Workforce sustainability in early childhood education and care (ECE) is most often examined through the lens of turnover (Kangas et al., 2021; Sirvio et al., 2023; Ahola & Valkonen, 2024; Sirvio et al., under review). While this body of research has generated critical insights into structural pressures and workforce instability, an exclusive focus on leaving risks obscuring the experiences of ECE teachers who remain in the profession despite ongoing challenges. This article, drawing on the third sub-study of a doctoral project, shifts attention from turnover to retention by examining why experienced ECE teachers continue their professional engagement. It foregrounds the conditions and meanings that enable long-term commitment within a Finnish ECE context characterised by emotional labour, ethical complexity, and institutional constraint (Sirvio et al. 2023). 

The study is theoretically informed by the intersecting concepts of moral resilience and belonging. Together, these frameworks conceptualise retention as an active, relational, and institutionally mediated practice rather than a passive response to limited alternatives. Moral resilience provides a lens for understanding how teachers sustain ethical commitments over time. Moral resilience refers to the capacity to sustain or restore moral integrity in the face of ethical adversity, complexity, and distress (Rushton, 2016, 2018; Young & Rushton, 2017). For experienced ECE teachers who stay, moral resilience is not a fixed trait but a dynamic process that is continually renegotiated through everyday practice (Young & Rushton, 2017; Melasalmi et al., 2022). It involves navigating ethical tensions, emotional labour, and institutional constraints, with leadership practices playing a role in shaping the conditions under which teachers are able to maintain a sense of professional integrity (Garrett & Gibbs, 2025). 

Belonging further explains why some experienced teachers sustain long-term attachment to the profession. Belonging encompasses feelings of recognition, inclusion, and connection within professional, organisational, and relational contexts (Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011). Empirical research in Finland and internationally highlights collaborative work practices, interpersonal trust, collegial relationships, supportive leadership, shared professional values, and alignment with educational philosophies as key facilitators of belonging (Hakkarainen & Kivistö, 2020; Allen et al., 2025; Melzak et al., 2025; Zhang et al., 2025). A qualitative review by Sirkko et al. (2022) further demonstrates that belonging is strengthened when staff experience trust, collaboration, and low hierarchical distance, while unclear roles and marginalisation undermine belonging and increase burnout risk. 

In ECE contexts, belonging is cultivated through structured induction, mentoring, and peer support (Doan, 2024). Place-based and culturally responsive approaches that recognise local contexts and validate diverse identities further enhance teachers’ sense of connection and inclusion (Chan & Ritchie, 2025). Personal experiences, cultural sensitivity, and awareness of local communities strengthen engagement and commitment (Juutinen & Kess, 2019). At the same time, structural conditions such as income adequacy, workload, and work–family conflict also shape organisational commitment and turnover intentions, underscoring that belonging is embedded within material working conditions (Li & Chen, 2025). 

By foregrounding retention rather than leaving, this article outlines moral resilience and belonging as conceptual lenses that may help understand workforce sustainability in ECE. The study does not assume these frameworks will fully explain teachers’ experiences; rather, they provide a way to consider the relational, ethical, and institutional factors that could influence long-term professional engagement. Future analysis of the empirical data will reveal how experienced teachers themselves describe and navigate these dynamics in practice. 

This study explores experienced early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ lived experiences through a hermeneutical lens (Schwandt, 2000, p. 301), centering on narratives of retention, moral resilience, and belonging. Experienced teachers are the focus because their extended professional practice offers rich insight into the complexities of teaching, organizational life, and sustained commitment. Rather than identifying causal relationships or attributing experiences to individual traits, the study seeks to understand how teachers’ career stories are intertwined with their social, professional, and institutional realities. Participants will consist of 15 experienced ECE teachers. Each will have five to fifteen years of continuous professional experience accumulated between 2010 and 2025 and will hold a university degree in early childhood education. This ensures a diverse range of perspectives on retention, moral resilience, and sense of belonging. At the time of writing, the process of identifying and recruiting interviewees is ongoing. A qualitative narrative approach is adopted, using individual interviews combined with the journey plot method to explore factors influencing retention. The journey plot enables participants to visually and narratively represent their professional lives as a chronological journey, foregrounding the temporal, emotional, and contextual dimensions of their careers (Goodson & Sikes, 2001; Krough & Andersen, Sheridan et al., 2011; 2013; Sheridan et al., 2016; Knaflic, 2020; Young et al., 2024). This method captures both significant challenges and meaningful high points that shaped participants’ decisions to remain in the profession. Discursive institutionalism provides the analytical lens for examining how broader policy and organisational discourses are taken up, negotiated, or contested within individual career narratives (Schmidt, 2008, 2010). By integrating narrative discourse analysis with discursive institutionalism, the study conceptualises staying as a morally, relationally, and institutionally situated practice. This methodological approach ensures coherence with the study’s theoretical framework and supports a nuanced exploration of experienced Finnish ECEC teachers’ sustained professional commitment. Narrative discourse analysis (De Fina & Georgakopoulou, 2015) is employed to examine how teachers construct and interpret their career experiences. Stories are treated as discursive performances through which teachers make sense of their lives and position themselves within moral, social, and relational contexts. The analysis attends to both narrative forms, how experiences are structured and sequences, and narrative function, including identity construction, moral meaning-making, and expressions of belonging. (Riessman, 2008.)

This paper has presented the theoretical and methodological foundations of a study exploring why experienced early childhood education and care (ECE) teachers stay in the profession within the Finnish context. Developed during the data collection phase of the third sub-study in a PhD project, the paper contributes by foregrounding a theoretically informed approach to understanding retention as an active and meaningful professional practice. Drawing on moral resilience and belonging, the study conceptualises sustained professional commitment as ethically grounded, relationally embedded, and institutionally mediated. The significance of this study lies in its shift away from attrition-dominated and deficit-oriented accounts of the ECE workforce. In Finland, children’s wellbeing, participation, and holistic development are central aims of ECE policy and practice. Experienced and committed teachers are critical to realising these aims in everyday pedagogical work. The study also contributes methodologically by combining narrative interviews with career journey lines and analysing these narratives through a discursive institutionalist lens. This approach enables connections to be made between individual career stories and broader policy and organisational discourses shaping Finnish ECE. It offers insight into how teachers interpret, negotiate, and sometimes reframe institutional expectations in ways that allow them to maintain professional integrity and a sense of belonging over time. By centring experienced teachers’ voices during the data collection phase, this study lays the groundwork for generating empirically grounded knowledge that can inform workforce sustainability discussions in Finnish ECE. Understanding staying as a moral, relational, and discursive practice has the potential to support the development of professional cultures and policy conditions that enable experienced teachers to continue to belong, contribute, and uphold children’s wellbeing at the heart of ECE.

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