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Jacqui Ward – Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education

Welcome to another Early Learning Matters podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward and I'm the Early Learning Coordinator at the NSW Department of Education and today I'm joined by Nic Burgess, Principal of Tacoma Public School and Sarah Wenham, Assistant Principal at Adamstown Public School. Today we are talking about one of my all-time favourite topics; play-based learning as an age-appropriate pedagogy in schools. So, I'm going ask a little question or have a little chat first of all, but welcome Nic and welcome Sarah.

Sarah Wenham – Assistant Principal Adamstown Public School

Thank you.

Nicole Burgess – Principal Tacoma Public School

Thanks Jacqui for having us.

Jacqui

Awesome, I guess a little bit of scene setting here is looking and thinking about play-based learning as a well-known concept in early childhood settings, but not necessarily as common or as well-known or as even well understood in the school space. So, I thought it might be good for me to set the scene a little bit and then ask you guys some questions. So first of all, learning through play is one of the pedagogical practices of the Early Years Learning Framework and therefore it makes sense that early childhood audiences might know that a little bit better. We would expect to see it in early childhood services, but it's something that is not as common in schools so what I'm really interested in to start the conversation with both of you is what was it that sparked your interest and engagement in this form of pedagogy or this practice? Sarah, would you like to go first on that one?

Sarah

Yeah, thank you. So I have two daughters, both had the same experiences, both went to preschool. I found my eldest daughter transitioned to primary school beautifully, a textbook transition. But my youngest daughter, it was more challenging and I felt that it took her nearly the whole year to feel really comfortable and really settled in a Kindergarten environment. And it wasn't because she had an awful teacher, it wasn't because her mum wasn't at the school as we were all there together and I had a hunch. So similar to Helen Timperley’s framework of the spiral of inquiry, I thought, there's something going on here and I don't know what it is. So, I spent time talking to the local preschool educators and going in there and watching what they do and showing my underbelly really and saying, I need help. Despite having taught Kindergarten for a very long time, something’s going on and it's not just my daughter. And that's when I had an understanding of how the brain works and develops and why we need play- based learning in the classroom, because she just wasn't ready. She wasn't ready for a lecture style of learning. She still needed to play. She still needed to learn through concrete items, through experiencing something for herself. And it wasn't just my daughter, it was a lot of little people that needed that experience.

Jacqui

That's awesome. Thanks, Sarah. Couldn't agree more. It's a really important thing that seems to have been overlooked over time. I think that's the way I went to Kindergarten, it was a little bit more play-based. And what about you, Nic, would you like to share where you came across the interest or the idea?

Nicole

Yeah, sure. I too had been in Kindergarten and doing lots of training transitions for many, many years and then I was lucky enough to take on a role for a term of the P-2 Initiatives Officer in district office and I was introduced to preschools that I was looking after and I had a lot to do with the Early Years Learning Framework. All of a sudden, the penny just dropped that we were approaching everything in Kindergarten transition and indeed Kindergarten itself from the point that we were using the wrong pedagogy. We were all about the children being ready for school rather than the school being ready for them. I saw the students playing and learning through play and the huge chasm of difference between the settings of the preschools and then what we expect them to do and how we expect them to learn when they come to school, where it’s still very much teacher at the front of the class and everybody sits down in lines and listens. I was really reminded of how very unfair it was developmentally to our 4 and 5 year olds who are starting school. They're just not ready and in fact it's damaging. When I was in the Aspiring Principals learning program, I had to have a focus and that was engagement, children's engagement in their schooling. Because we know the research tells us that life outcomes are far better for our students if they're engaged in school and they actually finish school. I just took it all the way back to Kindergarten and I thought, what if we can engage our Kindergarten and Year 1 children more effectively, then that could make a bit of a difference all the way through to the end of their schooling. So that's where I came from when I first became a principal, I was like, right, I'm going to introduce play-based learning in Kinder and Year 1 and we haven't looked back since.

Sarah

I agree with you on that one, Nic. We're a really big advocate that we've got to get it right in Kindergarten, we’ve got to get it right in preschool and Kindergarten. Waiting until Year 4, waiting until Year 9; It's too late. Why start then? You get it right straight away, because you’ll see that have a knock-on effect for those later years of learning.

Jacqui

Definitely! And those department wide measures I guess of the strategic outcomes and goals, usually are further down the track, but I couldn't agree more, if you have a really positive start to school then all of those things are more likely to happen. And I think that's something we really need to call out early in this podcast that play-based learning in schools is not only a really positive experience, but it also reflects the theory that it's developmentally appropriate for children birth to 8 to be engaged in those concrete materials. They're natural researchers, their brains have plasticity and they're capable to hold multiple thoughts and windows open at the same time. So they actually think differently and process learning in a different way. So I would love to hear some of the examples of what you've seen in terms of the difference it made at your schools when children are learning through play. Nic, would you like to go first on that one?

Nicole

Yes, definitely. Well, we've put a lot of time into understanding that play- based learning recognises the importance of communication and language, which leads into early numeracy and early literacy concepts as well as social and emotional development. I think in today's day and age, our kids are coming to school with a lot less social and emotional learning and we're having to do a lot more at the later end of primary, and again, what we were saying is if we can get these kids developing as far as they can in the early years, the better it will be for their life outcomes. As I said before, it's so important that we are ready for the child rather than they be ready for us. We notice in our school that our kids who have experience in play-based learning have much better communication and collaboration skills and that has actually resulted in less Sentral entries. So Sentral is the data collection for behaviour tool that we use and we have noticed that over time there has been less Sentral entries for things where kids are squabbling over certain pieces of equipment or just not playing with the rules of the game. We have very few entries for kids around that area, which I think is definitely supporting play-based learning because the teachers and SLSOs are consistently facilitating play. We have also seen the strengths of some of our younger students who actually have a diagnosed learning disorder thriving in experimental play, so giving them those opportunities in the playground at recess and lunch as part of our loose parts play program and discovery play within the classroom has seen such little people take on leadership roles rather than being the kids who are labelled as not doing so well in reading or not doing so well with counting and their numbers. They are seen as these people who are actually constructing solutions to tricky things like leveraging kids going uphill in in cardboard barrels and things like that, so it’s been just so good for the kids who sometimes can't access curriculum but are actually really great thinkers and have great mathematical minds. So there are two examples why we see that it's absolutely vital for our kids, really in Kindergarten and Year 1, possibly even to Year 2, that they are being exposed and learning through play.

Jacqui

Awesome, thank you. And I’m reminded of a quote from a colleague of ours, where she often says ‘engagement trumps behaviour’ and that idea that children are really engaged in some thought processes and there's obviously a lot of literacy and numeracy and all sorts of KLAs that are happening - key learning area content that's being covered in these play situations but children are really engaged. I think it makes it a fun place to learn for teachers and children too, doesn't it? Sarah, can I throw to you for your thoughts on this?

Sarah

Yeah. Well, I agree with you. We have found that by setting our classrooms up to be a similar environment to a preschool setting, the children are automatically engaged when they come. So they come in, and they think, Oh I want to be here, this makes me feel safe, I'm familiar with this, this looks engaging. So we've found that's had a huge impact on our attendance and we see that a lot in our early years, our attendance is phenomenal because children want to be at school. It's engaging, it's fun and what we know, as I mentioned before, is that children, their brains aren’t ready to sit down for a lecture format and that structure, they have to have the experience first to develop those new neural pathways. And we've found that our students respond best to those concrete experiences, hands on, investigating for themselves and then they transfer that information to a new abstract setting because they've got that prior knowledge. They've also been in an environment where it has been safe to take risks. For instance, in our classroom, we have a cafe set up and we use real cups and sauces. and at the beginning of the year, we'd find that the children for instance are doing those string-like letters, drawing pictures, having to work on those communication skills, taking turns, asking what I as the customer wanted, listening, recording what I was saying, repeating it back. And then because they've had that confidence in that play-based setting, they were then comfortable to apply that knowledge to a more formal writing session later on in the day or later on throughout the year, because it was safe. We've done this before, we can see how that information transfers over and so it's engaging, it’s fun.

Jacqui

That's awesome and a really nice segue I think into our next point, which is that notion of continuity of learning. For me this is a real area of passion at the moment because I think if we can achieve for children, if we as teachers and educators on both sides of early childhood and school can create this continuity of learning where children experience similar pedagogy, they experience similar learning environments, then they're more likely to have that really strong start to school that we want to achieve for them. The evidence base shows in that space that when teachers and educators in both spaces, early childhood and school, understand the pedagogy and curricula, the similarities, the differences, then children are much more likely to be afforded that experience of continuity, building on their prior knowledge and understanding. So it's a shared responsibility between the two spaces, so I think without this children's transition, I'm not sure if it was Nic or you, Sarah, or both of you have said that really abrupt change between what learning is like in early childhood and then what it's like at school, it shouldn't be so different. Have you got any thoughts Sarah that you'd like to share on that one?

Sarah

Yes, so as I mentioned before my daughter was still in her preschool environment about a week before she started Kindergarten. And for instance, I was picking her up from preschool, where she was cooking her own sausages on a fire pit, swinging from a trapeze net, built her own skateboard ramp, and then transitioned to a very formal setting where all of a sudden, she had no autonomy, she couldn't determine any of her learning. She was told what she could and couldn't do. It was very structured, she was expected to sit in a little plastic chair for hours, and that's when I thought, something’s amiss here. So what I started doing was I reached out to our local preschools, not just one, about 6 and said, can I please come and do some team teaching with you? So I went into their centres and they were doing amazing things. Then I thought, why does this stop? Why does this stop all of a sudden when we get to Kindergarten? I can actually take this, and I can actually embed this into my classroom.

Jacqui

So I'm just going to segue into the point that I think it was you Nic, made about the syllabus requirements and syllabus outcomes through play. So one of the biggest questions that we get in our business unit from schools is about, how do we meet those NESA requirements in terms of teaching time across all key learning areas? The play experiences are not just throwing it out there and children are playing, they're actually quite intentional, purposeful, planned experiences to ensure that syllabus content is addressed, and the outcomes achieved. So how does that planning for play-based learning incorporate specific intentions for you guys? Would you like to go first on that one, Nic?

Nicole

Yeah, sure. Well I'm going to mention probably something that's the most exciting thing is that our new K-2 syllabuses have been written. So we're stepping in the right direction there. Look, we really do have a big responsibility as we move through primary school to make sure we hit outcomes that are stated by NESA and by the NSW Department of Education. However, a lot of the content that is required in Kindergarten is very easily, particularly for other KLAs - key learning areas, incorporated within a carefully constructed play centre. So people have to trust that play is research based, it's best for our kids and that we don't have to teach content by sitting kids down and telling them something and then getting them to write or draw a picture. We can set up learning centres.

If we’re talking about our school environment, for example, every afternoon may be a little mini walking excursion to a different area and playing in a different area and discovering what's on the oval and what's behind the oval, and all those kinds of things. We don't need to be sitting in the classroom and you do have to think outside the box because realistically if we look at all of what we're required to teach in Kindergarten and Year 1, all the way through to Year 6 or Year 12 for that matter, it's almost impossible to get through it all, so we do have to teach for example, a lot of the time we teach a lot of history using English as the vehicle. So, it might be choosing a really beautiful quality text to be reading and then let the children respond in that way and it might not be just you're going to draw a picture or whatever it might be through drama or through a dance, or through creating something using blocks or Lego or sand. So for us, we look at the outcomes that we're expected to cover in certain terms and of course, now with the K-2 it's a little bit different because we're just on that journey. But we then look at the outcomes that we can throw in together into a quality learning centre or a play-based experience. So, it's about having time at the beginning of the year to organise. There needs to be time, so as a principal, I need to make sure that I'm giving my Kindergarten and Year 1 teachers a chance to look at all those outcomes and those experiences and for the beginning of the year, how they are going to have those available in the classroom and how the teachers can facilitate that learning through play. But then as the term goes on, we need to look at what the children's interest levels are. So, for example, as I said, we have a lot of Aboriginal perspectives, so we might have read a book to them or listen to a story that then we might actually set that up the next week in a writing centre or in an art centre or in a science centre if it's something about the amazing way our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders used to live. So, we very much follow what the children are interested in as well and then we just really think outside the box and say OK, how are we going to set this up in our classroom?

We still do explicit teaching in our classroom. We still explicitly teach phonics and we still explicitly teach other aspects that we have to. But the whole morning, for example in English, isn't just around drumming things into the children. It might be small groups that the teacher is working with and then they will go and play. But those play-based learning centres and experiences are all set up around literacy, but often with a history focus or a geography focus. So that's how we cover it. It does take organisation, we found having a P-2 Initiatives Officer to help us with that really helpful, and you need to have people who are really willing to think outside the box and also give permission to say, OK, we're giving this a go and then see the benefits of it as it comes or we just didn't actually cover this outcome, we covered these outcomes as well because they were writing and they were creating, and they were talking and they were sharing, and they were collaborating. A lot of things come from different centres.

Jacqui

I couldn't agree more. It's an integrated approach and we talk about intentional teaching and intentionality in the early childhood space, and it's very much about that idea that sometimes you might use a range of different strategies within the play to achieve those learning outcomes. Sarah, would you like to share your experience in this regard?

Sarah

Yeah, I think it's just a reminder that play isn't separate to learning and it's the natural way we all learn. So initially at the start of the year, we don't even put our Kindergarten students straight into classes, we let them play and we observe them. So, it's very student-centered play, so they drive it. So, we may have areas set up within across the classroom, so you open up all the doors and we may have different centres opened up and we watch them, where they naturally gravitate to and we hover around and we listen to conversations that are taking place, watch what they like to play with, and we often watch them build on something for weeks where they'll pull it down, pull something apart, that they've been using 3D objects to create a palace and you see them pull it down, recreate, put it back the next day, get it down again because they're going through a system of trial and error, this didn't work, ok, well I'll add this on. And while that's taking place, we actually have created a proforma to have at our centres. What would we be having at each centre? What would be looking for from our students? How would we assess them? Would that be through talking? Would it be taking photographs? Would it be just through observation, just in those early couple of weeks? And then from that information that's how we set up our classes, looking at relationships, of who worked well, who didn't work well, knowing what they like, knowing what they don't like, knowing what they're willing to take risks with, knowing what is frightening for them and then we move through and this is what Nic said before, my team, it's about being uncomfortable and stepping outside the box and going alright, this is what we've got to teach. This is the content we've got to cover. How can we program and plan to ensure that children have an opportunity to create sense of these abstract idea? How can we do that? So for instance, we might be reading a really rich text with really rich vocabulary about using the words, bobbing, float, dive. Then that afternoon or straight after we get out the big water troughs and we get out toys and we listen to them and they're saying, oh, my duck is bobbing, my ducky is skimming across the water, so we create opportunities for them to play with those ideas that they've learned in an explicit situation so it goes from being abstract to concrete.

That's what we do, we sit down, we look at our literacy, we look at our numeracy and say alright, what opportunities can we provide to allow children to play with this concept that we've given to them? And what would that look like? How will we know that they've got those ideas? What would that look like? Is it me listening? And is it me taking photographs? Is it me having a conversation? Is it coming back and sharing in a circle? All right, we're going to go outside, we have learned about 3D objects, now we're going to build a Gunya and that's what the Awabakal People built in this area. How can we make a Gunya and listen to them negotiate, take turns to build a 3D object, from using sticks and branches and then watching them do that because there you are, there’s your math it’s happening there, there's your PDHPE, making relationships. It's all happening in one spot. It doesn't have to be in a classroom where children are quiet and I'm out the front, I'm telling you what to do. You're going to repeat it to me. It's letting go of control.

Jacqui

Yeah, that's a really good point and I love the fact too Sarah that you shared that idea, it's a great platform for assessing learning then isn't it because you've got multiple opportunities to know this child does understand that concept or does have that skill.

Sarah

And letting them take a risk to show you and to show that this information can be shown in many different ways and through rich questioning. Well, can you show me how you can do this another way? Or if I took this part off your palace, what do you think would happen? So, it's changing how I teach. It's not about me. It's about this little person. So I have to change what I'm going to do to get best outcomes for this child.

Jacqui

Well, that's a really nice segue into our next point, which is that play-based learning is an ideal opportunity for differentiation, so if a child doesn't speak any English or maybe are high potential or gifted, you've got lots of opportunities to do things in a little bit of a different way. Nic, would you like to tell us about some of your experiences with this opportunity?

Nicole

Oh yeah, sure. I definitely touched on the little boy before who has a literacy disorder, a language disorder, who just absolutely thrives and shines in mathematical thinking and that has actually been amazing because he’s seen by his peers as a leader, so that builds his self-esteem and sense of belonging. We have two little beautiful kids with quite high needs as far as autism and very, very low communication skills when they first started with us. One of the most beautiful things for them is that they also obviously engage in everything that we do but because it is very much student led, they can once again choose those activities and get what they need, so if they're drawn to the blocks and they want to create something, they're actually improving their fine motor skills and they're communicating with whoever is at the blocks. At the moment they've both got SLSOs because they are funded, and on a side note, it’s really important that SLSOs know about play-based learning and know that they are there as a facilitator. They don't problem solve for the kids, they facilitate rich conversations and help them through challenges. So basically, these little people are about to go into Year 1 and their communication skills, their language has absolutely thrived and blossomed as well as their ability to share and know that they have to wait and take time. So I just don't believe they would have thrived the way that they have this year in a mainstream classroom that didn't do any play.

