How do newly-qualified early childhood teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand critically reflect within constraints and possibilities of dominant discourses of early childhood teaching?

Early childhood practitioners' professionalism is a contested concept, with interpretations that include professionalisms based on qualifications, on accountability, on relational skills and on critical advocacy. Understandings of professionalism as situated in ecological frameworks rather than within individuals have led to the concept of a critical ecology, within which teachers critically reflect on and question professionalism at all levels of their professional ecosystem. Carmen Dalli has called for re-emergence of a critical ecology of the early childhood profession in Aotearoa New Zealand in challenging political contexts. This article explores two newly-qualified early childhood teachers' critical reflections about their subjectivities in a Master's thesis research study set in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the poststructural paradigm of this research, subjectivities comprise individuals' multiple, complex and dynamic self-understandings shaped by power relations within discourses. This article will draw on Michel Foucault's discourse theories to consider how these newly-qualified early childhood teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand critically reflect within constraints and possibilities of dominant discourses of early childhood teaching.