Australian Early Years Research Articles

\u201cPortray cultures other than ours\u201d: How children\u2019s literature is being used to support the diversity goals of the Australian Early Years Learning Framework

Catering for diversity within birth to 5-year-old settings continues to be an on-going concern for policy makers and educators worldwide. This research contributes to discussion on the value of children’s literature in achieving international principles of diversity and, in particular, the Principles, Practice and Outcomes outlined in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework. The article considers the selection and use of children’s literature related to diversity, as well as what influences these processes. Seventeen educators from five long day care centres located in or near the Perth metropolitan area participated in the study. Data were drawn from interviews and a book audit. The findings revealed educators had limited understandings of the role of literature in acknowledging and valuing diversity and rarely used it to promote the diversity-related outcomes of the EYLF. The key challenges which emerged from the findings concerned beliefs of educators, professional learning and the application of the EYLF in practice.

The meanings of belonging: Revisiting the theory of ‘belonging, being and becoming’ in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework

The theory of belonging as it arises in the theme of the Australian Early Years Learning Framework suggests a complex arrangement of philosophical concepts, which deserve rigorous explication and interrogation. In this article, the author draws out some of the most pertinent implications of ‘belonging’ for the theory of early learning in Australia. In particular, the author addresses the risks associated with simplifying the term as a kind of knowledge that arises through social experience, without a meticulous explanation of what is meant by the ‘social’. The author also unpacks the possibilities surrounding ‘belonging’ if it is possible to think it outside vernacular definitions of property, with which the idea of belonging may easily be conflated. The aim is to provide a preliminary outline of philosophical approaches to ‘belonging’ to demonstrate that the Early Years Learning Framework may provide an important platform through which to think a new range of issues arising from the task of educating young children in Australia.

Collaborative professional learning: contributing to the growth of leadership, professional identity and professionalism

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to understanding of professionalism in early childhood education and argues that in working to implement a mandated curriculum framework, professional identity and professionalism can be enhanced. While primarily focused on examining the nature of leadership practice during professional development and learning to implement the Australian Early Years Learning Framework, this research offers insights into educators' subjectivities. A particular focus was to examine the influence of different social domains to understand how agency and structure were implicated in the enactment of leadership. Analysis of data from two case studies in early childhood centres suggested that professional identity was socially constructed with collaborative professional dialogue contributing to educators' sense of agency.

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

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.

Notice, Explore, and Talk About Mathematics: Making a Positive Difference for Preschool Children, Families, and Educators in Australian Communities That Experience Multiple Disadvantages.

Let's Count is a preschool mathematics intervention implemented by The Smith Family from 2012 to the present in "disadvantaged" communities across Australia. It is based on current mathematics and early childhood education research and aligns with the Australian Early Years Learning Framework. Let's Count has been shown to be effective in enhancing mathematics learning and dispositions of young children, early childhood educators, and families through a longitudinal evaluation undertaken from 2012 to 2015. In this chapter, the authors explore the development, implementation, and evaluation of Let's Count and highlight the importance of adults noticing, exploring, and talking about children's mathematics. The findings from the longitudinal evaluation of Let's Count suggest that when adults notice children's mathematics, then children's learning thrives, and the positive dispositions and confidence of parents and educators increase. Let's Count has made a positive difference for many children and adults across Australia.

The Pushes and Pulls of Pedagogy in the Early Years: Competing Knowledges and the Erosion of Play-based Learning

IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA, EARLY childhood educators have been asking whose agenda does early childhood knowledge serve and for what purpose? This has come to the forefront of debate as play as a pedagogical tool is disappearing from programs for four- and five-year-old children in favour of early academics through a pushdown curriculum. Such a trend was confirmed from research conducted with 200 Western Australian early years educators (mainly teachers) to discuss their most concerning early childhood pedagogical issue. This paper describes the educators' most significant concern, which was the erosion of play-based learning and the tension about the use of play as a legitimate pedagogical tool in early years programs. The analysis revealed competing knowledge about current moves in early childhood education. The knowledge shared by educators has implications for quality learning and teaching in the early years and impacts on children, educators, parents and schools, and in particular, early childhood pedagogy.