We also follow the Launch Explore Summarise Model, which is what our new K-2 syllabus is actually starting to do in mathematics, and that's when we launch a problem for these kids and we say to them, this is the particular issue that we have and then we let the students explore that whatever way they want, so it might be about measurement or volume. I'm actually using an example that we had in Year 2 and we have big mathematics trays and they are usually with groups or they can-do that alone if they wish to, but if they want to work it out using paper they can, if they want to use water, they can, if they want to use blocks they can, whatever they want to use, they can use. What it does is on that Monday that we particularly run our lesson like that, which is really inquiry based and basically for our K-1s, it's pretty much how they run their classrooms. But we see what each child is bringing and how they’re problem solving and how they're coming up with a solution and it gives us also a very good idea of how they need to differentiate for the rest of the week to actually teach that skill or teach that concept. But straight away, we're not putting a ceiling on kids, so one of the big things with our school is not just teaching to the middle. We really need to identify our high performing kids and really push them. Letting them explore themselves, it actually gives them opportunities if they've actually found it too easy, then the teacher facilitates another problem or makes the problem more complex. So that allows differentiation in itself, allowing your clever kids to actually access that really high-level mathematical thinking, whereas the teachers can also see the kids who need a little bit more help in basic concepts that may still need to use a lot more concrete materials to actually solve those things. Those 21st century skills that we've all been talking about for the last 10 years, you know, creativity, collaboration, communication, all of those things that our kids are going to need, they don't need content, they can Google content. They need those things to be able to exist in the world as it as it is today and as it is going to become.

For us, play-based learning in those early years, particularly sets the kids up with such a strong sense of who they are and what they're good at and how they can help other people and how they can take turns and get along with people, that's just setting them up for success. The really big thing too is engagement and making sure that they're actually engaged with the activity that's happening so you cover so many kids. We've also got a little boy who is Japanese and speaks a very small amount of English, and he's just thrived as well because he's had opportunities to engage in play and find out a lot of these words on his own and through the teacher facilitating opportunities for him. For example, some kids who have great vocabularies, cause he's a clever little boy, introducing him to lots of different word she’s also grown. So yeah, it covers all bases.

Jacqui

That's a really good point, too. Nicole. Nic I often say, and critical thinking is the other one I was thinking of as well because the play-based learning approach in school really allows for all those 21st century skills. So Sarah, would you like to share your thoughts on this one?

Sarah

Well, look, it's for everybody. Play is inclusive of everybody. There's opportunities for children to play on their own. There's opportunities for them to, as you mentioned before, to work collaboratively. There's opportunities for children who do not communicate verbally to engage with others. There's opportunities for those who are EAL/D. We have a little person from Russia and he’s come in and through playing with the costumes and the puppets he's mimicking and copying his peers, and I often like to think that his peers might be explaining a situation better than me. So the language that they're using, they're thinking is age-appropriate. So they're unpacking a situation for this little boy better than what I would. So they're learning from their peers and as you mentioned before, I remember last year I asked a little boy in my class ‘what would you like to be when you're a big boy?’ and he said, ‘I'd like to fix robots’. And I thought, yeah, the jobs that my Kindergarten students are going to be doing when they're my age, are not the jobs I'm doing now. And so sitting and being a critical and creative thinker, being able to self-regulate, being able to take on a leadership role and also being part of a team, being able to take a risk and think, hey, this didn't work, how can I fix this up? I'm going to have another go, building on this resilience. So all those wonderful strong strengths that we need for our children to be successful in life, so play offers all of those opportunities to everyone.

Jacqui

Yeah, I love what you've inferred there, Sarah, that learning is a shared act. It's a shared responsibility, and that's a really nice thing to create at school as well, which you don't always get in a more traditional approach to teaching. It's sort of you're in your own chairs and you're in your own space. So, I think that's beautiful.

I'm going to wrap us up now just to sort of say, was there anything that you'd like to share about the key shifts that you think are needed to do in your schools, or how did you communicate with families? What are some of the things that you'd like to finish up on in that regard? Nic, would you like to go first?

Sure. I think that education is really important that when we communicate to our families at the beginning of the year that Kindergarten is a play-based environment, especially for our new families. But we explain what it is. They also have an expectation of what school is; oh you're going to teach my child how to count and read and write. So we are very clear in saying that whilst we follow play-based learning, we also explicitly teach the things that we need to. But we actually show them, so we explain in our transition programs what it looks like and we do say even though it's very similar to what they're doing at preschool, it's also involving the syllabus and even in play, age-appropriate experiences for them. It’s definitely something that you need from me, as a principal, I've needed to put money aside, time aside for my teachers. So, not just money, more I should say resources. So, for me I always make sure that my Kindergarten and Year 1 teachers are not on an afternoon duty, for example, so they have time to communicate about the things that they saw during the day, perhaps outcomes that they saw that that the children were engaged with, that they didn't plan for. So it’s a bit of a reflection time and they can write some notes, I guess. Evidence of learning I should say. Also tapping into local preschools when the kids are there and at play, often after school it's a bit late because everyone's a little bit tired and it runs a little bit differently. But having those great relationships like Sarah was saying, with your local preschools and making sure that your leadership team in Kinder and Year 1 are getting around to those places.

So, it's definitely something that you need to do a little bit of research around. However, it's also very easy if it's something that your school is looking to do. Even just start the day by letting the children play and have a wide variety of things open and dipping your foot in that way. Rather than starting with, as Sarah said, the lecture style of classroom and just seeing how much more settled the children are and how happy are they are. But communicating with your staff as well, just making sure everyone's on the same page because it's a challenge for teachers running the play-based classroom. They're not just sitting down playing in the sandpit, they're doing so much more with their students and with all of the kids in their classroom at different things, so there needs to be a really big understanding that it's not for the light-hearted, not for the faint hearted. I should say it definitely requires you to dig deep and be brave. But you know what? That's what teaching is all about. We have to take risks and we have to be courageous to be the best for our kids and this pedagogy is the best for our little babies, so it's something we all need to do.

Jacqui

That's awesome. Thanks, Nic. What about you, Sarah?

Sarah

Yeah. So, as I mentioned before, for us it was about relationships and trust. So my team being seen regularly at the local preschools and the local educators being seen regularly each week at our school, parents could see that there was a relationship and mutual trust was happening and that they could understand that and be on board with us. If anything, our numbers for our school have increased significantly because parents want this for their child, they want them to feel supported and to be known before they start school. The other thing that we do is we use a really amazing online communication tool, very similar to what preschool educators use. So, our parents get to see an insight into their child's day every day. We will upload content, so our families get to see learning is taking place. Sometimes it is more of a traditional model. Sometimes it is play-based. Sometimes it's a mixture of the two and they say that they are accessing information and building on their knowledge in a way that is best for them and best for their brain development. So they have that insight into their life every single day. We also let our families know each week my team, bless them, we all get together every Friday afternoon and we sit down and we do a video together, which we upload to our families explaining what we're doing in the classroom and what it that will look like and what the outcomes are. Our families are a part of our journey the whole way from the minute they start school until the end of the day, they know exactly what's happening in the classroom for their child, so it may look different to when you're at school, and that's ok. It may look different to how your older child was doing Kindergarten, and that's OK. They're accessing information and they are learning in a way that is best suited for them.

Jacqui

That's a really good and nice point to finish on. I think that really clear communication and taking everyone on the journey, that's always key, isn't it? Making sure everyone's well resourced, well prepared and the messages are communicated across the board. Well, I'm going to say that I've absolutely loved this conversation. I think it's going to end up to be quite a long podcast, but I think everyone will enjoy listening to it. So thank you, Nic and thank you, Sarah. Really appreciate you joining us.

Sarah

Thank you, Jacqui. Thanks Nic.

Nicole

Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.

[End of transcript]

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Jacqui Ward – Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education

Welcome to another Early Learning Matters podcast. This is the first podcast in the updated Early Years Learning Framework podcast series. My name is Jacqui Ward and I'm the Early Learning Coordinator at the Department of Education.

Nicci McDowell – Early Learning Advisor

And my name is Nicci McDowell, and I'm an Early Learning Advisor with the Department of Education.

Jacqui

So today we're talking about the key changes that have happened in the updated learning framework, some of the reasons why, and what that means for your practice. So, we'll start off with that saying, well, why has the Early Years Learning Framework been updated in the first place? And that's really a really important thing to talk about.

First, all of our curriculum documents and frameworks need to reflect contemporary practice. They also need to reflect changes in the evidence, research, contemporary understandings, and other changes to mandated frameworks, such as the National Quality Framework.

Nicci

That's right. And it's really important to know that the updated framework hasn't actually been rewritten, that these revisions to the framework are an update or a refresh rather than that whole rewrite. So, some of the key changes that have happened in this update are both structural and conceptual. The changes include strengthening of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives throughout the framework.

The vision for children's learning has been updated and some of the concepts have been clarified. There's been a refining and a clarification of new and guiding principles. There's been refining and clarifying to the practices, including aligning guidance of the planning cycle to the National Quality Standard. There's been some strengthening around the learning outcomes. And there's been an expansion to the glossary, and this is really to support a common understanding of the terms used throughout the whole framework.

Jacqui

That was awesome. That's a great summary. And I think that's the point of this podcast, isn't it, Nicci? That if you haven't had an opportunity to read through the changes yourself because you're a busy educator working with children, we've put together this first podcast just to be a little bit of an overview and an opportunity for you to feel informed about the changes if you haven't had a chance to review them.

Nicci

Yeah, absolutely, Jacqui. And I think as a busy educator, the first thing that everyone really wants to know, is when do we need to start implementing these updates? And I think, in the communication about the framework, there's plenty of time to make this transition to the updated Early Years Learning Framework, and there's also a phased approach.

So, phase one begins this year in 2023. Here at the Department of Education, we are calling that the Engage phase. Then we move on to phase two of the implementation of these updated changes, and this will commence in 2024. And we are referring to this as the phase we call Enact. And then beyond this, because it's really important that you don't just stop engaging with this framework in 2024, so beyond 2024 is when you really begin to Embed those changes that have happened.

And it's really important to know that the original learning framework will remain in operation, and that as an educator you can actually refer to both of the frameworks, so the original and the updated, until February 2024. But I think when you are thinking about how you're going to make this transition to this updated version, it's really important to become familiar with the updated framework as early as practical for you in 2023, Jacqui.

Jacqui

Yeah, that's a really good point, Nicci. Because I think there's been lots of chatter about the changes are minimal, or this hasn't changed much, or that has changed or all those sorts of things. But the main thing is that educators take some time and really engage with the changes, because it's a really good opportunity to come back to the framework itself anyway, and really check in that your practices are really aligned with all of the ideas, and the concepts and the guidance in the updated frameworks. And I also forgot to mention a little bit earlier on, that this process has been led by Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) with a consortium of academics who've contributed to reviewing the literature and what's current now, what are current understandings, and seeking lots and lots of educator feedback.

Over 5,000 people across the country have had an opportunity to input. And there's also been, the frameworks have been trialled in some services across the country as well. So it's something that has been really well thought out in my opinion. I guess, what I was trying to search for the words to say, is that having had some time to really read through and start engaging myself and with our team, Nicci, in order to develop some resources and things that to support educators to go through it, is that I can really see that there's been a really, what's the word? Rigorous approach.

Nicci

Absolutely. And yeah, I completely agree with that, Jacqui. And I think as we go through the updates and some of the changes that have been made, I hope that's really clear to the sector that this is a very rigorous and well thought out approach that's been taken.

Jacqui

Yeah, that's awesome. Let's start off with, and we're not going to go through every single change in a lot of detail because it's a podcast, so we want to make it short and snappy, but we thought we would review section by section the changes and let you know the high-level bits and pieces that you need to know. So, first of all, the vision. So, the vision has been expanded to emphasise that all children are successful as lifelong learners, and active and informed community members with knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander perspectives, which again, is a really important and contemporary practice, I guess, that acknowledgement of our First Nations peoples.

And it's also been expanded to recognise the diversity of children, families and communities, and the opportunities that diversity brings to know more about the world. So, I think, again, that's a really nice inclusive approach. The overarching themes, there's been a bit of modification there. But one thing I really wanted to call out is that particularly recognising that belonging recognises children as global citizens now. Which again, I think that's a big change I guess from when the earliest Learning Framework was first published in 2009.

Our world has changed a lot. We're a lot more globally connected. And then we've got children's learning and just really strengthening the descriptions on play-based learning to support educators in explaining the validity of play-based learning, but also to include more contemporary understandings of play-based learning.

Nicci

Yeah, that's right, Jacqui. And I think the other update that's been made in relation to the vision is the introduction of the planning cycle and how that links to that vision.

So thinking about all those things that Jacqui's just mentioned, how can educators bring that back to their continuous cycle of planning, and implementation, and critical reflection and assessment and evaluation? And I think that the vision really calls that out. It makes that reference to the link between the expanded vision and children as global citizens, and all those things that Jacqui's mentioned and how that impacts on the planning cycle.

Jacqui

Yeah, that's really awesome. And I think anytime that we strengthen educators' understanding of the planning cycle and that planning cycle being equally acknowledged in the National Quality Framework as well as the Early Years Learning Framework, I think is really important.

Nicci

Absolutely. And I guess just too, that having that planning cycle there really emphasises that high quality programs for children have a strategic and a reflective approach in the way that they're developed.

Jacqui

So, there's new principles. So, the principles have had some updated names as well as the introduction of some new ones. They've been reordered and the numbers removed so that it's not about one's more important than the other. There's eight altogether now. And as we've said along, but just reiterating it, that they're a reflection of contemporary theories, perspectives, and research evidence, and they're essential for understanding how you do early childhood pedagogy, really. And the first one of the three new principles is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. Nicci, do you want to elaborate a little bit more on that?

Nicci

Yeah, absolutely. I think it can go without saying that the introduction of this perspective, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective principle is absolutely necessary. It brings the framework up to contemporary thinking, and evidence and research. And I think it's really important that when you do have time to sit, and read and engage with the framework, that you take the time to read the description of this principle and think about why this is so fundamental and one of the fundamental themes in this updated Early Years Learning Framework.

Jacqui

That's a really good point. And we've also got a new principle on sustainability, which is a great one as well. Do you want to talk a bit about that?

Nicci

Yeah, absolutely. I think this sustainability principle is about going beyond the environmental sustainability that everybody immediately thinks of when they hear sustainability. It's more about being sustainable around not just environmental issues, but social issues and economics sustainability too. So, there's some really quite abstract concepts to start to think about, but I think over time it will be really important for educators to reflect on how they can do this in their practice.

Jacqui

And I think it really pulls out, whereas before environmental responsibilities was mentioned as a key component of outcome number two, but it really brings that thread of ideas through to say, well, actually, it's more important than, well, not more important, but it's framed as something that you hold as a guiding idea about your practice, and then that supports children's learning and understanding about sustainability.

Nicci

Absolutely.

Jacqui

And then we've got the last one, which is probably one of my favourite inclusions, because I always thought it was missing, which is collaborative leadership and teamwork. So, I think we could have used a lot of the other principles to guide how we work together as teams and how we lead each other. But I think calling it out there, and one of my most favourite things about it is the idea that it really highlights professional accountability and that shared responsibility, because working in a service that has legislative and quality standards has inherently professional accountabilities. Whether you like it or not, that's the reality of it.

Nicci

Yes.

Jacqui

So some guidance on the way we work together and the way we lead is a really important thing as well. And then I think the last one is just that final clarification around instead of having multiple terms for reflection, reflective practice, critical reflection, there's a real emphasis on that your reflective practice or your reflection should be critical. And again, I would agree that they almost always are. If you're reflecting on something, you are critiquing things, you are being critical and analysing an idea of thoughts. That's a really nice one.

Nicci

Yeah. And I think what I like about that too, is that it's made really clear in that updated version around using critical thought and critical thinking when you are reflecting.

Jacqui

Yeah, that's awesome. So, moving on to the practice changes. There's been a reduction in the practices, which is nice too to know that the review has been about looking for opportunities to consolidate as well as opportunities to add some more content. So there used to be eight, now there's seven because of the combination between play-based learning and intentionality.

But what I wanted to start with is what I think again is probably one of my favourite changes, because I think it was not always really super clear, is holistic approaches has been updated in regard to that it's now about holistic integrated and interconnected approaches to practices. And that it really talks about that thinking, and looking and talking about not just learning outcomes, but the overarching themes, the principles, and the practices and how they all work together to promote children's learning and how they influence your pedagogy.

Nicci

Yeah, absolutely. And I think thinking about these practices, for me, I think it's really important to call out that one of the most significant updates to the practices has been a shift in language. So cultural competence has been removed and renamed cultural responsiveness. And I think that really sets the tone and guides educators to engage really deeply around what that means for them, and I think too, teams and educators will need to take time to unpack that.

