Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

What does it mean to feel culturally safe within a teaching team? This article reports on an Australian Research Council (ARC) project aimed at strengthening anti-racist orientations and practices in ECE teaching teams in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. While the rich and diverse cultural contexts of children and families are outlined in curriculum and policy mandates, existing research in Australasia largely disregards teachers’ cultural realities and relationships. Teachers and educators have an enormous influence on young children’s emerging attitudes, and thus also on (re)shaping future orientations and behaviours towards diverse identities and racial injustices within Australasian communities and society. This article outlines some of the insights and nuances emerging in this project. Grounded in a feminist, poststructural approach it illustrates the critical importance of paying ongoing attention to diversities amongst teachers in their teaching teams, as a crucial factor in promoting more just treatments of diversities in ECE settings and wider communities.

An update of the Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 emphasises the thoughtful, balanced and purposeful integration of digital technology in facilitating positive outcomes for children’s learning, development and wellbeing. In addition, educators are asked to support families with eSafety, yet it is unclear how educators are poised to respond to these changes. Within a post-positivist frame, 123 Australian early learning educators described their workplace digital provision, digital knowledge, skills, confidence and attitudes through a national online survey. Findings show that educators were confident about their own personal digital use, however their attitudes varied towards the use of digital technologies with children. Although most felt confident in their knowledge and skills of how to use digital technologies with children, many educators did not plan for children’s digital learning and there was negligible difference in how often educators used digital technology across different aged rooms (birth to age 5 years).

Early childhood educators may screen for mild motor delay in 4-year-old children but require appropriate resources. This study developed and evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of an instructional resource designed for educators to screen mild motor delay. An explorative sequential mixed methods study was used to co-design an instructional resource through focus groups with early childhood educators, then pilot test and evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the instructional resource using a survey. Two focus groups guided the development of the instructional resource, a website, and manual. Eighteen educators assessed 18 children using the resources. There was good concordance in scores between educators and physiotherapist (Bland-Altman: M _diff = −0.5, limits = −3.5 to 2.5). Educators ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ on the instructional resources’ ethicality (90%), efficiency (75%), liked its use (75%), and believed it achieved its intended purpose (70%). These findings suggest that the instructional resource is feasible and acceptable.

There is mixed consensus on the long-term academic impacts of Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs on children’s outcomes. While some studies show sustained benefits from preschool through to secondary school, others report that early gains, particularly in literacy, fadeout by grade 1. One explanation proposed in the literature is that this fadeout may result from ECE programs emphasis on constrained literacy skills over unconstrained literacy skills. This scoping review examined how the terms constrained and unconstrained literacy skills are defined, interpreted, and applied in early childhood education research, and the extent to which researchers find these concepts useful. Findings from 19 peer-reviewed and 22 grey literature articles revealed five main categories: benefits of ECE services, evaluation, family involvement, teacher perception, and skill development and assessment. The review illustrated inconsistent definitions and variable application of the constrained/unconstrained framework yet also highlighted its conceptual value for explaining different developmental trajectories in literacy skills. Overall, findings suggest that unconstrained literacy skills may fade out at a slower rate than constrained literacy skills, underscoring the need for ECE programs to adopt a balanced and comprehensive literacy approach that supports both types of skills.

While opportunities to learn about potential careers in early childhood are often limited to stereotypical role play contexts, a project undertaken in collaboration with three early childhood centres in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, demonstrated that early childhood settings can play an important role in supporting children to expand their understandings of potential careers in the World of Work [WoW], and help interrupt trajectories of disadvantage and unemployment. For children in this low socioeconomic area, families’ ability to support their educational and career aspirations was sometimes found to be limited by unemployment and a lack of positive educational experiences. Intentional Teaching was identified as an important pedagogy to address children’s lack of knowledge about potential careers and in particular, highlighted the rich potential for drawing attention to the WoW through children’s play interests and incidental conversations.

In Australia, early childhood education and care (ECEC) has experienced substantial policy reform in the past 15 years with major shifts in qualification requirements, a national prescribed curriculum, and increasing focus on quality. Teams of early childhood educators are expected to collaboratively navigate these reforms while making decisions that lead to quality. This paper draws on a PhD study that examined how teams of educators in ECEC make curricular and pedagogical decisions within a complex policy landscape. Three key national policy documents that govern educators’ work—Guide to the National Quality Framework (NQF), Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), and modern awards—were closely analysed to make visible the complexities of how team decision-making is conceptualised in policy. Findings contribute to the global political attention on ECEC and offers ways forward for educators, organisations, and governments to re-align the reform strategy and strengthen policy implementation, leading to quality outcomes for children.

In Australia, preservice teachers are required to complete a capstone Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) to graduate. A TPA a nationally endorsed assessment, requires preservice teachers to demonstrate their practice (planning, teaching, assessing and evaluation) against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST – Graduate Level). To date, in most states including Queensland, this assessment is completed in a school and not a prior-to-school early childhood education and care (ECEC) setting. This fails to recognise the professional nature of ECEC teaching and is a barrier to increasing the number of qualified teachers in prior-to-school education. This paper shares insights from a pilot study that investigated the implementation of a TPA in kindergarten settings. Drawing on views and experiences of preservice early childhood teachers, supervising early childhood teachers, approved providers and university staff, we explore the benefits and challenges of implementing a TPA in ECEC settings.