Shifting realities: Immigrant teacher transitions into early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Imagine you are an immigrant early childhood teacher… this article tells your story of transition and diversity. It interweaves tensions and complex realities and explores issues and concerns for immigrant teachers in the cultural places and relational spaces of early childhood settings. Based on teacher narratives and a post-structural discourse analysis, it suggests that immigrant teachers' realities are not always 'rich' or celebratory, but are often complex entanglements of struggle and contradictions. The article urges fresh considerations of early childhood relationships to allow for fluid, shifting identities and cultures-yours, ours, and the centre's. Sonja Arndt is a lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Waikato. Her research is concerned with critical (re)conceptualisations of notions of the foreigner and foreignness. Shifting realities: Immigrant teacher transitions into early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand Shall we be, intimately and subjectively, able to live with the others, to live as others, without ostracism but also without leveling? (Kristeva, 1991, p. 2, emphasis in the original). The happiness of tearing away Imagine you are an immigrant early childhood teacher. You have recently moved to Aotearoa New Zealand, and are trying to make sense of your new realities here. Kristeva's opening quote, where she recognises the intimacy and private struggle of being the Other, of living amongst differences, concerns you and your new reality. It speaks also to the other 'non-foreign' teachers in your centre, and to ways to enhance engagements across all of our differences. Kristeva (1991) suggests the possibility that maybe we are all Other, that we could all live 'as others', strangers also to ourselves, and that we might all get on together without marginalizing practices that 'ostracise' or 'level'. Her quote represents the aim of this article: to highlight tensions that arise in the cultural places and relational spaces of Aotearoa early childhood environments, and to explicate tensions arising from wellintentioned aspirations and practices. Its particular concern is for immigrant teachers, like you, whose stories, alongside others, have informed my research. You found it extremely hard to leave your homelandyou had never been this far away beforefrom your favourite places and the spaces that you loved. Even those places that had become difficult, towards the end, now, from a distance, remind you of the home that you left behind. Leaving your best friends and extended family has been particularly hard, and it still hurts to think of them. However, you are pleased, really, that you have been able to immigrate, with your husband and young children. Mostly, you are grateful to be here and to be able to begin to build a new life for your family. You have even managed to find a house to rent that is close to a few other immigrants from your country. How great it is to be able to speak your own language!

A review of research in applied linguistics published in New Zealand (2013–2017)

“…Tocker, 2015) to more recent approaches such as narrative (e.g. Arndt, 2014). They have also reflected the cultural understandings of the groups being researched (e.g.…”

“…The teachers noted positive benefits, including helping students and their families to feel safe, supporting language maintenance, and building on learning from children's early L1 experience. On the other hand, Arndt (2014) pointed out that within the climate of apparent celebration of the diversity of children and their families, teachers from non-local origins can struggle to have their differences appreciated and to avoid pressures to homogeneity.…”

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

“…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.…”

A more-than-social movement: The post-human condition of quality in the early years

“…The unprecedented expansion of the sector, increased marketisation, and changing family and cultural demographics (May, 2013; Tesar, 2015) entangle the sector in New Zealand in complex human-subject-centric ‘citizen-consumers, social markets and cultures of consumption’ (Peters, 2013: 313). The neo-liberal early years marketplace pushes to the margins any efforts for political advocacy for freedoms, identities, and relational, particularising ethics and quality, following instead the global recipe for measurable outcomes and financial (and shareholder) profits (Arndt, 2014; Mitchell and Brooking, 2007).…”