But having that practice there is really important, because then it goes hand in hand with that introduction of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander principle that's been introduced. But then again, even further, it also aligns to the recognition of the Alice Springs Education Declaration at the very beginning of the framework too. I think that theme that's running through the document is there from the very first page, right the way through to the end.

Jacqui

Yeah, that's a really good point. So just the last section that we'll talk about is probably the one that educators often rush to first, so the learning outcomes. And interestingly, at first glance, you might go, well, there haven't been too many changes around the outcomes, probably with the exception of learning outcome number three, which now has a key component.

So decompressing, there was a lot of content in those two key components. And now there's the introduction of mental and physical health and personal safety, which I think is really important, leading on to those conversations that happen later in school as children get older around consent, and child protection and all those sorts of things, child safe standards. It's a really nice call out to all of those sorts of things. And while the outcomes haven't changed per se, there've been lots of tweaks and updates to the examples within the documents, this learning is evident when children, and so there's been lots more things added to there, and then lots more things added to, and this is how you promote this type of learning as an educator, which I think is always helpful because that's good advice.

Nicci

Yeah, absolutely. They're subtle changes, but they're there. And I think going back to just what I mentioned about that theme running through the entire of the document, that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. So when you actually begin to look at the outcomes and begin to look at the evidence and guiding points there around how you can evident children's learning, then you begin to see that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, there's new ways to promote these perspectives, I think for everyone. But there's also an addition on how you can support learning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families in particular. So, I think that's a great call out, too.

Jacqui

Yeah, really good inclusion. All right, well keep out your eye out for more of these podcasts. Thanks, Nicci. It was really great talking to you about this. I think everyone's probably can tell that we're keen on the Early Years Learning Framework.

Nicci

Absolutely. It's just so great to finally have this updated version and to bring it into line with contemporary thinking.

Jacqui

That's awesome. Thanks. Bye.

Nicci

Bye.

[End of transcript]

[Music]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator]

My name is Jacqui Ward and I'm the Early Learning Coordinator at the Department of Education and I'm joined here today with my colleagues from Little Scientists, and I'll get you to introduce yourselves.

Sibylle Seidler [Project Director, Little Scientists]

Hello, my name is Sibylle Seidler I am the Project Director of Little Scientists.

Heike Hendershot [National Training Manager, Little Scientists]

Hi everyone, my name is Heike Hendershot and I'm the National Training Manager at Little Scientists.

Haley Bates [National Certification Coordinator, Little Scientists]

And my name is Haley Bates. I am in charge of National Certifications which means that I look at Little Scientists House program and I'm also one of the head trainers, a bit of a jack of all trades.

Jacqui

Awesome, thanks team and thanks for joining me in the podcast today. I am really excited to have a podcast focusing in on STEM in the early years and I just want to start off by talking about the links in the Early Years Learning Framework. Because our framework as it is structured does not have specific content area, I think it is not always as easy for our early childhood educators to see where some of those subject areas come in. But definitely in Learning Outcome 4 with children developing confidence as learners, there is lots of talk in that outcome and the key components around engaging and working scientifically, exploring, and using mathematical language, exploring trial and error, and hypothesizing and all those types of things.

And of course, this is a nice opportunity to again promote and talk about continuity of learning between the early childhood space and the early years of school because the pedagogy in that space is the same. It is important to call out the importance for very young children engaging with concepts of science, technology, engineering, and maths because they are very much 21st century skills and I think we all know how important those skills are and those dispositions are to take into school.

And I also think that this is the one area where children have the opportunity to potentially fortify themselves and gain that real confidence as learners.

Sibylle

Let me just jump in there, it is Sibylle here. So, Little Scientists is a professional development program for early childhood educators specifically. We usually say we target children, or the beneficiaries really are children aged 3 to 6 years old. So, as you can see already Jacqui, what you refer to, we really see us also on that transition point from the early years to transitioning into school. As you said, that is a really, really crucial time in a child's development as well.

So, what we do is offer STEM workshops, but they are not solely focused on STEM topics in every single one of our ten face to face workshop topics, we do have pedagogy rolled in as well, so it's a very holistic and long-term program. So, with Little Scientists it's not just come to one workshop and you tick a box and you've done STEM. We encourage educators to go on a STEM journey with us, so that is how we really see it. It's a journey of personal and professional development together with the children in their care.

Jacqui

I thought it was interesting how there was a lot of support from that pedagogy point of view, but also understanding the concepts and the ideas themselves as educators, which I think can often be a barrier to all teachers and educators in both spaces, early childhood and schools, to engage with some of this type of learning because they are not as confident themselves.

Hayley

You mentioned those 21st century skills Jacqui and that is what I would like to get across to people is that focus on STEM, and quite often educators are not as confident in STEM subjects themselves. We try and focus on that and spotting the STEM in the everyday and developing those STEM skills so that communication of STEM, resilience, and the critical thinking skills, rather than bombarding educators with facts and pushing facts onto children as well so it's more of a journey of discovery.

Jacqui

And that is the wonderful thing, isn't it? Because those are the things that you can investigate together as learners, can't you? Educators and teachers and children can do that learning of the facts together when you approach it from that point of view definitely.

Sibylle

And on our workshops they are really hands on workshops, so we want educators to come into the workshops, be it online as well as face to face and leave all those inhibitions at the door. We often feel that as adults, not just as educators, but as adults, we have sometimes forgotten to be curious like it has been trained out of us. So, when you come into the workshops, it's about enabling the educators and the participants in the workshops, to step back into the children's shoes, to see the world around them with children’s eyes and that way when they go back into their classrooms or into their early learning setting, they can, as Hayley said earlier, learn and explore alongside the children. So that is at the heart of it as well, that curiosity.

Jacqui

I think that there is an opportunity for the educators to use that pedagogy in other situations, in other things that they are facilitating with children’s learning. Because it's that project-based, inquiry-based approach to being a little bit more structured with a play-based approach as well, because people do not always see how the two things can align, and where the interest needs to come from so, I think that is a really important aspect.

But I did want to jump back to you Sibylle just to talk a little bit about this being a nationally rolled out program that is funded and supported by the Australian Government as well because I think it really shows that we as a country are committed to STEM in early childhood as well.

Sibylle

Yes, absolutely and we are grateful for that. So, I remember that when I started with Little Scientists seven years ago now, often we went into primary conferences or STEM conferences, and I was often the only person in the room saying, ‘but STEM starts earlier’. It starts earlier than just primary school and particularly the Little Scientists concept of inquiry-based play-based learning, play-based STEM learning, that must start earlier. We are incredibly grateful that since July 2016 we have been recipients of some federal government grants that have enabled us to take the Little Scientists program nationwide and to roll out and scale up, so this has been terrific and the way that we do it, we build local network partnerships.

So CELA is one of our local network partners in New South Wales, but we have other partners throughout the country. And those partners, we have a train the trainer concept, they come to our Little Scientists train the trainer workshops and then they basically go back into their communities and run and facilitate the Little Scientists educator workshops. And in saying that, that is a critical and important concept and approach that we have at Little Scientists because we know that our partners, those educators and facilitators, they know their communities best. They can really tailor it to their community’s needs and wants as well.

Jacqui

It is really drawing on the research around high impact professional learning and the research in the early childhood space that says that you cannot just go to a professional learning (PL) and then expect practice to change. You need to have that ongoing networking; you need to have that ongoing engagement and preferably over time and building your knowledge and having a chance to come back together to solve problems that you might have had when you tried to implement that practice will make a change. And the notion that whole services do things together as well is another great thing, because it’s often hard to make a change at your service if you are the only one that has been to a professional learning, so I think it’s a really great model in that regard as well.

We are going to move on now to talk a little bit about co-constructed learning environments and providing some examples, and I think Heike is going to talk about that.

Heike

Yes, absolutely thanks Jacqui. So, I have been listening to all of you and I agree with everything that was said and I want to just hook in there and talk about what is most important for me about this. And that is the educators reflective practice journey, where we invite them to consider and reflect on their role in regard to the children and what they can do to provide an inquisitive learning environment and that is where the idea of co-constructivism comes in.

Because what it means is that children are capable learners who can create an image of the world themselves, but and that is really important in a social setting. So, they are capable but at the same time require other people to really shape their world. And for us as educators, the big question is what does that world look like? What does an inquiry-based co-constructed learning environment look like? And the beauty of it is that it's very individual. You shape it together with your children, but it also requires a certain understanding of what it could look like. And even more so, it really requires for you to understand where you are coming from, how your own journey has shaped you, what your relationship is to the children, and what you want it to be like.

And, also in terms of STEM, what your relationship to STEM is because a lot of us, as you said, have an interesting relationship with STEM which was potentially shaped by their own experiences in school, and so these are all the things that we address in this program. What is my relationship with STEM? What is my understanding of my role as an educator or as a teacher? And what can I do to develop this inquisitive, co-constructed, collaborative environment where children can really delve into what they want to learn and how can I support them in this learning process?

Jacqui

That is a really great point, and I love that you've touched on a few things there that I wanted to pick up and emphasise. What you've talked about there is good examples of critical reflection. I follow a lot of Facebook groups and hear a lot from educators where they are not sure, what do I do in terms of critical reflection? What sort of questions can I ask? But those that you just posed then were really great examples of thinking about your own experience and what you bring to the situation and the learning environment as a learner.

But the other thing that people are not sure where to place it, is the idea of drawing on theorists and the theoretical framework that you are referring to their Heike is about Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding learning and the learner other, which might be other children, it might be the teacher in that situation, and that idea that there's a co-constructing of learning. So, I've never believed that linking to theorists has to be overt but understanding that you are linking to the theorist in that work is important as well, because then when you are doing that critical reflection, you can reflect on how well you did that scaffolding and how well you built on that social context of building on each other's ideas and how that panned out.

So, it's an interesting concept, and I think that's a really great thing for people to learn about and then apply to other areas that are not STEM related, they might be talking about Learning Outcome 1, building children’s identity, or Learning Outcome 3 where they are talking about social and emotional competence, these are good examples of where there's multiple learning happening at the same time across the five learning outcomes.

Heike

We often use the analogy of the toolbox when we talk about the skills that educators can acquire in our program, and for me, the theorists and the concepts, the educational concepts behind this are one tool of many, many, many different tools that educators can collect I would say in their journey. And Little Scientists is obviously not the only program or the only way to acquire skills and knowledge and understanding but as I said, the theoretical concepts are one tool that educators can use to reflect back to get a bit of an understanding of what it could be like and then apply it to your own setting in a very individual way.

And I think this is something that we stress a lot in our workshops, we give you the ideas, we give you the tools whatever they may be, like it might be a particular STEM activity, it might be a theoretical concept, it might be an educational method or concept, and then it's up to you to decide how you apply this in cooperation with your team and very importantly with your children.

Jacqui

Yes, that's right, because I can imagine if we're talking about, exploring concepts of the environment or natural phenomenon it's going to be different in everyone's context, isn't it? If you're in a school in the middle of Broken Hill, if you're in a preschool there, your surroundings are different, your environment’s different, there's going to be different things that are a priority. We've got the recent example with the floods, there's lots of things that would be being explored in those areas or could be being explored in those areas around whatever is happening in your context at a time.

But it's also a really nice lead in I think to our next point which is talking about the role of the educator in that inquiry-based environment and talking about challenges and opportunities for educators new to STEM inquiry. And I think one of the things that I wanted to point out here is, that this is an opportunity for educators to really unpack what do they do and unpack what they think about their role is in relation to intentional teaching. And it's a good example where the teacher or educator is going to take on multiple roles, and use a range of different techniques from things that are really instructional when you're doing some experiments or you're flowing through the research cycle or whatnot. From being very instructional to being more passive, where you might just be being a scriber a recorder of ideas and further provocations and the children are really taking the lead.

Haley

I think that's a really great point, but I also think it's important to highlight children's roles and different roles within our peer group learning as well. So, looking at the different roles that children take within an investigation and just being mindful of how we affect those roles. We don’t always have to be leaders; we don't always have to be the person who leads an investigation.

I saw it done beautifully once, where I went to a preschool, and I was introduced as the scientist and the educator said has anyone got a question for Haley? And I hate that moment because you have to come up with an answer on the spot and I don’t like giving answers, I like finding out alongside the children and the educator just completely turned it round. She said, oh, that's a fantastic question, how we going find that out?

And then a couple of children had some ideas, and she right there did all her planning. She said, right ok you're the investigation team, who's going to provide the equipment? What equipment do you need? Are you going to be responsible for bringing that in? Are you going be the recorder? Are you going be the observer? Who would like to take the lead on this? And it was just so beautiful, and I didn't have to provide an answer which was even better.

Jacqui

It sounds like a very skilful educator there.

Haley

It was beautiful, it was one of my Little Scientists Houses actually in South Australia. What was clear was, those children had practiced those skills in the past. They obviously were used to having different investigation teams and I'm not saying that it always works every single time, but these children had obviously had some practice of taking those different roles and running with them, so it was a real education for me actually and seeing that in action.

Jacqui

It does flag a really important point to me too. In order to be embracing STEM in the early childhood space with very young children, and I think this can happen from babies all the way up, that your image of the child is really important here, isn't it? That they're capable and that they're competent. And that story that you told then Haley, it showed that educator had really empowered those children to be taking ownership and taking the lead and she really saw them as capable and competent of doing all of those tasks. So, it's thinking about those shifts as well, isn't it, to think what are they capable of?

Haley

Yes, I agree, but also having that as an educator, having that view of yourself as a competent, capable learner and having that confidence to set that up and to run with it and not simply say, ok that's in the too hard basket or that I've never been a fan of maths. And I know Heike can definitely expand on that.

Heike

Absolutely, I've been nodding the entire time. I absolutely agree that yes, the image of the child is really important but talking to a lot of educators over the years, I feel the vast majority of them have this image of the child. But what's a lot harder is to reflect on your own image, and it's an ongoing process and I'm sure you can all attest to this, it never ends. You check in with yourself on a regular basis and you decide what your intention is on a momentary basis, and I think that's the important thing, you can't really know exactly what's going to happen in our educational approach. You don't plan ahead in detail, because there's always this big question mark of what's going to happen, but that is actually the beauty of it, because that's where a lot of this these great things can happen.

So, you have your structure, but then you just let it go and go with the flow, and this is a really hard one growing up in a society where educators and adults are meant to know what to do all the time, and this is the challenge, but this is the beautiful thing. To really let go and see what happens and then step in when you think it's necessary to step in, but also just really enjoy the process, because that's where wonder grows by being together with children.

Jacqui

That’s a really good point, and I was thinking that all along when you guys were talking, it's that discourse that the teacher doesn't have to be the expert. Actually, teacher is the co-learner, the co-researcher, the teacher, or the educator is on a journey as well, aren't they? And I think that notion of saying that you've got these ideas and teaching strategies that stem from what you're trying to achieve in relation to the Early Years Learning Framework allows you to be open to the direction of wherever that experience is going to head. Because the main thing is that you're facilitating learning in relation to the learning outcomes and then the other stuff can take care of itself.

Sibylle

And you know what Jacqui? Just jumping in there, I would actually like to just from personal experience, bring another group in because we talk about children and educators just from a parenting and carers perspective. I think as parents and carers there’s a lot of family perspective, there’s a lot that we can take away from there as well. Because I know when I was first participating in Little Scientists workshops in that inquiry-based thinking, that opened my eyes to how I parent as well. Because often as parents we also struggle with letting go and facilitating that journey alongside our children as well, so it's actually something that for parents and carers, would also be a great tool to have.

Jacqui

Yes, I agree. And I couldn't agree more because this is a really great opportunity, there's a window of opportunity to advocate for early childhood learning too, and it's a great opportunity in this space to talk about STEM in the early childhood years and how that transfers over to school, because it's an obvious thing that families know that happens at school. So, I think it's a great opportunity to involve families along the way and yes, encourage them. Terms like learning through play can be a bit ambiguous for families to really understand and engage with, whereas when you talk about it within the frame or the context of STEM, it can make a little bit more sense for them as well.

Should we move on then? So, you guys have talked a little bit about the professional learning that you offer and the opportunity to attend many workshops and be a part of a network and that leads up to the fact that services can then get a Little Scientists certification. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Hayley?

Haley

Well, I just thought it segued perfectly there from how do we communicate to parents and the wider community? What is happening? And how to open that discussion of inquiry-based learning and play-based learning and explain that the level and depth of knowledge and those 21st century skills that are being developed when you are often faced with that communication problem. So, that's where we started from with our Little Scientists House program. It helps us highlight to parents in the wider community, that we are celebrating inquiry-based STEM. To be honest with you, for me it's just the love and the joy of learning, that sense of, and Heike mentioned it earlier, that real sense of curiosity and wonder. And I'd just like to get that out there, that in my mind the Little Scientists House is a celebration of what's being achieved in our sector and in centres and our services.

So, the Little Scientists House program, it's a certification program. And so, centres and services that have gone through a certain amount of professional development with us, so that we know that they are on board with our pedagogy. And then we look at a project that they have done with the children and we're trying to build that sort of community, that neighbourhood of houses so that we can share what is best practice and what is happening within those centres. We showcase a lot of our Little Scientists Houses work on our website so that other services can learn from that, and we are trying to basically support our Little Scientists Houses and get the word out there about the inquiry-based learning.