Re-thinking Professional Development: Positioning Educational Documentation as Everyday Professional Learning

THE INTENT OF THIS PAPER is to explore the ways in which educational documentation—one of the many important key principles that challenge and sustain the educational theories and teaching practice of the Reggio Emilia Educational Project in Italy—supports the practice, principles and pedagogy of early years educators. In this particular context, documentation is positioned as both a strategy and a tool for examining the work of the individual and of the group, for both children and educators, with the aim of questioning the role documentation might play in supporting educators' professional learning. This commentary paper will examine the concept of documenting as a process that enables an educator's work to become visible and therefore support their evolving capacity as an educator, through ongoing reflective practice, as indicated in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009).

The (bio)politicization of neuroscience in Australian early years policies: fostering brain-resources as human capital

At the present, human capital theory (HCT) and neuroscience reasoning are dominant frameworks in early childhood education and care (ECEC) worldwide. Popular since the 1960s, HCT has provided an economic understanding of human beings and offered strategies to manage the population with the promise of bringing improvements to nations. Neuroscience arguments added new ways to regulate human beings, and thus another ‘hopeful ethos’ and investment into the future. In this paper, we examine different positive, life-improving, and hopeful takes on early childhood as forms of biopolitical government, which are closely related to the enhancement of individual capacities and the shifting problems of the neoliberal state. Curiously, this process, grounded on biological fatalism and naturalizing arguments, has led to new class categorizations and ways of social discrimination. We hence argue that even though a ‘hopeful ethos’ is offered through the (bio)politicization of neurosciences, it has led to eugenic arguments by re-inscribing social and economic differences into differences in brain architecture. Finally, we aim to demonstrate that ECEC policy offers an example of how current policies govern through scientific evidence and softer forms of ‘government by example’, at the same time moving the government of population into the home, and with that privatizing and personalizing self-investment.

Deploying Foucauldian genealogy: Critiquing ‘quality’ reform in early childhood policy in Australia

The last two decades have seen the emergence of a global education paradigm that has reimagined education through the lens of neo-liberal ideology. Education policy agendas and discourses in current times are globally governed through transnational networks, which have increased the opaqueness of education policymaking. For critical policy researchers, the challenge is to respond with new methodologies that can capture and critique the increasingly diffuse, fractured nature of contemporary policy processes. This article presents one such methodology, where Foucauldian genealogy is used to construct a history of the discourse of ‘quality’ in early childhood reform policy in Australia. The genealogical approach is combined with ‘network ethnography’, which uses interviews with policy actors and the construction of policy network and mobility maps to undertake a governmentality analysis of discourse production. The preliminary findings emphasize the global spread of a positivist discourse of quality, and discuss its neo-liberal ideological ties and policy uses in Australian early childhood policy. The tactical use of human capital theory in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework is uncovered, wherein government discourse control resulted in the creation of learning outcomes for children, intended for use as a performativity structure.

Equity and educators enacting The Australian Early Years Learning Framework

The mandated learning framework, Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia is part of a suite of reforms currently being undertaken in early childhood education in Australia. All educators working in direct contact with young children from birth to the age of five are required to use the Framework or an approved alternative. The reforms are aimed at achieving higher quality and greater equity of early childhood education throughout Australia. This article contemplates the equity of the Framework when the workforce required to use it is diverse and ranges from those who are degree, associate or diploma qualified, to becoming qualified. It considers the implicit construct of the ideal professional practitioner in the policy and the social justice effects of the policy. The article concludes that political concerns about a certain group of educators have been reduced to matters of technical efficiency and that as a consequence, the values of social justice and equity for this group have been subsumed to align with dominant economic imperatives.

Consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in early childhood education: the impact of colonial discourses

In Australian early years education, consultation and partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are central to embedding Indigenous perspectives. Building sustained and reciprocal partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people supports access to local knowledges and perspectives to inform curriculum planning, as well as protocols and community processes, and contemporary responses to colonisation. Drawing on data from a doctoral study about embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education curricula, this paper examines interactional patterns in consultations between non-Indigenous early childhood educators and Indigenous people in real and supposed form. Data is read through whiteness studies literature and related critiques to identify how the educators positioned Indigenous people in interactional patterns and how the mobilisation of colonial discourses impacted the potential for reciprocity and sustained partnerships, despite the best of intentions. Colonial traces of positioning Indigenous people as informants, targeted resources or knowledge commissioners were shown to be most salient in interactional patterns. While these findings are contextualised within Australia, I suggest they have applicability in examining approaches to embedding Indigenous perspectives in education curricula in other colonising contexts such as Canada and New Zealand.

