FULL REFERENCE: Ba Akhlagh. S. and Yamada, M. (2025). Shared cultural responsiveness teaching strategies for early childhood educators: Insights from Japanese and Australian researchers. NZ International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 27, pp. 17-30.
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ABSTRACT: The global movement of migrants and refugees presents significant challenges for host countries, particularly in providing equitable and inclusive education for children. Nations such as Australia and Japan have become safe destinations, yet the extent to which they are prepared to facilitate culturally responsive early childhood education varies. This paper presents research-based strategies, developed by two researchers in Australia and Japan, that have proven to be practical and helpful for educators, supporting children from cultural and linguistic diverse (CALD) backgrounds in Australia. These strategies, currently offered to educators in Australia, are planned for implementation among Japanese early childhood educators from 2026. Drawing on shared expertise from both countries, the approach fosters mutual learning and adaptation, aiming to inspire educators worldwide to contextualise and apply these evidence-informed practices within their own early childhood education settings.
KEY WORDS: Cultural responsiveness, educators, cross-cultural early childhood education teaching strategies, professional learning.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past several decades, early childhood education (ECE) has been shaped by unprecedented demographic shifts, as migration and global mobility have diversified the social, cultural, and linguistic composition of early childhood services worldwide (Chen & Lai, 2024; Veliz, 2024). Increasingly, young children enter educational settings with racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds that differ substantially from those historically reflected in national curricula and pedagogical practices (Haslip & Gullo, 2018). This diversification has demanded a fundamental rethinking of how education systems approach inclusion, belonging, and equity in the early years (Veliz et al., 2025).
The response to these demographic transformations has been the gradual evolution of multicultural education, which moved beyond its initial, narrower focus on race and ethnicity to develop into a broad pedagogical philosophy. Banks (2004), in his seminal work, identified core elements of this philosophy—ranging from content integration and the knowledge construction process to prejudice reduction and the cultivation of inclusive school cultures—that collectively sought to embed equity and diversity within everyday teaching practices. More recently, Paris and Alim (2014) advanced the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy, which not only emphasises responsiveness to children’s backgrounds but also actively seeks to sustain and enrich their cultural and linguistic heritages. In the context of ECE, this shift reflects a growing recognition that early education is not simply about accommodating difference, but about nurturing identities and empowering children to see their cultural and linguistic resources as assets.