Jacqui

I think that's a really good point that you've made there Hayley. That's the most popular thing that people always ask for, can I have an example of what this looks like in practice? Sharing those stories and sharing those projects is amazing to be able for people to say, well how might that work in my context?

And also, I can see that this is a great opportunity to showcase the way that you are engaging with the broader early childhood community in terms of Assessment and Rating and meeting the National Quality Standard. But also, I think in terms of making connections with local schools as well to support that transition to school because local schools would be really interested in that as well. And again, to reiterate, it's another opportunity for the broader community to understand that real learning is happening in that early childhood space, and that children are very capable in that space to explore some really complex ideas.

Haley

Well, we've had such incredible projects and such incredible things achieved by Little Scientists Houses. We've had whole community approaches to native bees and bee planting and giving away plants and things. We've got the early STEM award, which is actually coming up as well, which is a chance for all services in Australia to showcase what they're doing and look at that, to submit a project and a look at what other services are doing as well. I know that Sibylle was going to elaborate on that.

Jacqui

Well, I was just going to say, what a great opportunity to for people to get some acknowledgement too for their great work, because that's something that I think often early childhood educators feel like that there isn't any acknowledgement of their contribution and their work. Because the little people are too little to remember the important work or the influence of their early childhood teachers.

I'm going say to everybody now because I know Hayley, you've just had a bit of a chat, but I know Sibylle and Heike might like to say something else before we kind of wrap up, so I'm going to give each one of you a chance to have a turn. Would you like to go first, Sibylle?

Sibylle

So, thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation, this very important conversation about inquiry-based STEM learning, and I really wanted to reiterate that it is so important to celebrate those successes. As you mentioned Jacqui very often, being an early childhood educator and particularly one that nurtures STEM and STEM inquiry can be quite isolating. Often, it's one person or two people within a service that have that interest and push it forward but what we want is, we want to really want to bring like a whole of service approach and we want to create ambassadors and houses that shine bright within their communities.

Jacqui

Well, that's amazing. Thank you and Heike would you like to say anything else?

Heike

Well, actually I just want to wrap it up by mentioning that there are two sentences that I do not want to hear anyone say ever again. And one of them is I don't know anything about STEM because it's not true. So, if you say this about yourself and I used to be one of these people, so I know what that feels like, but don't say it ever again because it's not true. If you don't believe me, go to a Little Scientists workshop and we’ll change your mind. And the other thing I never want to hear again is, I'm only an educator. Because your role is so important and I have heard this sentence so many times, and I think it is time to stop thinking that education or an early childhood educator is not one of the most important roles we have in our workforce, because it really is.

Jacqui

Well, that's lovely. Beautiful, positive notes to finish it on. I can't thank you guys enough. I think it's been a really interesting podcast; I hope our audience agrees. And definitely do some further research and yes, start changing the world tomorrow with supporting young children to engage with STEM.

Thanks everyone.

Sibylle

Thank you.

Heike

Thank you.

Haley

Thank you.

[Music]

[End of transcript]

Mary Taiwo [AEDC NSW State Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome everyone to another podcast in the Early Learning Matters Podcast series. This is an AEDC NSW podcast. AEDC stands for Australian Early Development Census. My name is Mary Taiwo and I'm AEDC NSW State Coordinator at the New South Wales Department of Education.

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

My name is Jacqui Ward and I'm the Early Learning coordinator at the department.

Mary

In this podcast we will be talking about the AEDC, the type of information that is captured, how the AEDC data is collected, and the domains measured.

Jacqui

It is exciting. I'm keen to be joining in on this podcast today because I know many moons ago as an early childhood teacher when I first heard about the AEDC. I thought what a fantastic data set to look at engaging with our community and improving outcomes for children.

Mary

Yes, today will be joined by Tess Gregory and Yasmin Harman-Smith from the Telethon Kids Institute. This is the agency that provides strategic oversight to the AEDC project at the national level.

Yasmin Harman-Smith [Deputy Director Child Health, Development and Education, Telethon Kids Institute]

Hi, I'm Yasmin Harman-Smith and I'm honoured to have been invited to talk to you Jacqui and Mary. I've been working with the AEDC for about 8 years in my role at the Telethon Kids Institute. I've been lucky to be able to go out to talk to schools about the data, what supports they would like to be able to use, the sort of value they can get from it and hear about the terrific ways they've been using the data to make change for their kids. So, I'm really excited to be able to share some of those learnings with you today.

Tess Gregory [Senior Research Fellow, Telethon Kids Institute]

Thanks Mary. My name is Tess Gregory and I am an academic who works for the Telethon Kids Institute. I'm also really thankful to be invited along today to talk about the AEDC data. It is a valuable data set, both for the state governments, as well as the federal government, communities and schools across the whole of Australia to understand what is going on in terms of children's development when they start school and the best ways that we can support families and children to have a great start.

Yasmin

Can I just add an Acknowledgement? Tess and I are sitting on Kaurna Country today and I'd like to pay my respects to Kaurna Elders past, present and to acknowledge the importance of culture and Country for the Kaurna people today.

Mary

Thank you very much. I’ll also add that I'm joining this podcast series from the land of the Darug people. I'm in Parramatta and Acknowledge Aboriginal Elders, past, present and emerging.

Jacqui

Thanks, Mary. I'm also on Darug land, I Acknowledge Country and thank the traditional custodians for their great care of our beautiful spaces.

Mary

What is the AEDC and how did it all come about?

Tess

It's the Australian Early Development Census and we used to call it the AEDI [Australian Early Development Index], but it was rebranded in about 2015 to the AEDC.

Yasmin

So, I might jump in there Mary, if you like. The Telethon Kids Institute has been working with the AEDC program from around 2002, 2003 and the instrument came to Australia from Canada. The instrument that we use in the AEDC collection, it's called the EDI [Early Development Index], and there was work done in Australia more than 20 years ago now, or around 20 years ago, to understand how we can better measure child development. There was a lot of emerging science about the importance of those first 5 years of life and people really wanted to know.

Again, we know that that's important, but how are we doing? Where are we in supporting children's development? Who is missing out and what could be done better? And so, there was a lot of work done to identify how well we could measure that in Australia with a tool like the EDI, whether it was suitable for our context, whether it's suitable for our different diverse cultural communities and I guess the extent to which the data would be reliable for policy and planning.

So that work happened across Australia with some pilot communities in those very early days of 2007 and 2009. The data that was collected between 2007 and 2009 has been used for those communities for a long time in their planning. But for many of us, we've only been exposed to the AEDC from 2010, after the first national collection in 2009. We’re still learning, although we've had it now for five collections, just still learning about the difference that we can make when we use that data well in our planning.

Jacqui

Yes, it's interesting to hear you say that Yasmin, because I was completely unaware as an early childhood teacher before I went along to an event that was hosted by a local council and it was a whole group of Allied health professionals and early childhood services. And just knowing that there was a data set at that sort of community level, I guess was impactful to think about ways that you engage with communities. I think in the early childhood space and the school space, within the National Quality Framework [NQF] and the School Excellence Framework [SEF], there is a call for schools and services to engage with their community. And this is a great way to do it and have a bit of a collective impact on the work that we do, looking at the community level data. It is so exciting!

Yasmin

It really brings evidence to those conversations, doesn't it?

Jacqui

Yes, definitely. And I also think, I love the idea that that it's a holistic look at children's development because once children get to school, there is a big focus on literacy and numeracy skills and things like that. So, it's great to have the AEDC as a set that really looks at the whole child. And, you know, all the stuff that you, Tess and Yasmin, are going to talk about today. I think it shows the impact of what we know and how that kind of information about children's development, how we can tailor interventions and strategies and projects and all sorts of things to improve outcomes.

Mary

Yes, thank you very much for providing that context. As Jacqui has mentioned, most people are not aware of the AEDC data and the different level of reports available for them to explore and understand the needs of children at the community level and at the school level. If someone is curious about the AEDC, can you tell us a bit more on how the data is collected and who is involved in the process of the data collection?

Yasmin

Yes, probably we are the only country in the world that does this, and I've been overseas several times talking about the AEDC to people. They wonder how on earth do we make this national data collection happen? How do we have this holistic measure of child development for over 95% of children every three years? The answer is we have a fabulous school system that's been willing to support the collection and with the commitment of the education departments and independent schools and non-government schools around the country. And the data is collected through the teachers, so, we have a mammoth effort.

There are about 7 and a half thousand teachers in every collection who contribute their knowledge of children in their class. And so, they've known their children, at this point in time, for a term. And they tend to have a good sense of the way the children have developed holistically. So, it is that expertise of the teachers that we draw on and they answer an instrument. They have training that supports them to be able to do that really well and there's information within the instrument that gives them guidance about how to score a child's development on different aspects of their development. They answer just over 100 questions about the child's development and several questions about the child’s background, demographics, their experiences, family and those sorts of things. We get a rich picture through that expert knowledge that educators have of the children in their classes as they've got to know them in their first year of school.

Mary

Yes, thanks for that. I guess one of the questions that people often ask me up as a state coordinator, when I talk to them about the data, is how can we validate what the teachers are saying? Do they receive any training and how much training? How long do they need to have known the students for? Also, how do we consider the fact that there are so many variations in terms of teachers’ perspective, how do you manage that in the data collection process?

Tess

So as Yasmin said, teachers are making this assessment of children between May and July of that first year of their full-time school. So, they've known the child for a while already, and they're quite familiar with the child. They have seen the child behave in different contexts within the classroom, outside the classroom and so on. If any teachers feel like they don't know the child very well or they cannot make an assessment or they cannot complete any individual questions, they can indicate that on the on the instrument when they are completing it.

But, the teachers are really well placed to make these assessments and there has been quite a bit of validity research that's looked at if you get 2 teachers to assess one child, how consistent are those ratings? And we find that they're consistent. So, based on all the evidence that's been collected both in Canada and Australia, we're quite confident that teachers are very well placed to be making assessments of children's development.

Yasmin

And I think if you look at the questions, there are things like, does this child recover easily from an upset? For a teacher to observe those sorts of things in the class, you can imagine they have a good sense of the child’s behaviour within the context of classrooms, and we're measuring all children based on their behaviour in the context of classrooms.

So, I guess that concern Mary that people have that maybe teachers don’t know the children well enough. Obviously, children behave differently in different settings and how they are at home is different from how they are in the classroom. When they start school, there is a certain set of skills and capabilities that really set them up for a terrific start and support them to be independent in school, to learn or to grow their independence in those settings, to make friends, and to apply themselves enthusiastically to the learning opportunities and the exploration that comes through a lot in the early learning that we do in classrooms.

And so, it's those kinds of skills that teachers are assessing the child on. It is holistic in that it's about lots of different ways children bring lots of different skills to those environments. But it's not holistic in that it fully understands the child in the context of their family or their community. If we are clear what we're talking about is how well our children come prepared when they are starting school, to face the world that they are confronted with at that point in time. Really that's kind of what we're measuring with the AEDC. That's why it's so predictive of later outcomes, especially within the schooling system.

Mary

Yes, thank you so much for explaining that, it is interesting to learn a bit more about. My next question is that you have alluded to the fact that there are lots of questions, about 100 questions that teachers respond to. So how do they fit into the AEDC domains? What aspects of early childhood development is measured as a holistic measure of the child?

Tess

The AEDC measures 5 domains of children's development. The first one is their physical health and wellbeing, so these are things like kids’ fine and gross motor skills.

Then we measure their social competence so that's the degree to which they can interact with other peers and their behaviour within the classroom and so on. We also measure emotional maturity. This are things like whether the children are coming to school anxious, whether they're showing signs of hyperactivity in the classroom or aggression, as well as their pro-social skills.

The next domain is language and cognitive skills. So this includes emergent literacy and numeracy skills. And then the final domain is communication and general knowledge, and this measures kids’ oral language skills.

So, we have a broad range of skills, we measure those literacy, numeracy skills that are important for schooling. But also, there's those really important social and emotional learning skills as well as children’s physical health and wellbeing.

Mary

Right, thanks so much for explaining that Tess, it sounds very interesting to me. So how is the data reported to teachers in all those domains once it's all captured?

Tess

As you said earlier, there are hundred items that teachers complete and then based on those hundred items, children get a score for each of the 5 domains between zero and 10, where 10 is the best possible score. Ten means the highest development in whichever domain we're talking about. And then children are classified into three different groups based on where they sit within those 0 to 10 scores. So, children are considered developmentally vulnerable, developmentally at risk or developmentally on track. When teachers and schools receive the information about how their kids are going, it's not an individual level, so they don't get a report about that child like they might with NAPLAN, for example. Instead, they get a summary report about how the children in the whole school are doing overall.

They will see information about the percentage of children who are developmentally vulnerable on each of those 5 domains. And then there is also some summary information. We also look at the percentage of kids who are vulnerable in one or more domains of the AEDC and the percentage of kids who are vulnerable on 2 or more domains.

So, schools really get a lot of information about the development of their children. And then there is also some contextual information that's provided back to schools. Things like the kind of experience that kids have had prior to school, so whether they've been in preschool, the kind of care arrangements that they've had and so on. That school report that goes back to schools is quite comprehensive, but it's a summary report. It is not an individual level child report.

Yasmin

It's worth noting as well that schools can access other types of reports. The AEDC reports they can access, the same way anybody else in Australia can, are reports for the communities in which their schools are located. They can compare how children in their school compare to children in the surrounding community that might be going to other schools. And they can look at that in relation to state and national data as well to get a sense of the areas where they might need to focus their attention. Also, what is unique or different about the cohorts of kids coming to their school, might support them to think about the context of those children and how they can shape what they do to meet those contexts.

Jacqui

It's a great opportunity, I think too, for schools to really have a look at what is the data in another area and say, okay, well what are those guys doing, particularly if they're running a range of initiatives or other projects connecting to community. What can I learn? What can my school learn in terms of improving outcomes for children as well?

Yasmin

Great examples of the ways some schools have really shifted their community level data, we don’t really think about that being a possibility sometimes because the AEDC is already collected by the time kids are already at school so anything the schools do is shifting the future trajectories for the trajectories of the next cohort of kids coming through. But through some of the work that schools have done in their community really as leaders in early childhood and leading organisation in changing lives of kids and families. They have been able to bring people together to make some great change for kids in their communities and those are sorts of stories that I have been inspired by as I have done this work.

Jacqui

It is a really great opportunity, isn't it for schools and early childhood services and community organisations to partner together and think about a continuum of learning and fostering children’s learning? Also, creating a sense of belonging because children are known, valued and cared for, from one setting to the other.

Yasmin

Yes, you're right. That partnership, Jacqui, that's exactly it. I think it's these partnerships and those connections and building that continuum of support that results in the changes I've seen taking place.

Mary

Yes, I just wanted to go back to some of the things you have highlighted in terms of understanding the needs of the students and understanding how the school can better support students. I guess something to highlight here that comes from conversation with people is that the AEDC data tends to focus on areas of needs in terms of vulnerabilities. Are there other indicators that look at people's strengths or where the students were on track. This gives us an indication of what success has happened.

Tess

Mary, for each of the domains we report on the percentage of kids who are vulnerable, at risk and on track. And historically those summary indicators that we've had are really deficit-based, as you mentioned. It is about the percentage of kids who are vulnerable in one or more domains or 2 or more domains. But more recently, there has been a new summary indicator that we're starting to use and it's the percentage of kids who are on track in all 5 aspects of their development. So, this one is much more positively framed, and strengths based. So, what we really want is all kids on track in all aspects of their development when they come into the schooling system. This is a good indicator and metric that we can start to look at that's more strengths based.

Yasmin

And the learning is that there are high proportions of children on track. What can we learn from those settings? What can we learn from the sorts of things that are in the services and you know, community coalitions, schools, etc.? What are they doing in those places that is supporting more children to be on track in 5 domains? Then potentially, look at the national average or state average or average of other communities that are similar in their contexts.

Jacqui

I think it's a real opportunity for early childhood services to think about how this data, as you mentioned before I think Yasmin, about the children that will be attending the school in the future, it's really important that early childhood services engage with this level data to think about how does it impact my program? A lot of educators, including myself in the past, too often focused in on this group of children and what they're interested in and all those sorts of things. But if you know that there is some areas of vulnerability in your community then you can really make a difference in the way that you're targeting your educational program and the ways that you engage families within your services.

It's something that services could document in their Quality Improvement Plan. It is a really great example of the exceeding theme, meaningful engagement with families and communities as well I think. Sometimes I think there is a question of whether or not the data is relevant for early childhood services or is it more school based? And I think it's a really good example of the reason why we collect data is to know what we need to do to change or improve outcomes and this is where I get a bit confused, Tess, when you're saying you want a decrease in vulnerability and an increase in people on track.

Tess

That is right, yes.

Yasmin

I think, to add to Jacqui's point, when we talk about that, what can you do about the data? What programs did you implement? Where do or does the community need support? I think sometimes when we think of the AEDC we think of the data as telling us the answer of what we should do. But AEDC is really a starting point for identifying where do we need to know more? Where do we need to look and understand better where support is needed? It doesn't tell us what to do. I think the things that I've seen when schools and early childhood settings use that data really well, is when they come together and have those conversations.