Feeling the pressure: Early childhood educators’ reported views about learning and teaching phonics in Australian prior-to-school settings

Early childhood educators’ beliefs about literacy teaching can impact on the types of phonics experiences educators provide for children in prior-to-school settings. The Australian Early Years Learning Framework supports a play-based, intentional approach to teaching phonics, however little is known about what Australian early childhood educators believe is important in teaching phonics in the prior-to-school years. Using a qualitative content analysis, this research study investigates 115 early childhood educators’ views about how phonics should be taught and the use of commercially produced phonics programs (e.g. Jolly Phonics and Letterland) in prior-to-school settings. This study further investigates educators’ perceived pressures to include structured phonics lessons, as a way of addressing parental notions of ‘school readiness’. The results of this study indicate conflicting views were held about how phonics should be taught. Some educators also experienced external pressures to engage in literacy practices that may be in opposition with their own beliefs about how literacy is learnt. This study provides insights into the pedagogical practices early childhood educators believe are appropriate when teaching phonics. The educational implications are discussed.

‘Time for Being’: Why the Australian Early Years Learning Framework opens up new possibilities

Many Western countries around the world have been reviewing policy and practice aimed at enhancing the quality and professional practice of early childhood education. The response has been to establish government-sanctioned curriculum frameworks based on current research and the dominant discourses of educational provision. The successful implementation of a curriculum framework relies not simply on the policy or regulatory practice, but on educators; their interpretation, knowledge and understanding of the framework; and their ability to apply it to their pedagogical practices. Australia too has introduced a new national learning framework, the Early Years Learning Framework, titled Belonging, Being and Becoming. ‘Being’ is central to the framework but what does it really mean? Our Being is part of who we are and yet is difficult to describe. This article aims to provide insights into the meaning and importance of Being in the context of early childhood education and care settings. It draws on Heidegger’s ontological explanation of the concept of Being and offers clarification on what it means to Be and why it is significant for early childhood educators and children.

Asylum Seeker and Refugee Children Belonging, Being and Becoming: The early Childhood Educator's Role

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF educators from one Australian university in relation to boat people, comprising mothers and children in detention, is discussed within a Foucauldian theoretical framework. Media and political portrayal of refugees at times leads to ‘us-and-them’ conceptions of asylum seekers. This paper foregrounds the challenges of their lived experience while in detention, with a specific focus on children. The corollary highlights the pivotal role early childhood educators play when these children are granted visas and arrive in early childhood settings after years of incarceration. What belonging, being and becoming, as envisaged in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework, might mean for these children specifically as they become citizens of Australia, is examined through the findings of an action research study in a preschool and lower primary school with high refugee enrolment. Key to children's development is utilising play as the preferred pedagogy in the early years of formal schooling.

Lessons from a Face-to-Face Meeting on Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives: ‘A Contract of Intimacy’

THIS PAPER PRESENTS THE findings from a conversation between an Aboriginal educator and a non-Indigenous pre-service educator about the importance and complexities of building productive partnerships. Although the participants focused on the challenges and benefits of building relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and non-Indigenous educators in Australian early years settings, the more significant outcome of the meeting was the personal connection two young women were able to make when a friendship began to develop. The project was intended to enable an opportunity for the participants ‘to engage in reflexivity on their pedagogic work’, something Mills (2012) understands as crucial to the support of social justice and transformation in the classroom.

