Early childhood educators’ perceptions of the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF): Engaged professional learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoinette D White ◽  
Marilyn Fleer
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Early Childhood Educators ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Initiation Phase ◽  
Learning Framework

Educational change is dependent on the practices and perceptions of educators. Yet efforts to sustain teacher’s adoption and implementation of reform packages often deteriorate over time. Monitoring educators’ engagement across the reform process, and making adaptions to reflect key findings, is central to successful implementation. This cultural–historical study explored trends in early childhood educators’ perceptions of an Australian nation-wide educational reform, making recommendations based on the findings. Results from the Baseline Evaluations of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) represented the initiation phase, whilst an online questionnaire explored educators’ attitudes and concerns four years on. Data analysis included a thematic and content analysis where the dialects of everyday concepts and scientific concepts helped give meaning to the clusters found. Whilst findings show an overall positive orientation towards the EYLF, concerns are evident at both moments in time. Although this initially suggests educators have not progressed in their implementation of the framework, a theorisation of the results suggests educators are seeking effective means of transforming professional concepts of the EYLF into practice.

Intentional teaching: Can early-childhood educators create the conditions for children’s conceptual development when following a child-centred programme?

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
Rebecca Lewis ◽  
Marilyn Fleer ◽  
Marie Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Early Childhood Educators ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Video Observations ◽  
Subject Positioning ◽  
Children's Interests ◽  
Preschool Setting ◽  
Child Learning

This study investigated the practice of two early-childhood educators and their interactions with 24 children (mean age 5.2 years) in an inner-suburban Australian preschool setting. The study specifically examined the nature of how educators ‘intentionally teach’ concepts to young children in a child-centred programme. Six hours of educator–child digital video observations and three hours of educator interviews were gathered and analysed using Kravtsova’s (2009) concept of ‘subject positioning’. The findings suggest that it was challenging to teach intentionally in a child-centred programme based on children’s interests. This research is the first phase of a larger study. It is argued that the tensions between educators’ beliefs about child learning and their role in relation to fostering children’s conceptual development in child-centred programmes could make it difficult for educators to implement intentional teaching as presented in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009).

scholarly journals The Early Years: Beginning Early Childhood Educators’ Induction Experiences and Needs in British Columbia

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura K Doan
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Peer Support ◽  
Early Childhood Educators ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Semistructured Interviews

<p>This purpose of this study was to understand the experiences and needs of beginning early childhood educators in British Columbia. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the research involved 114 beginning educators who took part in an online questionnaire, 11 of whom also participated in semistructured interviews. The key findings were that the work is both overwhelming and deeply satisfying; the induction support that beginning early childhood educators receive is haphazard; and beginning early childhood educators would like induction support in the form of mentoring or peer support, observations, feedback, and professional development. A model for induction support is presented.</p>

Considering Form and Function: A Commentary on the Review of the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia

2021 ◽  
pp. 183693912110185
Author(s):  
Caroline Cohrssen
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Quality Standard ◽  
Early Years ◽  
National Guidelines ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
National Quality ◽  
Planning Cycle ◽  
Standard Quality

An important milestone in early childhood education and care is reached in 2021 as Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia is reviewed. The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) was groundbreaking. It has been influential in providing national guidelines around pedagogical principles, practice and learning outcomes for children. This commentary is intended to contribute to the wider conversation that is taking place this year. It proposes that a refined EYLF retains the focus on child-centredness and playful learning, and advocates for the structure of the revised document to include continua of learning and development. The provision of learning trajectories would assist early childhood educators to enact the planning cycle, meet National Quality Standard Quality Area 1, and thus potentially increase the learning outcomes for all children.

scholarly journals Is infant belonging observable? A path through the maze

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-416
Author(s):  
Jane M Selby ◽  
Benjamin S Bradley ◽  
Jennifer Sumsion ◽  
Matthew Stapleton ◽  
Linda J Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Infants And Toddlers ◽  
Quality Outcomes ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Education And Care

This article evaluates the concept of infant ‘belonging’, central to several national curricula for early childhood education and care. Here, the authors focus on Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework. Four different meanings attach to ‘belonging’ in the Early Years Learning Framework, the primary being sociopolitical. However, ‘a sense of belonging’ is also proposed as something that should be observable and demonstrable in infants and toddlers – such demonstration being held up as one of the keys to quality outcomes in early childhood education and care. The Early Years Learning Framework endows belonging with two contrasting meanings when applied to infants. The first, the authors call ‘marked belonging’, and it refers to the infant’s exclusion from or inclusion in defined groups of others. The second, the authors provisionally call ‘unmarked’ belonging. Differences between these two meanings of infant belonging are explored by describing two contrasting observational vignettes from video recordings of infants in early childhood education and care. The authors conclude that ‘belonging’ is not a helpful way to refer to, or empirically demonstrate, an infant’s mundane comfort or ‘unmarked’ agentive ease in shared early childhood education and care settings. A better way to conceptualise and research this would be through the prism of infants’ proven capacity to participate in groups.

scholarly journals Partnerships in Early Childhood Education and Care: Empowering Parents or Empowering Practitioners