For instance, in a community, and there is a community story about this on the AEDC website so people can go and look for more information, in a Western Australian school the principal came in in his first year. The 2009 data had already been collected and he got his school report. And that's the first he heard at the time of AEDI and he saw that a much higher percentage of children in his school were developmentally vulnerable on one or more domains than in most communities around the country, and well above the national average. He was just gobsmacked by just how far behind the kids in his school were before even starting school. Rather than just saying, ok, well, we need to do something to improve development.

It was like, ok, why? Why is it that this is happening? What are the factors? And the school was also in a very socio-economically disadvantaged area, with low levels of employment and lots of social problems and all kinds of challenges. And when he talked to his teachers about it and the experiences that they were having and the challenges that they were having, the need to engage families in the classroom became really evident as well as the challenges that they were having with language barriers with some of the families. He really unpacked this, like, what does this high rate of vulnerability mean to being? What's impacting development and how are families coping with the sort of challenges that they're facing?

And through that he was able to employ a social worker within the school to improve family engagement, to provide more support to families, to make it safer for families to come in and have someone at the school that they felt they could talk to. With that kind of improved family engagement, they went from having a school where they barely had any parents show up for any of the school events to having a school where families, all the families, were coming. They were bringing food and sharing, sharing culture, sharing stories and you know, you think that's great.

That has improved the environment in the school and these families, these kids, they have younger siblings. Their parents are now more engaged with services, the community is finding the school a safer place to come. And, you know, as a source of information for where they might need support, for when they're struggling with something. And over the years, their AEDC data is just continuing to improve and improve. And they went from having a level of developmental vulnerability well above the national average to below the national average. Within a matter of six years of doing it, starting that work, which is huge. If every community could make that kind of shift, imagine what we would be doing to change intergenerational disadvantage in Australia.

Jacqui

Yes, that's a really good point, isn't it? It's just not the fact that we're improving educational outcomes for the children themselves, but we're improving health outcomes and avoiding justice issues, lots of different things and there's a huge impact, collective impact on the whole health of the community, isn’t it?

Mary

Thank you, Yasmin, Tess, and Jacqui and hopefully we can catch up in our next AEDC podcast, which focuses on engaging with the AEDC data.

[End of transcript]

Mary Taiwo [NSW AEDC State Coordinator]

Welcome everyone to our Early Learning Matters Podcast series. This is the second podcast focusing on the AEDC. My name is Mary Taiwo and I'm AEDC NSW State Coordinator. I manage the AEDC project within the New South Wales Department of Education.

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator]

I'm Jacqui Ward, the Early Learning Coordinator, also from the department and we are continuing our conversation with Tess Gregory and Yasmin Harman Smith from Telethon Kids Institute.

Mary

Today we're going to continue talking about the AEDC and how various stakeholders can engage with the AEDC. We will also highlight the value of the AEDC to different stakeholders, how you might want to engage, or analyse the AEDC reports at different levels at which you can engage with the AEDC data, either at the school or community level.

In the first podcast, we discussed the school and community report. So, can you tell us a bit more about what are the key differences when you are engaging with the different levels of data?

Yasmin Harman-Smith [Deputy Director Child Health, Development and Education, Telethon Kids Institute]

So, I think at that school level you’re really thinking about just the cohort of children that come to your school. And if you think about the ways families select schools in the community and where they choose to send their children, you may very well see differences within your school than you might see in a neighbouring school. So, the community data can tell you more about the overall context of the community. And like, let's say, for instance, you’re a school with terrific resources but the schools down the road don't have such great resources. You might have an excellent disability support program, for instance, but maybe your school is not as accessible for children with disabilities as some of the neighbouring schools, because families feel more shame for coming to your school or maybe they feel that your school doesn't have as good a reputation.

So really understanding who is coming from the community to our school versus the other schools, how do we partner with the schools in our community so that we're all supporting families together regardless of where families choose to enrol their children. How are we sharing resources and knowledge and opportunities for training, so for instance a school might have done a lot of work to support their staff to develop an understanding of trauma informed practice. But in a community with high levels of transient or work parents, they might have a sense of standoffishness about engaging with schools because of their own poor experiences in the past. You might find those children changing schools quite frequently if they have behaviour problems because the parents just do not want to deal with the school around it, so they shift their kids. What that means is that their child might have been in a school where they've got great support and then they go to a neighbouring school and they don't have any support. So really being able to create those local networks that support families.

We have gone over what the contextual issues are so sorry, coming back to your question, Mary, about what these different data profiles provide to schools. I would say a mix of looking at all those data sources and really thinking about where the commonalities are, where the differences are and what you are seeing can help you inform your local planning within your own school, but then help you connecting to the community around you to ensure that all kids in that local area are supported, irrespective of where their families end up enrolling them.

Tess Gregory [Senior Research Fellow, Telethon Kids Institute]

I will just add in terms of specifics of what is included in those different reports. The school report says about the cohort of kids that attend your school, and those school reports go to the schools, and they are private, they are not available to anyone else to have a look at. Whereas if you go to the AEDC website, you can access a community profile which provides information about all the children who live in that community.

When we talk about a community for the AEDC, it's a local government area, so it is quite a wide area and those reports, in general, are based at that local government area, but then also in the back of those reports you can have a look at the results for smaller geographies. So, we have what we call AEDC local communities, which are suburbs, so you can also have a look at the development for kids in different suburbs within that local government area.

Mary

Wow, that is interesting. It provides lots of information, and you can break it down to exactly where your service is. As Yasmin said earlier on, you can also explore what area are the kids coming from and what are the differences and is that reflected in your school report. But I wanted us to talk a little bit more about, we have talked a lot about schools and how schools can engage with the data.

A little bit more about early childhood services. I know from some of the recent conversations I have had, it is sometimes early childhood services that struggle to understand the value of the data for them because it is captured at school already and they are thinking, ok the kids have gone through. But then we know the school receives the data and now I can look at the community data, how is it valuable? Probably just to unpack that a little bit more for the services both in policy and practice. How can they engage with the data?

Yasmin

So, I have seen good examples of early childhood services using the data as well, and in a way, it is like they have a greater opportunity to influence what the data is because it's their core business, it's those early years before children start school. It is not a report of how well they have done as a service because there are lots of factors that influence children's early development. But in the same way that it can inform schools about what is happening in the community, that is just as relevant for those early childhood services and thinking about how we can best support the children in our community through our programs and service provision, which early childhood services are such a great equalizer. They really give an opportunity for children to be exposed to rich early learning environments to responsive caregiving, language rich interactions, all those things that are terrific for children's development.

When families are struggling at home, you know, not only does it give the family is a bit of a break and an opportunity for parents to have some time for themselves to fill their own cup and cope more with the challenges of raising young kids, and let me tell you, I know about those. You get an opportunity for those children to have a set of experiences that are really targeted at the things that are important for child development. So, it's the interacting with other children, it's the learning about social norms, like waiting and taking a turn and being able to sit and eat with people and being able to focus on a story and learn from that oral language exposure and it sparks creativity, it sparks imagination and play. There are all kinds of terrific things that happen in those early learning settings. So, when you're thinking about what program do we put in place or what do we focus on in our early years setting or what are the aspects of quality that are really important for us to get right this year or now and how can we be responsive to community? That community data gives you the pointers of where to look and ask those questions.

It gives you the starting point for conversations with families about what is important for them and what aspects of their children's development they would like the centres to focus on. So, it might be important for us to develop literacy and numeracy, or it might be important for us to develop creativity. But for families that might be the opposite so, it’s thinking about how you have those shared conversations about the development of kids in the community and how you use that data and the information that you gather from the collaborative conversations you have around it to shape what you do in your programs and how you have the greatest impact for kids.

Jacqui

I think it is also very important for early childhood services to consider the data in relation to transition practices and programs. If we think about our current circumstances, how to early childhood services consider the data in relation to the impacts of COVID or the increasing levels of mental health issues, in younger children, younger and younger, all the time, as young as three children can experience some anxiety and all sorts of things. So, I think it's useful data I guess for services to be thinking a bigger picture of what is happening in their space rather than the sort of day-to-day, I guess.

Yasmin

Absolutely agree, and that is the place where that nexus happens with the school as well. Thinking about the transition programs, I've seen examples where schools come through starting that conversation with their early childhood partners, or vice versa, the early childhood partners starting conversations with schools, they have really worked together to re-examine their transition processes and how they support continuity of learning.

So that the kids are not in one service for a few years before school, where they have a particular type of experience and suddenly their world changes dramatically between December and January and they have an entirely different set of expectations and norms. So those shared conversations really help ease the transition from that highly supported early learning environment with small ratios to these classrooms where kids are suddenly expected to be these independent scientists wandering around doing their learning.

One of the things I think that is great about having this community conversation is that you learn what kinds of things the community might need support accessing, or where there might be difficulties. So, for instance, a school in Queensland that we worked with notice that there were lots of children starting school with oral language delays and they were working hard to try and speech pathology support into the school and they were referring families to the local Allied health service for speech pathology and the families were not getting any support and they didn't know what was going on they had been struggling with this issue for a while. So when they came together with their community organisations and this Allied health service came to the school as well to have this shared conversation, they learned that the criteria for being able to access speech pathology there was that the children were not yet enrolled in school. So, it was a preschool Allied health service, so they needed to get children into that service and assessed before they started school.

So what that school was able to then do was to move their transition or their enrolment process further ahead in the year so that they were already reaching out to families and inviting them to come and have a conversation about children enrolling in their school the following year, earlier in the year and identify early any needs that kids might have so that they could have the children assessed before they started school. To get the speech pathology supports in place within the education system more quickly, so that children had a smoother transition into the school process. So that is a good example of the way that the community conversation fed into the planning processes of the school and supported them to do the things they are already doing in a more effective way and with greater understanding of, I guess, what was and was not available in their community and how they could support families to access those services.

Jacqui

Yes, it's a good opportunity to promote continuity of learning and talking about the learning that is happening across both spaces because I think there's strong links to all the AEDC domains and the early years learning framework outcomes as well as the syllabus outcomes and key learning areas. So, it's a great springboard for a conversation to get to know each other's curriculum and pedagogy and each other’s spaces, early childhood services and schools.

Yasmin

Yes, and to share that information, like the history of learning that the early childhood services have done for each child they come with this rich understanding of the children that they've developed over the time the child has been in their setting. When they know that a child might really struggle when they start school, they can start early with those schools to set up better processes for sharing information about strategies that support that child, getting services in place early if that child might need additional inclusion support, for instance. So that the schools are ready when the children come for each child as well as the children being more ready for school.

Mary

Going back to some of the things you've all mentioned partly in terms of looking at the big picture. We all know we are interested in students social, emotional wellbeing and all those aspects but there are other tests and measurements in terms of NAPLAN assessment and other assessments that happen later in the schooling years. So how can AEDC support in that or how does the AEDC link to some of these bigger assessments that happen later along in the schooling years?

Tess

So, we have done some research into these at the Telethon Kids Institute. What we've been able to do is to have a look at the AEDC results for that original cohort of kids who were involved in the AEDC in 2009 and then we've linked them up. So, we've followed up through the Department of Education's records in terms of NAPLAN, we’ve been able to link those records in terms of how kids are doing when they start school, and they had a look at the degree to which that is predictive of how they go in NAPLAN when they're older. There's quite a quite a strong relationship between child development at five years old and NAPLAN all the way through to grade 9. So, what we can see is that kids who have better development on each of those 5 different aspects of their development tend to be less likely to be scoring below the national minimum standard and the strongest relationships as you might imagine are with their language and cognitive skills.

But we also see significant relationships in terms of their social and emotional wellbeing when they start school and their physical health and wellbeing. I think that the implication for schools is that if we want to think about supporting kids literacy and numeracy skills, and in particular the NAPLAN results for your school, it's really important to make sure that we get kids as prepared as possible and whatever we can to support their development, because the way they come into the school system at 5 is really predictive of how they go in their educational outcomes all the way through to grade 9.

Yasmin

Yes, it's interesting because I struggle with this a bit because I like to think that what we do in schools can make a difference, regardless of how the kids arrive. In an ideal world, wouldn't it be terrific? And we do know there's strong links between kids later outcomes and it's a bit idealistic, but it would be terrific if the way that schools use the data to understand what challenges children might face when they start school, in being able to engage in learning, make friends, etc. with shaping our planning in such a way that the things that we now do in schools do make that difference. Business as usual we've seen does not make a difference so those inequalities widened for kids. Where they start has a lot to do with where they finish, and the gap widens overtime or stays parallel so the kids tend to not catch up in the way we would like to think they might through high quality education.

So, what is it that we could be doing differently? How do we use data to really understand what challenges kids might have? And how do we use these successive collections - the AEDC linked through to NAPLAN and university outcomes through to employment outcomes to really understand what things that we do well make that shift. I think that’s kind of the research I'd really like to see more of overtime to really understand what can help break that trajectory and set kids on a different trajectory, if they have not had the best start before they come to school.

Tess

Yeah, I agree Yasmin. I think if we can find some good examples of schools or schooling systems that have been able to narrow that gap over time, then I think we can learn from those different examples in terms of what is working to support those children and what is working to reduce those gaps overtime.

Mary

Yes, that's interesting. As Yasmin was saying, in an ideal world, we like to think that what happens in school makes a difference to the child. I remember one of the workshops I presented to schools and one of the schools that was in attendance, they had the principal and one of the early Stage 1 teachers there. While we are talking, that was their first time really engaging with the AEDC data beyond just the data collection. It was the 2018 data collection, and we were talking in 2020 and they were thinking the students in year 2 currently have lots of social emotional issues.

When they were looking at their data, which was from two years before they realised it was actually telling in the data that there had been a decline. But the whole time, the school didn't realise because they had not looked at the data. There was no specific intervention, and it meant they were just struggling with that year group for whatever reason, and it was interesting that the data had shown that before, but then nothing else had happened in a way, and so the school just carried on. But it gave them some insight on what they could do or give them the insight to think they could respond to the data and make a difference to the students.

Something else again around the data in early years, I know there has been quite a bit of work around the AEDC and prediction around suspension and behaviour issues. Some frameworks are around like the Behaviour Strategy in New South Wales and the wellbeing strategy within wellbeing and inclusion team has engaged with the data in such a way that they're trying to understand some of the policies and the implications in that sense.

Something else I was going to ask. We have just received the AEDC 2021 data publicly released. I wondered if you're going to say something about some of the outcomes that we've observed already and around the context we are in now. Where has there been a decline nationally? What are your early insights?

Yasmin

What we've seen is early impacts of the kind of disruption to children's lives in the year before they started school in 2021. At that point in time, we've had a year of this pandemic and we know that the sorts of things that happened for families where both negative and positive in lots of ways. So, in negative ways, we had reduced access to in person learning at school, we had reduced access potentially to some of our health services because we had more distancing. We had parents working from home, which could be a good thing as well as a bad thing so sometimes that was great because parents had more time with their kids, sometimes it wasn't great because it meant that they had to juggle more things all at once. We also had income support for families who might have had a lesser income previously.

So, we might be expected to see some shift in children's anxiety levels and those sorts of things from the pandemic, but we have not really seen that so much and I think we might see that potentially in some younger cohorts that were born during the pandemic or were quite young during the pandemic. But if we think about the children that started school in 2021, they were 4 so they had that year of kindergarten before school, that was most disrupted and that's where we see the changes in the data the most, I think is in that language and cognitive skills domain, which of those early literacy and numeracy skills.

I think, what we're seeing in the data is overall quite a protective effect. I think what we've done has supported children’s development more generally across the board, but we have seen some losses in both early literacy skills, and I think I am quite heartened by that because that stuff is easier to catch up. If we had children anxious when they were starting school and less able to regulate their behaviour and make friends, I think that stuff is harder for schools to be able to overcome.

Mary

Yes, and I think just to comment from an NSW state level report, the pattern that we've seen nationally is also quite reflective in New South Wales. However, one of the things that I would encourage schools and communities to look at is also to consider their demographic data, in terms of who is in the community and how probably different equity groups have been impacted differently by the experiences that Yasmin has just highlighted during the COVID interruptions.

Some of that is still ongoing for New South Wales and so it's important for schools to actually consider these extra occurrences. But do you have some other data sets that might help schools to engage with the AEDC and not just looking at the AEDC in isolation, but what are the other relevant data that you feel from your experience other people have referred to and has provided more context to understand the AEDC outcomes?

Yasmin

Well within the AEDC data set itself, you can look at the rate of preschool attendance, for instance, or engagement with playgroups and potentially the early care experiences have children, but also looking at your community level ABS data and now the ABS census is obviously every 5 years, so we don't necessarily have an always accurate at that point in time picture. But we can see how communities might be changing over time and their makeup, are more young families moving to a community and how many families are experiencing housing stress? Those kinds of things, you can get from the ABS census data.

There's a terrific resource in Australia called The Social Health Atlas and that's developed by the Public Health and Information Development Unit (PHIDU) and they have maps, similar to the AEDC maps, but with access to all kinds of data from health administrative data, so you can look at birth outcomes and pregnancy outcomes, you can look at information collected from ABS censuses, you can look at information collected from various other things like transport and volunteering, all those kinds of things.

