduced herself.

I would first describe myself as “Australian,” and then “Anglo-Australian” or “white Australian” to differentiate myself from the Indigenous Peoples of the land now called Australia. My genetic heritage is English/British—my ancestors came to Australia many generations ago—and Danish, as my mother’s father immigrated to Australia from Denmark. I think most people assume Anglo-Australians have British heritage’.

Growing up on unceded land, I also feel a sense of guilt from my English heritage … I try my best to promote and incorporate Indigenous perspectives and culture into my teaching practices and hope that one day Australia will be an equitable and reconciled country.

Heidi, who is from a European background, reflected on some of the difficulties arising for her in integrating Indigenous knowledges into her practice, saying

I don’t know what’s the right amount of cultural input of Indigenous culture. Or is it more … should I bring back my culture? Or I … let’s get all the children’s culture in there… so, so I feel like, what’s the right balance? What’s the balance for that to bring culture in and everyone is included, yeah, that’s my question right now.

As part of Kate’s hope that ‘one day Australia will be an equitable and reconciled country’, for Lizzie this means interweaving her connection to Country and her own Indigenous heritage. For her, culture is a deep and far-reaching process, in terms of celebrations, for instance, where

understanding not just the celebration, but the history of that celebration, and what it means to people and how it connects to people’s um you know, food growing processes and food gathering processes and food sharing processes, or garment making processes, rather than just that flashy thing that happens at the end the actual process of making the garment and where the material is gathered from, and what the stitches mean and things like that. Um Yeah, it’s about, I guess, like following the threads back rather than just staying with the flashy, shiny stuff.

Further Provocations – Beyond the ‘Flashy, Shiny Stuff’

As the comments and stories from teachers continue to diffract through their own and each other’s histories, rituals, languages, emotions, affect, place, and lives, a revolt-ful ongoing questioning has led to further provocations. They take us, as Lizzie urges, beyond the ‘flashy, shiny stuff’ – pushing our dialogues in year two and into the future.

Kate’s storying about what culture means, who has a culture, and what being from a different culture might mean, appears to reflect a context where all of us who are not from an Indigenous heritage have either come, or have ancestors who have come, from elsewhere. She says

My best friend growing up had dark olive skin due to her Sri Lankan heritage, but I never noticed it as significant. Similarly, our neighbours were Greek, and it also didn’t seem important to me. I only really learned about cultural differences in year seven when asked if I liked ‘wogs’ a term I didn’t understand until it was explained to me. This has influenced my teaching, as I do not tolerate racism in any form and strongly promote, respect and celebrate diversity.

Going beyond the flashy, shiny stuff means recognising that cultural safety crosses the intersections of diversity, for instance of culture, race, gender and politics. Taking the feminist stance called for by Braidotti (2022) above, that urges us to ‘empower those who live along multiple axes of inequality’ (p. 3), means reflecting on the constant construction of our identities. Kate notes that at the beginning of the research she thought about

…what is your cultural identity? And as sort of a sort of a white Australian… I said, Oh well, I don’t actually have a cultural identity. Um, but of course I do. I’m just not aware of it, or I’m not focused on it. Um and it’s usually only in comparison to others that I think oh that's a difference between us because of culture, because my colleague has [culture] and I don’t have any. … But of course, I do have culture, I’m just not aware of it.

The more deeply teachers reflect on their own lives, relationships and histories, the more questions arise. How long do you need to have been in Australia to be seen as having a different culture? Or does this depend on where you’ve come from? When questioning identity, what does it mean to be ‘an Australian teacher’ – as Ling questions right at the beginning of this article? Can we say that when people are from the same country, it means that their cultures are all the same? The storying included here gives some insights into the range and complexities of the teachers’ reflections, rather than a final solution, or one ‘recipe’ for developing a culturally safe workforce.

Interim Concluding Comments: but What About Me?

This project responds to research and frameworks which tell us that ECE teachers should nurture respectful relationships with children and families from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The critical framing underpinning what this could mean for teaching teams includes that identities are always infinitely in construction – open, evolving, in flux, never static, that we are never completely products of our own experiences, and that storying culture is a deeply personal, ethical imperative - that takes time. For all of these reasons, there can only ever be an interim conclusion - the stories are always ongoing. They include developing a sense of comfort with the discomfort of not knowing, that arises in thinking about ways of listening to cultural ways of being every day, not just on culture day, or harmony day. Such an ‘unknowing’ involves consulting with others on how ‘culture’ and ‘inclusion’ might be done most sensitively, as a contextually complex consideration. It involves a constant critical questioning as has been outlined and discussed in this article, and urges us to rethink the complexity and multiplicity of what it means to conceptualise cultural safety in relational ways. This article has given some tentative insights into some of the storying, without fully knowing one another, or even ourselves.