The Australian Early Childhood Curriculum and a Cosmopolitan Imaginary

In our interconnected and interdependent world, national early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies can no longer be made or read independently from their global contexts. Policy statements often display a global awareness that construct notions about ‘the child’ as a ‘global citizen’, particular relations to others and certain prospects about the world. In this paper, we analyse the Australian Early Years Learning Framework: Belonging, Being and Becoming (EYLF) and associated documents to make explicit the particular child subjects, forms of belonging and prospects they produce. The multivocality and multiperspectivity of the EYLF enable parallel interpretations, which we utilise here and focus on two possible readings: first, an educational prospect that furthers neoliberal globalisation and modernist notions by fashioning ECEC as part of national and mostly economic projects, while the second reading identifies aspects of the EYLF that prefigure a new mode of learning that engages alternatively with our interdependent world through a ‘cosmopolitan ethics’ and ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’. Based upon our second reading, we utilise our ‘radical imagination’ to extend the cosmopolitan imaginary of the EYLF for pedagogical use.

A Fine Balance: Understanding the Roles Educators and Children Play as Intentional Teachers and Intentional Learners within theEarly Years Learning Framework

THE AUSTRALIAN EARLY YEARS LEARNING FRAMEWORK (EYLF) has foregrounded intentional teaching as one aspect of its first national curriculum, thus sparking a debate about the relationship of play-based learning and the role of the early childhood educator. This paper draws upon current research with early childhood practitioners and their emerging identities as intentional teachers. Central to practitioners' struggles is navigating relationships between intentionality, required documentation in the form of outcomes, and the different approaches encountered during outdoor and indoor environments. This paper analyses tensions between the construction of curriculum and the role of educators. It argues that a focus on intentional learning, as well as intentional teaching, will create a more effective treatment of the teaching/learning nexus.

The Theory of ‘Belonging’: Defining concepts used within Belonging, Being and Becoming—The Australian Early Years Learning Framework

The implementation in 2009–10 of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) spearheaded the efforts of the Australian Commonwealth government to institute a national curriculum. The theme of the new early childhood framework follows three guiding concepts: Belonging, Being and Becoming. In this article, we discuss these three concepts in order to provide a theoretical context to the Early Years Learning Framework and to enrich the debate surrounding its writing and implementation. In particular, we address the significance of posing Belonging in contiguity with the concepts of Being and Becoming. The authors suggest a strategy to cultivate a deeper appreciation of the dialectical relationships between sameness and difference, belonging and nothingness. Our premise is that ‘belonging’ refers essentially to different beings, and implicitly to the prospect of a ‘together-ness’ or identity according to which different beings are located, understood and associated, in order that Becoming can take effect. We offer these commentaries as a means of deepening conversation about the importance of scholarly approaches to philosophy for early childhood research, and especially with respect to curriculum and pedagogy.

Toward a Model for Early Childhood Environmental Education: Foregrounding, Developing, and Connecting Knowledge Through Play-Based Learning

Environmental education represents a growing area of interest in early childhood education, especially since the inclusion of environmental principles and practices in the Australian Early Years Learning Framework. Traditionally, these two fields of education have been characterized by diverse pedagogical emphases. This article considers how teachers in particular see different types of pedagogical play, such as open-ended play, modeled play, and purposefully framed play as providing opportunities for young children and teachers to develop knowledge through experiences about environmental education in early childhood settings. As a result of findings based on our qualitative research study involving early childhood teachers and children, an emerging model for thinking about environmental education in early childhood is proposed as a way of integrating these pedagogical emphases traditionally associated with environmental and early childhood education. Avenues for future research associated with this model are also identified.

Interrogating Social Justice in Early Years Education: How Effectively Do Contemporary Policies and Practices Create Equitable Learning Environments for Indigenous Australian Children?

This article examines some of the contemporary policies and practices in Australian early years education to provide an insight into why social justice is such a critical element in preparing Australia's Indigenous children to engage in learning experiences in ways that will enable them to establish sound foundations for their future learning journeys. In order to understand why social justice and equity are central to delivering quality early years education to Indigenous children, it is vital that the modern educator has some knowledge of educational history, in particular the role of education in promoting and maintaining the status quo, thus ensuring the continuing dominance of those who occupied positions of power. Viewing the expectations of contemporary early years education against the backdrop of past realities serves to highlight the way in which education sets the scene for the cultural destruction and dispossession that has, in too many parts of the world, been the long-term outcome of education for Indigenous peoples. Examining the themes and forms of discourse that have informed the theorising and practice underpinning the development of concepts around social justice demonstrates the importance of addressing diversity in early years education contexts.