So, you can get a rich picture of the sort of makeup of that community and the kinds of things that that community might be grappling with. It’s still only ever an indicator and it's still learning about at the high level so it can be used in conversation, but I don't think alongside the AEDC data alone without those conversations that it tells you enough additional stuff, but it's definitely a value add.

Jacqui

It sounds to me like it's the sort of databases that the data nerds among us would love to jump into, and I guess they're great springboards if you wanted to get some more information from looking at your AEDC.

Yasmin

Yes, I warn anybody who is not a data nerd when they start looking at it, to come prepared for a lot of scanning, and if anybody you know, wants support to look at some of that data, there are lots of resources on the AEDC website that help you navigate what you might look for in some of those places.

Mary

Yes, I guess that has prompted the next question I was going to ask you all assuming I'm a school principal or I'm at a local council and I've downloaded my AEDC report, and I've had a look, I've listened to this podcast and I'm thinking where can I get help? What next? What do I do? What kind of support is available? Do you want to speak to that?

Yasmin

I think there are a lot of great resources on the AEDC website. We have certainly developed a lot over the years to try and target that question of what next, what can I do next with this data. There are really great examples of what other people have done with the data. So, if you're more of a storyteller or story reader, you might want to look at some of their community stories or school stories and you could look at some of the resources. There are videos if you don't want to spend a lot of time reading in the first instance that take you through a bit of an explanation of the data and how you might start to use it.

Then there's some more detailed kind of how to go about planning guidelines and those things are there stepping you through the process of looking at your reports, talking about establishing partnerships in your community and having those conversations, thinking about what sorts of things you might look at in your communities and then what kind of data you can start pulling down into your planning. So, thinking through how you develop strategic plans and those sorts of things. So, there's some great support resources out there.

Mary, I don't know in New South Wales whether you have some of those workshops that people can attend, but you could talk about that.

Mary

Yes, we are open to people contacting us for targeted support, which we've had over the years but now because of everything happening we have some restrictions; however, we do have professional learning resources that also provided on demand resources. So, on the AEDC NSW webpage within the Department of Education all these links will be provided alongside the podcast recording.

In the coming months, there will be a community grants program that we're hoping will support communities to take the time and engage with their data. But lots of resources on the AEDC NSW webpage, and we have the ADC NSW research symposium, which we had last year. A lot of those recordings have been provided as on demand professional learning and we're hoping to have a rerun of that symposium this year again and provide the opportunity for different stakeholders to come along to engage and unpack some of the data that has just been published. So that's the support we have in NSW.

Jacqui

We also have the Early Learning website which has a lot of resources for both early childhood services and schools on broader things such as transition to school and all sorts of programming and planning things as well. So, there is plenty of resources available for everybody to support them on their journey.

Yasmin

And if people are really interested, they can come along to an AEDC conference. I think the next one being 2024, just doing a little bit of pre - speaking. But in those conferences, we learn a lot about what other people are doing with the data and you get to talk to others who are, not academics like Tess and I, but are on the ground doing the kind of work that you do and sharing and learning from each other.

Jacqui

Thanks everyone for joining us. It has been good to talk about the AEDC, the context within which people can engage with the AEDC data and collaborate and plan for initiatives to improve outcomes for children. Hopefully, you have got a lot out of this, listening to our podcast.

Mary

Thanks, Jacqui and if you need more information, you can contact the AEDC NSW team using the email address aedc@det.nsw.edu.au or you can also visit the AEDC NSW web page for more information. Thanks.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome to the Early Learning Matters podcast series. We’re focusing today on talking about numeracy in the early years.

My name is Jacqui Ward and I’m the Early Years Learning Coordinator and I'm joined by my colleagues Juliana and Linda. Would you guys like to introduce yourselves?

Linda De Marcellis [Numeracy Coordinator K-12, Department of Education]

Yeah, sure thanks Jacqui. It's Linda De Marcellis, I’m the Numeracy Coordinator K-12. My background is primary but enjoying this space of K-12 thanks.

Juliana Lagana [Numeracy Advisor K-6, Department of Education]

Good morning, everyone, it's Juliana here. I'm the K-6 Numeracy Advisor working with the beautiful numeracy team at state office, it's a pleasure to be here.

Jacqui

Awesome. So today we're talking about numeracy in early childhood and talking about what it looks like in the Early Years Learning Framework. But also acknowledging that the early childhood years span in to the first few years of school as well so from the pedagogy point of view, there might be a bit of overlap in both spaces.

So, the first thing that we wanted to talk about today is the sort of learning that happens in early childhood and in particular now we’re focusing in on before school particularly in relation to the Early Years Learning Framework.

So, I wanted to start off by saying that, because I don’t think that people always acknowledge that numeracy is called out specifically in the Early Years Learning Framework. It's an important aspect all the way throughout a child’s schooling, literacy and numeracy are core skills that children need to have to be successful learners at school and lifelong learners. Within the Early Years Learning Framework it’s specifically called out but not solely represented by learning outcome number 5 and it talks about, the Early Years Learning Framework talks about, literacy and numeracy capabilities are important aspects for communication and are vital for successful learning across the curriculum.

In terms of the definition, numeracy is defined in the Early Years Learning Framework as the capacity, confidence and disposition to use mathematics in daily life. The Early Years Learning Framework also calls out that educators require a rich mathematical vocabulary to accurately describe and explain children's mathematical ideas and support numeracy development, spatial sense, structure, pattern, number, measurement, data argumentation, connections and exploring the world mathematically, are all powerful mathematical ideas that children need to become numerate. So, I guess we are keen to talk a little bit about that Juliana and Linda.

Juliana

I'll jump in there Jacqui and I can't go past the dispositions as a part of the numeracy definition and that's I think something that beyond the early years we’re still getting a hold of and an understanding, especially as educators and teachers who may or may not have a biased view towards mathematics and numeracy. So, I think it's a really important part of the definition of numeracy that goes well beyond the early years so I'm so glad that you pointed that out.

But I was going to add on the back of that in terms of dispositions, is the Early Stage One syllabus is right on top of that in terms of the mathematics and what it demands of students. And the very first sentence says ‘students ask questions’ in the Early Stage 1 stage statement and it's so beautiful. And I'm speaking from my own experience here being in those rich classrooms full of tasks and tools that students can really leverage and bounce from to ask questions and do that exploration, and then off that they develop that fluency with the mathematical ideas.

Of course, there's a lot of planning involved behind the scenes, but having at the forefront that student's curiosity and their ability to ask questions about what's happening to sort through what the mathematics is and what those structures are, and then building in of course the language and the materials and ways of recording to build forward to those mathematical ideas.

In terms of that first year of schooling, again in the syllabus but also throughout all the experiences that we've had, I think the working mathematically components of the syllabus really drive what it should look like in those early years and the learning that should be happening. And that includes a focus on inquiry and exploring and connecting mathematical concepts through that understanding component, and then also we've got the problem solving and fluency as well.

The last thing that I want to say about the working mathematically components was that it really provides those opportunities for students to engage in genuine mathematical activity, and I think that's really important so that students find those real connections to their lives, and that's the goal in terms of being numerate and being really creative and flexible and confident with the mathematics and numeracy that they develop in school, to also apply outside of school.

Jacqui

It's interesting isn't it. It's a really good opportunity I think, to see continuity of learning for children and how they could experience that, with looking at what does it say in both the Early Years Learning Framework and the mathematics syllabus because there's an opportunity to see that there's the similar ideas being built on and the similar way of teaching in those early years is really important as well.

Having opportunities to interact with concrete materials and explore ideas and problem solve and ask questions and all those ideas, are equally represented in the Early Years Learning Framework as well, especially in outcome 4.

Linda did you have anything else to add on looking at the maths in both spaces?

Linda

Yeah, thanks Jacqui. Look I really also love that whole notion of dispositions and how powerful it is about that curiosity and the wonder and the hypothesising. We know that in mathematics we strive for students to be able to generalise, and to have that opportunity in the Early Years Learning Framework to be called out that they are going to be hypothesising at such a young age through their curiosity and wonder of what is around them, and really noticing that mathematics is important as the early childhood teacher, and then capturing students ability to express themselves based on what they're noticing and wondering, and then to nurture those dispositions.

We know that the young students are really quite confident with what they can do, and they don't really have this notion of ‘I can't do this’. So, the mindset is really important to still nurture that knowing, that they may not know all the terminologies that can be expressed and articulated, but as a teacher you're purposefully encouraging those conversations and that language to be mathematical.

Jacqui

Yeah, and building that love of maths and that understanding that you are capable to engage with those ideas and concepts, because from a really early age people decide whether or not they can or can't do something. So, if you are encouraging people to be open, to see themselves as mathematical thinkers when they're really young, that's likely to stay with them throughout their schooling.

Linda

Exactly and as adults sometimes we also have that tussle with disposition about what we can and can't do, so I think it's really important as educators that we always display those growth mindsets to nurture those dispositions.

Jacqui

Alrighty well let's move onto our next topic and this one I put in there because I always think to myself, what's the difference between mathematics and numeracy? We talk about both of them and we often talk about them intertwined and interconnected so I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say about the difference, and what's the rules around talking about one versus the other, and do you normally talk about them together. What are your thoughts on that?

Juliana

Jacqui you are not the only person who tussles with that idea or needs that clarity.

Linda

Exactly.

Juliana

It's something that even in our roles in state office we are constantly tussling with this, especially in the K-6 space where students have that one teacher usually who is in charge of their mathematics development but also their numeracy development. And that's quite unique to primary because secondary is quite different to that. But, it's really hard to define one without reference to the other.

The numeracy guides that were released earlier this year really starts to unpack that idea but in a nutshell, numeracy is considered as that confident application of the mathematic skills, understandings and dispositions, and the important part is that it's across areas of learning and also embedded within our daily lives, so that's the goal when we say we're trying to build numerate students.

It also involves critically building students who can recognise where mathematics can be used and which mathematics, which tools, which problem-solving techniques, which part of their maths knowledge are they most relevantly supposed to apply in a particular situation.

But if we talk about the way that mathematics is described, and I’m going to use the syllabus definition, its reasoning and creative activity employing obstruction and generalisation to identify, describe and apply patterns and relationships. Now that's a really important definition for mathematics as well because reasoning and creative activity are not the two things that teachers would think of when you ask them to define mathematics and sometimes it's not what students think mathematics is either. So I think having knowledge of what mathematics is, is also really critical to how we build our pedagogies around mathematics and it really is that study of patterns, relationships and generalising.

Jacqui

Well, that is awesome. That has been very informative for me and thinking about it in the Early Years Learning Framework it's we don't think in terms of key learning areas, it’s more broadly talked about from the point of view of the child so it's not like it's essential to know but if we're thinking about building our understandings as educators and knowing how do we then teach children mathematical knowledge and understanding but then also numeracy skills to apply it I think is really important to unpack that a little bit.

Linda

Yeah, and I think Jacqui when we talk about what comes first, is it the mathematics or the numeracy, in a primary perspective and I think the early years, it's really closely linked. There are some mathematical understandings that students will have to have, and small children have to have, but it's then how they bring out their understandings and they become numerate to display that.

Jacqui

Nice. And a nice little segue into our next topic which is supporting numeracy development.

So I guess just talking a little bit to start off with the idea of how does that early learning, because this is I guess the point of our podcast, as in the title Early Learning Matters, and one of the things that I really hope that this podcast series does is really raise the awareness of what, how important it is I guess to nurture the garden of what happens in those early years to lay the strong foundations to reap a bumper crop when we're talking about children doing their HSC and all those sorts of later targets I guess for literacy numeracy and performance in general in terms of improved outcomes. So, how does that early learning support later learning at school?

Linda

I'd like to start there if I can. I think how we started this conversation about that description of the Early Years Framework and how your outcomes talk about disposition, talk about curiosity and that confidence, creativity all those really beautiful language that describes really what students need to take from preschool into their first year of schooling is that confidence, and that real understanding that I'm here to express what I know but also to hear what others know and then use what I know and what others know, to bring together to form their understandings about mathematics, especially in those really early years.

Jacqui

Yeah, that sounds good. Would you like to jump in there Juliana?

Juliana

Yeah I was just going to jump in and really focus in on something I said earlier as well and I think Linda touched on it as well, is that maths, as we said, is that study of patterns and structure, so the early years are really, really critical in developing students as what we could consider pattern seekers and Jo Boaler has some beautiful stuff about what this looks like in the early years and then obviously developing it a little bit further and it's as simple as noticing what's the same what's different even just that little structure of noticing and wondering which I know our early years educators do so well. It really does change the lens at which students enter their mathematical understandings.

So, building that ability to test conjectures, make generalisations, use structures such as which one doesn't belong and why where there's multiple reasons why things don't actually belong, but finding those similarities and differences to test those generalisations is really important. They can be done in the early years, I've done it in my own little Kindy classrooms and teachers across the state are doing it really, really well, where they are comparing and contrasting and using reasoning activities to really get that sense of mathematical structure and then supporting that of course with the correct mathematical language.

And I think it's really important to remember that in those early years it's really important for students to physically engage in mathematical tasks. So even something as simple as counting and building in the right tools so that students are getting a sense of that quantity and then when we're talking about sorting animal counters in multiple ways and keeping it really open-ended so that students are really curious, creative and true to the heart of what mathematics is.

Linda

And then to add to that, the more patterning they’re seeing or noticing and the more differences that they're able to articulate, is really going to help them with that generalising about what they can notice and wonder and what it is exactly that has that regularity or that has that mathematics behind it.

Jacqui

Yeah and I think that you raise a good point there, that there's lots of evidence that shows children have all of these great skills early in their experiences in early childhood, they’re more likely to be able to develop stronger skills in more complex mathematical skills in later life and I think it also prompts within me thinking about what we need to do as educators is ourselves have a good understanding of numeracy concepts and awareness of how children learn these skills so that we can look at and address any of our own biases like we often bring to our professional practice our own experience with things, and maths is a really good one where some people don’t, haven’t always had a positive experience themselves. So, that idea that you look at your own experience and understanding and build it. If you feel that there’s any gaps or room for that so that you can then be encouraging children to do all those things that maybe you didn’t feel as comfortable with yourself.

So, I think, unless we have anything else to say, I think that's probably drawn us to the end of our podcast. Hopefully we'll get together again and talk some more about everything numeracy and maths, as we've decided that they're good friends and hold hands together.

Is there anything else that you wanted to add there Linda?

Linda

Oh, look I just wanted to say thanks for having us here to talk about this, it's a really nice way to start the conversation and really about connecting teachers to understand mathematics and numeracy and that relationship, especially in light of the Early Years Learning Framework and student’s early entry to schooling. But thanks for having us, we've definitely got more to talk about, so we hope to continue this conversation and explore or a lot more.

Jacqui

Awesome thanks Linda. Juliana, would you like to say anything more?

Juliana

I was just going to finish off with I'm really happy with where the conversation led us today in terms of developing those dispositions, to curiosity. It didn't matter if we were talking about maths or numeracy, the early years or Kindergarten, it really spoke to what we want teachers and students to know about numeracy and have that love and passion that we all do, and developing that in our learners, so thanks for having us Jacqui.

Jacqui

Yeah, thank you. It was a really good opportunity I think to showcase a bit of continuity of learning opportunities there as well wasn't it.

So, if anyone is interested to find out a little bit more about what we’ve talked about today or some more resources, you can go to the early learning website which is on the Department of Education website. You click on teaching and learning, curriculum and then early learning and you can find some resources on our page or you can go to, Linda, would you like to share the details of literacy and numeracy?

Linda

Sure, to get to literacy and numeracy you go to teaching and learning, and then again curriculum and within curriculum has literacy and numeracy. We have quite a few different sections there and with some of the things that we talked about today.

I think would be nice to go and have a look at the guides which is under resources for schools and then any of the classroom resources you can get through that tab.

We also have professional learning, so have a look at literacy and numeracy professional learning there might be something in there that you will be able to discover and help your journey of becoming more confident in what you're doing with your students around numeracy and mathematics.

Jacqui Ward

Awesome, thanks guys.

Linda

Thank you.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome to the Early Learning Matters podcast. We’re here for our second in the series of numeracy in the early years.

My name is Jacqui Ward and I’m the Early Learning Coordinator at the Department of Education. I'm here with my colleagues Linda and Juliana, would you like to introduce yourselves?

Linda De Marcellis [Numeracy Coordinator K-12, Department of Education ]

Hi Jacqui, thank you for having us here again today. It's Linda De Marcellis, the Numeracy Coordinator K-12.

Juliana Lagana [Numeracy Advisor K-6, Department of Education]

Hi ladies it's Juliana here. I'm currently the Numeracy Advisor K-6. It's an absolute pleasure to be with you today.

Jacqui

And, I hadn't planned to say this but we've had some exciting news since our last podcast as well with the launch of the new strategy around literacy and numeracy, and I was very excited to see that we have a strong reference in there to including the strategy applying to preschool all the way through to year 12 so that's really very exciting space I guess to acknowledge the importance of literacy and numeracy in the early years.

