Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

This paper reports from a pilot study investigating the ways digital documentation platforms are changing educators’ work in early childhood education. Digital documentation platforms are secure websites or application software, enabled by computer, smartphone, or tablet technologies, allowing educators to record observations of children’s learning as text or in visual forms, to which interpretations or commentary from educators, family members, and children are added. This paper examines how these platforms orient the ways educators see and articulate young children’s learning. Video stimulated recall interviews with educators (six in total) at four ECE sites across Australia and New Zealand were analysed. Key concepts are offered in relation to how digital platforms shape the learning that is seen by early childhood educators: tag-ability, trackability, completeness, and co-constitution. Each of these concepts is problematised in relation to contemporary ECE practices and the persuasiveness and ubiquity of the visual in discourses of documentation.

While early childhood educators’ use of digital applications (apps) to document children’s experiences and support parent communication is increasing, there is limited empirical research about the impact of these applications on children’s experiences and educators’ practices. This article provides a critical analysis of the findings from this body of research with a focus on affordances and challenges. While the research supports potential benefits for parent engagement and pedagogy, a range of challenges relating to content, access, equity, workload and ethics are highlighted. Features of the neoliberal contextual that may enable the increasing use of apps and shape the way they are used are considered, and opportunities for future research to further critique, enhance understandings and inform practice proposed.

This paper examines how early childhood teachers employed in kindergarten, understand and manage their changing roles regarding digital technologies. Nineteen participants were involved in the study. Symbolic interactionism provided the theoretical lens to investigate each early childhood teacher’s lived experiences and grounded theory provided the methodological theory and methods. Following data analysis, a central category, Professional Agency, and three major categories, Professional Identity, Pedagogical Practices, and Relationships with Families, were derived. These categories, together with the relevant empirical literature, form the key features of the Early Childhood Teacher Management of Digital Technologies Framework. This Framework contributes to knowledge and presents a substantive theory that explains how early childhood teachers manage their changing roles with digital technologies in their kindergarten.

A child’s right to high quality education not only relies on a competent and skilled workforce, but one in which educators are well. Supporting a well workforce requires governments, organisations and educators to attend to work environment quality. This attention needs be based on sound, relevant evidence. In this paper we contribute evidence of educators’ well-being from the survey component of an Australian study with 73 participants. We map results against international guidelines, and policy openings in Australia’s National Quality Standard to understand how educators’ work environments are affecting their well-being. We conclude that existing policies on quality in early childhood education in Australia attend to only some features of work environments, with a notable absence of attention to supporting educators in the relational complexities of their work. To enable educators to provide high quality education and care, greater attention is needed by organisations and governments to what quality work environments might look like.

Early childhood teachers’ professional learning and development (PLD) is a significant factor in the provision of quality early childhood education (ECE), yet gaining a full picture of PLD in the New Zealand ECE context is problematic. Information about government-funded PLD programmes is available through evaluations, however, teachers access PLD from a range of providers, many of whom are not government-funded, nor subject to regular monitoring for quality. Teachers’ reports, therefore, represent important sources of insight into PLD. We surveyed New Zealand early childhood teachers about their experiences of PLD, including topics, delivery, and facilitation. We analysed 345 responses. Workshops were the most commonly experienced PLD model. Many respondents had also experienced job-embedded support, but may not have experienced the types of facilitation strategies likely to prompt shifts in teaching practice. This article reports the survey results, examines implications and discusses features of PLD that support shifts in teaching practice.

Visual arts provisions are central to children’s holistic, play-based learning, yet the visual arts self-efficacy beliefs and subject content knowledge of early childhood educators influence pedagogical choices. When early childhood educators lack the visual arts confidence, skills, and knowledge required to effectively support children’s visual arts learning and engagement, children’s learning in the visual arts domain may be restricted; resulting in a negative cycle of influence whereby the next generation are denied their right to access visual languages. Qualitative case study research explored the visual arts beliefs and pedagogy of 12 degree qualified and vocationally trained early childhood educators. The conceptual framework, designed to to interpret and analyse the research data, aligns Dewey’s philosophies of democracy, education and art with the philosophy and visual arts praxis of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. The research findings suggest educator’s low visual arts self-efficacy beliefs develop during childhood and are not improved by pre-service training, resulting in limited visual arts skills and knowledge. The research participants’ visual arts pedagogy appeared to be strongly influenced by the experiential ‘baggage’ they carried into their pre-service training and practice contexts, by the participants’ theoretical beliefs about children’s development and by a range of divergent beliefs about the purposes of visual art in the early childhood context. Although training has the potential to broadly inform knowledge and practice, this study suggests that unless limiting visual arts self-efficacy beliefs are disrupted by constructivist theoretical knowledge and combined with practical skills and knowledge, the visual arts curriculum offered to children may be significantly compromised.

CHILDREN LEARN in the context of relationships with important caregivers. The early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector increasingly recognises that supporting strong relationships between families and ECEC services is a powerful way to improve children’s educational, health and wellbeing outcomes. We report findings from a study which, via online surveys and focus groups with parents and educators, sought to understand (a) parents’ experiences of collaborative practice, (b) educators’ confidence in working with families, and (c) educators’ perceptions of training needs. The results suggest families commonly feel welcomed and respected but desire improvements in educator communication. Most educators reported high confidence to share children’s progress but less confidence to greet families by name, raise or respond to parent concerns, or work with families facing significant parenting stressors. These findings indicate a need for practice support and training to improve educators’ skills and confidence in partnering with families.