Belonging-with Country: Diffracting equity, inclusion and care in Australian early childhood education

Abstract

This article revisits the widely used yet underexamined concepts of equity, inclusion and belonging in Australian early childhood education. Building on Sumsion and Wong's interrogation of ‘belonging’ in the original Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) for Australia V2.0, it traces how the concept has been taken up across policy, practice and scholarship, including EYLF V2.0 and contemporary work on care, book sharing and cultural responsiveness. It argues that these approaches, while well intentioned, often individualise belonging, obscure ongoing colonial relations and privilege Euro-Western, human-centred ontologies that normalise some children, families and places while marginalising others, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and Country. In response, the article brings dominant constructions of belonging into dialogue with Indigenous and critical theoretical perspectives, including Aboriginal relational ontologies and decolonial pedagogies. Drawing on Indigenist research, Red Pedagogy and critiques of culturally responsive practice, it reimagines belonging as relational, place-based and more-than-human. Through illustrative pedagogical vignettes, the article considers what it might mean for educators to read-with texts, care-with assemblages and blog-with Place in accountable relationship with First Nations communities and sovereignties. In doing so, it offers conceptual and practical provocations for reconfiguring pedagogies of care, equity and belonging-with Country within early childhood education.