So today we thought we would start this podcast with a focus in on intentional teaching. Intentional teaching is one of the key pedagogical practices within the Early Years Learning Framework and very much relates to the professional standards of knowing what to teach and how to teach it and aligns closely with my understanding of differentiated teaching in the K-12 space.

So, I wanted to start off by just unpacking a little bit of research here because there's been some clear evidence I think in both spaces, the early childhood space and particularly early years of school, talking about the importance of instructional support or explicit teaching and I wanted to unpack that a little bit first with a little bit of a conversation. So, the E4Kids is some significant research in the early childhood space that looked at the strategies that educators and teachers were using, from supporting children's development to supporting their skill development and all sorts of things and it clearly called out that instructional teaching, which as I said is a crucial component in intentional teaching, is something that early childhood educators don’t do well.

So that really explicitly teaching an idea or concept or skill. And again, as I said, I think it's got a strong affinity with explicit teaching, which is called out in the CESE document of What Works Best. And I think that there's probably a general misconception about both instructional support and explicit teaching and the idea that people think that they have to be doing it in a very direct way and I wanted to explore that in this session today, the idea of how can we still provide that concept and knowledge skill development while doing that in more of a play-based, exploratory, inquiry-based way.

So, I’ve done lots of talking there so I'm going to hand it over to you guys to add a thought or two there.

Juliana

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in there Jacqui.

Some really interesting points for consideration that you mentioned and I think that last one is really sticking with me about teachers and educators are really confused about what is explicit teaching and how do you hone in on those teachable moments without doing that direct instruction all the time. So, the one thing that I want to tie it into is the National Council for Teachers Mathematics has this publication called Principles to Action and what we do in the numeracy guides is reference these 8 research based teaching practices and some of them are really, I mean all of them are really worth diving into to be honest, but there's some that really speak to those early years specifically and a couple that I want to point out was the use and connection between different representations, so that is really explicit and intentional and teachers having the knowledge of tasks that do branch into the different representations and then using discourse and student input to really bring those connections together and of course bringing the concrete, the pictorial, the words, the language, the symbolic where relevant, I think that’s really important.

And I'm coming also back to this concept of really planning hard. So yes you can jump in on those teachable moments but you really have to have all the different directions that could possibly have and anticipate that, and anticipate what the students will do, so that you have that range of representations and those routines for discourse really a part of the classroom culture so that students are really adept in jumping into these ways of working and learning.

Jacqui

If it's ok with you guys, I might jump in there too because I think you've raised a really good point in early childhood Juliana, that often people think I'm working with a play based approach or I'm responding to children's interest so they think, oh well if it hasn't come up in play or if it's not in relation to a child's interest that then how do I cover those things but this is a really good point about there being some things or some concepts or ideas that you as a teacher might need to bring to the situation and you do need to be really well thought out and well planned out to be able to do those things that you mentioned, that idea of concrete, children exploring materials concretely and then also showing some of the visuals, the symbols, the patterns that represent those things. So, I think it's a really, really good point that there needs to be really purposeful and intentional planning in in this space.

Linda

Yeah Jacqui if I could tag on there, I think when Juliana was discussing this idea about what it looks like, I was looking at some of your resources that you have on your page, your website, for planning and it really does talk about how being prepared and the so that notion of what Juliana was saying about, planning hard is ensuring that you have appropriate numeracy based materials whether it being indoor or your outdoor activities, so that children can really take on the role of a numeracy user in their play. And then also having that open-ended materials and objects that they can have a choice to decide what they're going to engage with and use while there doing their play-based learning.

But then there's this also notion about talk and how important it is, and we I think we touched on this a little bit in our first podcast, but we wanted to explore this further today, about talk and how it describes what are students doing and then also with talking it also engages them in asking questions and also the teacher asking questions. And so, then that enables that modelling of mathematical vocabulary which is really I think intentional that you want to make sure that your encouraging the students to use the terms correctly, if they if they are ready and willing to engage with that.

Jacqui

Yeah, and the Early Years Learning Framework calls out that quite significantly throughout the outcomes as well to talk about that those mathematical, the mathematical language as being really appropriate, or really relevant I guess in the Early Years Learning Framework as well as it is in the school space. And I do think that yeah people, teachers or educators need to be really prepared then don't they to have that to use the language themselves and feel confident themselves in doing that.

Juliana

Yeah, I just wanted to add onto that Jacqui, and part of that being prepared is having really purposeful questions almost planned as well, so yes we also have to be on the fly asking those really beautiful questions that continue and extend on the learning but also planning where you want the learning to go and where the focus of your mathematics and numeracy learning is. And that's called out in both those practices that I mentioned but also in the What Works Best document where we do talk about explicit teaching, questioning is such a really important time, important part and giving students that time to not only ask but answer questions I think it's really important and again that brings us back to talk moves and those beautiful actions that we can build into classrooms that have that expectation of students to engage in discourse in a really meaningful way to draw out really clear mathematics.

Jacqui

Yeah couldn't agree more and I can see one of your points there is sustained conversations and we often refer to sustained shared thinking in the early childhood space, so that to-ing and fro-ing of really an extended period of time and also an extended time with a child or children to really deeply explore some ideas and some concepts and I think this is a really good example if we think of a topic if you like, numeracy is a good topic that really, really requires I guess that extended period of time and that opportunity to look at things from lots of different angles because that's the way children develop those numeracy skills and that mathematical understanding isn't it, when they've had lots of opportunities to explore it in different ways to look at it from different sides and dimensions and again it does require that more planned approach.

Linda

And I suppose when you’re trying to say that planned approach you don't want to make it too formal obviously because it is the early years and we definitely know that in Kindergarten classrooms they’ll be a lot more formalised with the way they have that mathematical discussion, but if I can bring those Talk Moves in, which is a resource that we have available on our website. It came from a PETAA paper back in 2014 which was from Christine Edwards-Groves and hers was about the repertoire of practices for productive classroom dialogue and it illustrated some quite very distinctive behaviours that you could very much practice with your students. And then in 2017, Jeanette Bobis and Jenny (Jennifer) Way then took this paper and made it another PETAA paper actually, which was the literacy of mathematics. And they had very distinct Talk Move strategies that they describe that were really helpful in a classroom.

And I know that when we talk about early years we’re thinking, we don't want to make it too formal that it's not looking as engaging and as natural as what it can be, but there's things here that I think some of the early years teachers could encompass into their daily practise, like when you’re posing that question with what Juliana was saying, that they take that time to wait, to let them understand, so it really allows the child to really think about what they should be talking and we found that when we took this to classrooms across the state especially in the Early Action for Success, that these posters and these Talk Moves really empowered teachers to reflect on their teaching, so that wait time was really something that they weren't enacting a lot in their classrooms.

And then giving that opportunity, another one was a turn and talk, where you ask someone you turn talk to you mates or your friends and so that gave courage to those who may not feel confident to talk, gave them that purpose to talk and also gave the students who really want to talk all the time, just that attention to talk to just turn and talk to your friend. And then it also gave an opportunity for teachers to eavesdrop on those conversations so that they can then pick up that mathematical discourse and say I want to focus on that with my students, and again like I said really natural in those early years, but those Talk Moves are really nice for teachers to start to see what type of practices they could incidentally plan with their early learners.

Jacqui

Well that all sounds amazing and I think that we've talked a little bit about the notions of what skill and knowledge gaps with teachers and educators and where we might go but I'm really interested to unpack a little bit more about the importance of mathematical talk, and I'm going to throw it over to you guys to unpack that, and the resources and the concepts and idea a little bit more.

Juliana

I'm going to jump in there because as you were talking about those tips for really guiding talk in the classroom, I think Kazemi and Hintz are beautiful researchers that we often reference in our professional learning opportunities in the numeracy team. They have a range of discussion routines that can be used, beyond the early years, but when you bring it down to their key principles it really is just about knowing that out of a discussion there should still be an achievement of a mathematical goal. So, if teachers are really clear about where the mathematics sits in whatever the learning experience is, and then using that discussion to really draw that out and have students do a lot of talking too of course, that's one of the key principles.

But bringing it back to Talk Moves, one of the other principles is about students having that knowledge about how to share and what is the part that they should be sharing in reference to the learning experience that they just engaged in, so again really focusing in on the mathematics, but using those Talk Moves to really not only make sense of their own ideas but makes sense of the ideas of others and really building that collaborative risk-taking classroom culture as well, and that’s one of the other practices is that teachers really are the ones that have to orient students to one another because all the ideas aren't coming from the teacher they’re actually coming from the other students and their peers.

So, their last practice is about teachers communicating that all students are sense makers and that all of their ideas are valued, and I think that's absolutely critical especially as we move into those early years because when we’re sharing different strategies or using different representations again that's exactly what explicit teaching is. Connecting them so that students can make sense of it in a really explicit, systematic and connected way then that's exactly what any learning experience and discussion that follows could have.

The only other thing I was going to mention was in reference to a podcast, podcast webinar that we were listening to that the Mathematics Strategy recorded. It was ‘In conversation’ with Jeanette Bobis, and she talks about this action of anticipating before you go into an instructional framework like launch, explore, summarise, and how important that that idea is that teachers need to know where the mathematics is, where it can go what the students might offer, and how to navigate those discussions and that talk, so that students gain the most out of it. So, I think that's a really important thing that as all teachers and myself included, is something we really need to build on is that notion of anticipating so that we can be really natural and guided by what the students are doing, but still refocus it back on the mathematics and the goal that we intended.

Linda

And I suppose if I can go on to that, I think Juliana definitely mentioned the benefits of utilising the Talk Moves, but I think my takeaway would be reflect on your practices as a teacher. I think, like we said with that plan hard and also having that natural flow of the lessons and of what's happening inside those early learning spaces, but maybe reflect on things that they need to pay more attention to. Like I said before, maybe it is about allowing opportunities for more wait time or helping students revoice their thinking, so putting back the mathematical language or offering support for how students are trying to explain their thinking by giving something like, ‘so you're saying’ and ‘do I have that correct’ and other little prompts that are on that resource for them to use.

I think it would be really nice for teachers to start to reflect on their practices so that they can actually utilise those numeracy learning opportunities so much more deeply in those opportunities whether it be like I said in the incidental plays or intentionally planned, with something that they're doing in the outdoors or the indoors environment.

Jacqui

I was going to say that Linda, if I bring it back to an early childhood context there, I'm thinking for me that would be looking like a project of something we were investigating or exploring as we do in that more play-based pedagogy that I would be thinking that some of it would be some really planned maths concepts and ideas and I had those pre-prepared teaching strategies that I was going to use to draw those ideas out. So, I can see that being very fitting in the early childhood space as well, being quite purposeful and intentional in what you wanted to get out of it and I'm just focusing on maths or numeracy now, but in a project, you might be looking at a whole range of different learning that's happening there but this is one where you're very focused in on the on the specifics of numeracy and maths.

Linda

Yeah, absolutely and like I said the Talk Moves that we have demonstrated on the website, that it does stem from a literacy background so it was definitely a conversation that started much earlier in literacy opportunities, but we can always know that the literacy opportunities are definitely going to be parallel with some of those numeracy opportunities too.

Jacqui

For sure. Well, I think that's been a really great podcast at focusing in on supporting teachers to improve their pedagogy and engaging with numeracy and maths, so thank you both for your time.

Linda

Thanks for having us again, we really enjoyed this thanks, Jacqui.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome to the Early Matters podcast. We're focusing in on our Numeracy in the early years series and this is our third podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward. I'm the Early Years Coordinator and I'm here with my colleagues Linda and Juliana. Would you guys like to introduce yourself?

Linda De Marcellis [Numeracy Coordinator K-12, Department of Education]

Yeah, hi. Linda De Marcellis here Numeracy Coordinator K-12.

Juliana Lagana [Numeracy Advisor K-6, Department of Education]

Hi everyone, it's Juliana Lagana here. I'm the Numeracy Advisor K-6.

Jacqui Ward

Very excited to be doing a third Numeracy podcast and just to recap for everybody our first one, we talked about numeracy in the early years within the Early Years Learning Framework and the syllabus and we talked about its place and what does it look like. And then the second podcast we focused in a little bit more on the pedagogy and the importance of having a really planned approach to facilitating numeracy skills within children.

And today we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the concepts, because one of the things that's fundamental I think for a teacher in either space, early years at school or in the early childhood space, is to have a really good understanding of the numeracy and maths concepts in order to be able to teach them. So, I’m going to shoot over to Juliana and we will talk a little bit about, not an exhaustive list, but some of the concepts we're covering today.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, well, I mean we could have talked about quite a bit, but are we going to narrow it down to a nice list that we think that no matter where you're teaching in the current context that you're at, there's something relatable. So, we'll start by talking a little bit about sorting and classifying, moving into some patterns, then a focus on number and some of the different approaches in number, and some of the wonderful resources we've got in the department for those early years, and then finish off a little bit of a focus on measurement and geometry and space.

Alright, just before we go into each of those concepts in a little more depth and give those examples of resources and different types of pedagogies, I think it's really nice to talk about what's the same about those. I keep bringing it back to this quote, well sort of narrative, that I heard Professor Di Siemon talk about at one of the professional learning courses I was a part of, where she talked about this concept of yellow, and how we come to know that yellow is yellow. And it was all about how knowledge is constructed through activity and interaction and reflection on your experiences. Really developing your language but also forming and testing generalisations from a really early age. So, you're exposed to many examples and non-examples of yellow and then you start to attach that word yellow to different things. And you're supported by others, you test it out, you get it wrong a few times, you start to build a mental object, and that's really similar for some of these concepts that we're going to talk about today.

And we want to really emphasise how many experiences our young children need to really develop a strong understanding of a concept. So hopefully as we talk through today, really remembering that through those interactions and those reflections, and that physical activity with different representations and materials and testing out that language, is a really important part of developing and a clear understanding of these concepts.

Linda De Marcellis

And if I can add there, Juliana, with what we were talking about the yellowness, we can also refer to the work of Ann Gervasoni from Monash University. She was working with COVID tutors and there was a really lovely conversation about supporting students and she also reiterated that to build that concept and to understand and to give students many opportunities to be exposed to the yellowness. And she talked about it in using dice and how long will it take for a student to understand all those patterns and recognise the dice pattern. And she said over 200. And so, we can talk about that yellowness that Di Siemon talks about, but also about Ann Gervasoni and how she really emphasises many, many opportunities and so it takes time to develop all these concepts for students.

And then we also want to make sure that we engage in the mathematics through what they bring and consider their culture and context in which the learning takes place, and then use that representation language and the senses and the physical environment to encompass all that and bring it all together.

Jacqui Ward

I would like to jump in there too Juliana and Linda just to say that your quotes there and your talking there really resonates with the developmental approach that we take in early childhood and that idea that children develop schemas, and I was thinking the same thing. A very young child will know what a dog looks like based on the characteristics of a dog, and again that's lots of exposure of parents pointing out that's a dog and figuring out that it has four legs and all those sorts of things, and you recognise that there's all different shapes and types of dogs. So, I think it's a really good point because we don't always think that with numeracy or literacy skills, do we? That it’s these multiple, hundreds and hundreds of opportunities to engage with concepts and ideas.

Linda De Marcellis

And yeah, Jacqui, and to add to that we're always looking at time and time frame and what we're going to focus on this week and what's happening next week, and it's not necessarily rushing through those concepts, but making sure that we go deep into the development. So that the yellowness is definitely recognised in many, many different examples and opportunities.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, I think that leads really nicely into the first concept that we're going to talk about around sorting and classifying, because like you said Jacqui, and like we've been referencing, children can do that from a really young age. They're looking at things and their brains are already deciding; what's the same, what makes things alike, and what's different. And that's one of the most important questions we continue to ask throughout mathematics and numeracy development, is what's the same and what's different?

From an early age, kids are usually looking at colours, grouping by colour or grouping by shape, sometimes by textures, definitely by size. Kids from a really young age, whether they're dealing with quantity of cookies or quantity of trucks, they know instantly which representation shows more. So, they are very innately good at sorting and classifying, and so leveraging that is a really important thing, especially leading into patterning.

So, when we're talking about sorting, we're really talking about multiple objects, and one of the most beautiful things we can do with students is showing them how to sort and classify in multiple different ways because it's a really nice entry point to talk about number and mathematics being really flexible, and we own it. We get to make the decisions about how we use these different things.

So, it's really important that we actually give students ownership over the things that they are going to sort and classify as well, so if you happen to have a set of a cars in front of you for a selection of students, sorting those in different ways or if it's a selection of fruit and vegetable because you're choosing your snack.

So really, leveraging the opportunities that are right around them, really of interest to them but then really talking about that sameness. What makes these the same and talking about it in different ways, like I said before. So, sometimes talking about it in terms of colour, sometimes it's shape, sometimes it could be a breakfast food rather than something that we usually eat in the afternoon. So, sorting and classifying from a very young age is really, really important.

But what we also have, especially in those early years, are some beautiful resources from the department and the Maths Strategy team, inside of the thinking mathematically suite. And there's some beautiful stuff also that supports parents to talk about this with their children at home as well. I think it really leads nicely into patterning and we know at the heart of mathematics is that patterning and structure.