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rouse
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Practice Model ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Education And Care

Research acknowledges that outcomes for young children are enhanced when effective partnerships are developed between educators and families. The Australian Early Years Learning Framework provides direction for the professional practice of early childhood educators by acknowledging the importance of educators working in partnership with families. In the Victorian state-based early years framework, family-centred practice has been included as the practice model. Family-centred practice has as its core a philosophy of professionals supporting the empowerment of parents as active decision makers for their child. The early childhood education and care sector in Australia, however, is made up of a workforce which is largely perceived as being undervalued as a profession. This raises questions as to the capacity of these educators to support the empowerment of parents when they themselves are coming from a position of disempowerment due to their professional status. This article reports on findings from a small-scale study of childhood educators working in a long day-care setting which aimed to identify perceptions of the partnerships that exist between themselves and parents. In the course of the investigation, it became evident that some of educators felt disempowered in the relationships that exist with some families.

Play: Challenging Educators' Beliefs about Play in the Indoor and Outdoor Environment

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Leggett ◽  
Linda Newman
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Free Play ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Outdoor Environment ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Adult Roles ◽  
Indoor And Outdoor

WESTERN DISCOURSES OF EARLY childhood pedagogy promote a play-based approach to learning, growth and development. However, play is a contested concept. Educators' understandings can vary from allowing freedom for children to play without interference, through to a range of adult engagement levels. The Australian Early Years Learning Framework adopts a play-based approach to children's growth and development, though says little about adult roles or intentionality in play. This paper draws from recent research that explored educators' beliefs and understandings of their roles as intentional teachers within indoor and outdoor learning environments. Findings highlighted differences between role and responsibility perceptions whereby educators shifted roles from teacher to supervisor between contexts. Drawing on Vygotsky's sociocultural approach that regards play as a social event and the leading source of development, promoting cognitive, emotional and social development in young children (Connery, John-Steiner & Marjanovic-Shane, 2010), we believe that a re-examination of the role of the educator in children's play requires specific attention. Finally, based on the research, we contest the notion of ‘free play’. This paper suggests that by acknowledging the role of the educator as an intentional teacher both indoors and outdoors, and emphasising the complexity of the educator role, a more robust definition of play that is reflective of contemporary early childhood contexts and curricula can evolve to strengthen educator understanding and practice.

‘Belonging’ in Australian early childhood education and care curriculum and quality assurance: Opportunities and risks

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 340-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Sumsion ◽  
Linda Harrison ◽  
Karen Letsch ◽  
Benjamin Sylvester Bradley ◽  
Matthew Stapleton
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Quality Standard ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Care Services ◽  
National Quality ◽  
Education And Care

This article considers opportunities and risks arising from the prominence of the belonging motif in Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework and, more implicitly, in the National Quality Standard, against which the quality of the early childhood education and care services is assessed. A vignette constructed from case study data generated in the babies’ room in an early childhood centre in an Aboriginal community in rural Queensland is used to illuminate some of these opportunities and risks.

scholarly journals TOWARDS PLAY-BASED LEARNING PRACTICE

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Dewi Mulia
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Educational Settings ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Child's Play

This paper provides the rationale for an overview and a discussion of the issues that affect best practices for play-based learning, particularly the implicationsof adults’ attitudes regarding child’s play and learning for play-based learning practice in early childhood educational settings in Indonesia. The conceptof play-based learning can be attributed to the National Early Years Learning Framework in Indonesia. However, the practice remains challenging as the result of diverse concepts of child’s play and learning. This discussion begins with an overview of the framework and of government support. It details the relevant research on the challenges that educators and teachers have faced with the implementation of the framework.

scholarly journals Sexuality education and early childhood educators in Ontario, Canada: A Foucauldian exploration of constraints and possibilities

2021 ◽  
pp. 146394912110607
Author(s):  
Adam WJ Davies ◽  
Alice Simone-Balter ◽  
Tricia van Rhijn
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Early Childhood Educators ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Sexual Diversity

Open conversations regarding sexuality education and gender and sexual diversity with young children in early childhood education settings are still highly constrained. Educators report lacking professional training and fearing parental and community pushback when explicitly addressing these topics in their professional practices. As such, gender and sexual diversity and conversations of bodily development are left silenced and, when addressed, filtered through heteronormative and cisnormative frameworks. Through a Foucauldian post-structural lens, this article analyses data from open-ended qualitative questions in a previous research study regarding early childhood educators’ perceptions on discussing the development of sexuality in early learning settings in an Ontario, Canada context. Through this Foucauldian post-structural analysis, the authors discuss forms of surveillance and regulation that early childhood educators experience in early learning settings regarding the open discussion of gender and sexuality. The authors explore how both the lack of explicit curricula addressing gender and sexuality in the early years in Ontario and taken-for-granted notions of developmentally appropriate practice, childhood innocence, and the gender binary – employed in discourses of sexuality education in the early years – regulate early childhood educators’ professional practices. The authors provide recommendations which critique the developmentalist logics – specifically, normative development – that are used to silence non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities in the early years, while articulating the need for explicit curricula for educators in the early years regarding gender and sexuality in young children.

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