Linda De Marcellis

And if I can add there Juliana about the patterning, like you said, patterns are everywhere. I'm always noticing patterns. I'm looking at dates. When I've worked with my students in my classroom we're always looking at the environment and noticing all the patterns around us. And I think as a teacher I've always known that it's an important concept to teach and to use, and we sometimes forget the actual structure and the components of that repeating unit. So, we may sometimes give students opportunities to look at more complex patterns, but we actually have to always come back to what is a pattern and what is it that's making the pattern, and it’s that repeating unit and identifying what that unit is.

So, if we talk about; heads, shoulders, heads, shoulders, they can actually say the heads and the shoulders are the actual piece of pattern that is repeating over and over, and they can then repeat it in the other way and do shoulders, heads, so that we can see patterns moving forwards and also patterns going backwards, as well as what's missing. Then you can do; heads, shoulders, knees and toes, and then you can almost see the teacher doing head shoulders missing the knees and going onto the toes, so that students can also see that.

And then of course you can do that with shapes, and you can also do it with things outside, with sticks and exploring that. So, if we think about patterns and how important it is, it's really giving many opportunities to explore with creating, making, finding the missing pieces of patterns, but also never moving away from what that core structure is of the pattern. Really calling that out so that students are really aware about what patterns are.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, I was just going to jump in there too Linda to give an early childhood example of being responsive and taking the teachable moment, which I think is a core component of what we're saying now, if you need to offer lots and lots of opportunities for children to engage with the concept, you really need to pick up when a child's interested.

I was just recently playing with my little three-year-old grandson, it was a posting box and it had two of multiple shapes that were different colours, and we did a little bit of posting and then we just started playing a whole lot of patterns and groupings; which are the same colour? Which are the same shape? Some of them were from a different posting box, so we were able to identify that those were different. I just started creating little patterns that I was trying to get him to repeat. He couldn't, I noticed that he couldn't, he wasn't at that that point where he could repeat the pattern, but even just the fact that we were talking about what one might go next, was still part of the language which was a really great opportunity I think, to not just rely on what you've got planned, but also be responding when a child's interested in different things. That's kind of emerged from his interest in that particular posting box, and he was talking about those things.

Juliana Lagana

I was just going to add in there as well, that to support parents who are wanting to have these conversations with their children at home, another really good place is the Everyday Maths Hub. So, as teachers, we’re looking for those moments all the time. So, whether I'm talking with my nephew about all of these cars have four wheels, but you can see that the trucks and the semi-trailers have more than that. We're constantly having those conversations which are absolutely beautiful, so the Everyday Maths Hub has really focused on how we can support parents to have those conversations. And there's some everyday context, because that's what we're saying, patterns are all around us, these numeracy concepts are all around us. These conversations can be happening and should be happening all the time. So, there's some beautiful ABC videos that parents can look at and again, it's about looking at patterns that are all around us, working out what comes next maybe, continuing patterns, or even just asking some open-ended questions that can really just extend on an idea that a student or child’s already thinking about.

But I think we’ve spent a lot of time talking about sorting and classifying and patterning and honestly, we could probably spend a lot more time talking about it because it really is, there are some beautiful opportunities, especially in the early years, to work on that and it has incredible benefits as well leading into the other concepts.

But I think it's a nice time to move into number because I think it was Linda, you were talking about noticing patterns on a dice, I think it was with the Ann Gervasoni conversation. And that's one of the approaches that a lot of people use getting into number, as an approach to getting students into number and we teachers call it subitising. But a simple roll of the dice and recognising that three is always three, or that the six-pattern shows three on one side and three on the other, there's a lot of game-based things that offer us those opportunities. But subitising using those dice patterns is a really critical approach that we have in the early years and many students come to Kindergarten already knowing some of those patterns and we can really leverage those opportunities into number.

One of the other ways is counting. And I feel like when I say counting it has many different meanings and layers of understanding for different people, including students and especially students as they come into school. And parents can say my child can count to 30 already isn't that great, but what we need students to know is that counting is so much more than just those words.

It's really important that we can say those words in order, and that the order doesn't change no matter what we're counting, but I think it's also really important that the next thing we start to talk about is that those numbers represent a quantity. So, when we're actually counting something, whether it's lollies or cookies or trucks or whatever it is, that we're actually attaching one of those number words to one thing. So that's another really critical understanding that we have in the early years. And the biggest one that we see, especially as kids come into Kindergarten is they're counting the same thing twice. So that's where we start to talk about that organisation, how it's really important to start to organise and structure our thinking as little mathematicians, so that we know we can get accurate understandings of quantity.

Some of the other counting principles, so I just referenced two there, we talked about the stable order of counting and one to one correspondence. One of the other ones is cardinality, so that if I've got a group of lollies in front of me and I count them and somebody asks me ‘how many do you have?’ I know that that last number that I counted is the total quantity. And that's a really tricky one. I taught Kindergarten for quite a few years and someone could have just counted something in front of me and I say how many do you have, and they go off to count again. So that's a really critical understanding that most people know as cardinality, and a really tricky one for students to get that trust into what they're counting, because for so long it was just words that they rattled off. It didn't actually come with that understanding of the last word, meaning something a little bit more.

The other thing that I wanted to add was around conservation, so that's another really critical one, and again it comes down to that organisation, that children think that if I have, just say those same five lollies, spread out really far that it's more all of a sudden, or if the size of the lollies is bigger that I might have more. So, conservation is one of those ones where it doesn't matter if I spread them out, or bring them together, or they're arranged differently, the number, the quantity, is still the same.

So, as I bring up each of these, I'm really emphasising that whilst we think counting is just those number words and it’s a really simple process, it's so incredibly rich in how much we need to do for students to actually understand each of those quantities, even to just 10. So, of course, we want to move beyond that, especially in Kindergarten, but in those early years, and as students start to produce that rote counting of the numbers, to really bring in what it means to count and attaching objects and quantities as soon as possible.

Jacqui Ward

I was just going to add that it just really reinforces again and I’m going to come back to developmental theorists influence in my pedagogy, the idea of how important it is for children in the early childhood phase of development, which is that birth to 8 range, really need concrete materials for all those things you were talking about, Juliana. That you need to be able to actually manipulate things in order to get a good concept of number, numeral order, all of those sorts of things and particularly the association of counting one thing and knowing that the numbers match those things.

And I think it's a really great opportunity, if I think about it in an early childhood setting, to have the importance of loose parts or open-ended materials or baskets of resources that children can use in a variety of different ways. I personally like a lot of natural materials like pine cones or things like that, because it provides a great opportunity for children to be playing with them in their own way, whatever they're doing, and then when they start to engage in some grouping or some counting or whatever, you can jump in there as an educator and be responsive and talk about what number comes next, and how many have you got in this group and what happens if I take this one away and how can we group them in groups of whatever. It's a really great opportunity, I guess.

Linda De Marcellis

If we think back of all the different components that Juliana was talking about number and all the principles, they definitely need time to really capture the right thinking that's behind it, trusting each of those principles. I know conservation definitely is one of those ones, and if you think about if someone has more and it's just because they're spread across, I can just see the little 3-year old’s or 4-year old’s having a little bit of a you've got more than me, that's not fair, but in actual fact it's probably because they haven't got that concept of conservation. So yeah, lots of time is really what is required and definitely manipulatives, is exactly what you said too Jacqui.

Jacqui Ward

And I can really see the importance of intentionality here too as an educator, being really intentional when you're in those moments, where you're responding to what children are doing, just being really purposeful that you're bringing in all of the concepts that you want to be teaching.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, I think that as you guys are talking about the different materials and things like that, in Kindergarten, there's a really big emphasis on the different representations and what they offer. So, you'll notice in the Literacy and Numeracy Hub, there's a lot of resources in that K-1 space, around 10 frames, around dominos, around bead strings, or what we call rekenreks. A lot of subitising resources and then a lot on quantifying collections, and that's a really nice way of talking about whether it's loose parts or if it's actually a mathematical representation, that it really is about quantifying. And that was a new word for me even a couple of years ago, but it really changes how you look at counting and number and turning it into quantifying a collection, and starting to organise our understandings of number.

Jacqui Ward

Could I just jump in there Juliana because I remembered what you said about that idea, because again coming back to my grandson and lots of little things that we're playing with, and sometimes when he's counting, for example, those same sorting blocks that I was talking about yesterday, was talking about one was a cross shape which had four points on it and another one was a star and he was just counting four and the other one had five, but at one point he didn't remember where he started for the star shape and so therefore he only got to four. So even helping identify a starting point if you're going around in a number, is a really helpful thing to do for children as an anchor point to know where the start is, and then where do I finish?

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, absolutely critical. And that's a really nice example that we still see in Kindergarten, especially when we're dealing with continuous first discrete collections and having that balance of both.

But that was the other thing I wanted to mention was that there's quite a lot of advantage, through approaching number through measurement because it allows us to also explore with students that notion of equivalence. So, what's equal and what's not? What's longer, what’s shorter, what's the same? What might be heavier or bigger and lighter or smaller, so the concepts of measurement really allow us to start talking about those things, but they also really support understandings of number especially around equivalence. We do a lot of work with students beyond, definitely beyond the early years around equivalence, and that's one of the things that we started to notice students don't quite have a good handle on. So, using their strength in measurement to strengthen their understandings in number and there's those beautiful balance scales that we use in the early years for measurement, comparing what's heavier and lighter and how many of these would equal some of those, which would really support students understanding of equivalence

Linda De Marcellis

Yeah, I was just going to just talk a little bit about geometry, in that sorting and classifying which you spoke about before and how all the concepts really do interrelate to each other and using the environment to explore 3D objects and then relate it back to 2D and having that opportunity and then sorting what things are similar and different, and why they're the same and different. And again, going back to relating things that they would be using in number, whether it be the pinecones, whether it be the cars, you can see a lot of connection between and across measurement and geometry.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, and I think I have to mention that I'm really excited by one of the new structures that the new K-2 syllabus will give us next year, which is that starts to link. As teachers we were will probably doing this already, but it's nice that within the document that we refer to that these things are brought together. So, area and 2D space will come together as structures that fit together. 3D space and structures such as volume and 3D space, so we're talking about these things at the same time. We talk about non-spatial structures, so that mass and time do work a little bit differently to the other strands of measurement. And again, the Everyday Maths Hub has absolutely beautiful resources to support teachers as well as parents, in those early years around those concepts of measurement and geometry.

Jacqui Ward

I was going to jump in there too to say from the early childhood point of view within the Early Years Learning Framework, that's a nice opportunity the way you were describing engaging with measurement. We've been sitting within learning outcome number 5 mostly, with literacy and numeracy sits there, but learning outcome number 4; children as confident and involved learners, really talks about children experimenting, hypothesising, and exploring the reasons why, engaging with measurement in those ways that you describe Juliana, of how many of this and how many of that and is this different, what could be the reason, is a nice opportunity to move into outcome number 5 as well within the Framework.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, and honestly Jacqui, I think we could spend a lot more time on each of those concepts and also start to think about how each of the concepts work really well together, but they aren't exactly, with the intention of mathematics, nothing is intended to be taught separately or experienced separately, that they are intricately related in our world around us. And so, as we're teaching or are responding to students, where we can find really important links in the mathematics itself, really highlighting that to students and children as they're experiencing it, so that they're always thinking about those critical connections, I think, is a really important thing to be conscious of.

Jacqui Ward

And I do like the fact that you called out, and I would agree, that lots of these concepts were things that I wasn't familiar with all of the names and the proper titles, and so I thought that was great that you also called out that Juliana, because I think people listening to you would have thought, ‘Oh wow, Juliana is a natural expert on all things numeracy and maths’, but in reality it's just about broadening your own understanding and engaging with some ideas and then slowly yourself as an educator realising, putting all the pieces together about how all the maths concepts fit together and how the numeracy skills are developed.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, and Jacqui, I think the only reason I can say those terms multiple times is that once I learned that word, and I think it's very similar for how students experience things, is once I learned that word, I saw it so many times. So, if I'm talking about that cardinality one for example, where students counted and then I said, how many do you have? And they went back and counted again instead of telling me that last number word represented the total, because I was experiencing it so often it just became my second language using all these words. So, I think it's just about, really noticing these things and once I've said it out loud, I'm sure everybody listening to this is thinking about, at least five students,

Jacqui Ward

yeah

Juliana Lagana

or a relative that they’ve recently been counting something with, and you just ask how many, and they go back and count again because they don't trust that. So, Di (Siemon) talks about this big thing about trusting the count and whether it's having a mental object eventually, but first really trusting and it takes so many experiences, counting and trusting that that last one does represent that total.

It takes a lot of practice and a lot of experience, so back to the beginning of this podcast we talked about how long it took us to learn what the concept of yellow was, and in all its shades and all of its forms, so it really does take a long time for students to experience things, but also us. And for us to reflect on, we really do need to be reflecting on how we're talking about things, where our focus is, what we're responding to at different points in time, and how we're extending students thinking, knowing where our end goal is. I think, all those things are really important in building our understandings around these concepts.

Linda De Marcellis

And if I can just add, to that conversation that you're just having Jacqui about knowing all the rich dialogue, the department definitely has lots of tools that can support teachers. And if I can give a plug to the numeracy guides, the Kindergarten to Year 2, really does support teachers with conversations and educators around some of those really key ideas just to unpack. I'll have to double check if cardinality is in there, but there's definitely lots of resources to support teachers because it is important to build that conversation, to know your content so that you can do exactly what Juliana did, is take those opportunities in the classroom and know what she is looking for because she has understood what it is that the outcomes are telling her to observe with students and their learning.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, great opportunity for us to promote that on the Early Learning website we're about to publish some literacy and numeracy in the Early Years Learning Framework and the links, and all of those concepts as well. So, there's lots of resources out there, feel free to engage. Just because you're in the early childhood space, doesn't mean you can't have a look at the stuff that's intended for this school audience, and adapt, and vice versa.

So, I think it's a nice point in time to wrap up the podcast and the series, and to say a big thank you to you both. It's been a great opportunity to chat and unpack some of these ideas, but hopefully we've influenced some great pedagogy.

Linda De Marcellis

Thanks, Jacqui, I'd like to say thank you on behalf of literacy and numeracy for inviting us for this three series podcasts, we really have enjoyed it.

Juliana Lagana

Yeah, I agree Linda, I think the best thing about engaging in these podcasts and I'm hoping it's the same for the person listening on the other end is the reflection opportunity that it gave us. So, it really helped us have great conversations that really tighten our focus, really reflect on our own experiences and our own practices and just to have a lovely conversation about how to build little mathematicians who have an absolute love for what they're learning and a really positive disposition towards numeracy and mathematics.

Jacqui Ward

Thanks guys. Bye.

Linda De Marcellis

Thank you, bye.

[End of transcript]

[upbeat music]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome to another Early Learning Matters podcast, and we've also got a combined podcast today with the Chatting Creative Arts team. So, this podcast is focused in on creative arts in the early years, and that's talking about the importance of creative arts in the early years, including early childhood in the first years of school. My name is Jacqui Ward. I'm the Early Learning coordinator at the Department of Education, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Julia and Gai. I'll leave it to you to introduce yourselves.

Julia Brennan [K-6 Creative Arts Advisor, Department of Education]

Hi, my name is Julia Brennan. I'm the K-6 Creative Arts advisor for our Department of Education in New South Wales and today I'm with Doctor Gai Lindsay who's a lecturer in the early years degree at the University of Wollongong. Her PhD thesis explored the visual arts beliefs and pedagogy of early childhood educators. Welcome Gai.

Dr Gai Lindsay [Lecturer, University of Wollongong]

Thank you, it’s great to be here.

Julia Brennan

Would you like to tell us a bit more about your research Gai?

Gai Lindsay

Yes absolutely. So, I guess the background of my story is that I taught preschool for more than 20 years and I was a preschool teacher and director. I had been trained in both primary and early childhood, but my whole career had been in the early childhood space, mainly in New South Wales, but a little time in Western Australia as well. I guess what led me into doing my research, it wasn't something I'd ever had an ambition to do, I hadn't thought I would ever be a university lecturer.

But I'm somebody who has a passion for the arts in early childhood pedagogy, but again and again I used to see examples of practice that made me ask lots of questions. I used to see educators saying the arts were really important, but at the same time putting up lots of identical stencil type activities on the wall in the name of art. And I guess that career experience, my professional experience, was what opened the door to doing research because I just really felt frustrated that while educators were saying the arts were important, it wasn't playing out in what I saw in practice. I’d so often hear my colleagues and other teachers and early childhood educators saying all but I'm not the creative one, I'm not the artistic one on our team and therefore people were floundering a bit.

So, I talked to a colleague at the University of Wollongong and said what can we do about this? Obviously, there's some sort of a glitch, and so that's what's really opened the door for me. Initially it was a masters by research, because again I hadn't pictured myself doing a doctorate. So, I started that and then the findings just really showed that this was an area that needed further exploration and deeper exploration. So it led into me doing a PhD while I taught at the uni, and then now I'm in a full time position as a lecturer in the early years team. So yeah, it's been an interesting and very unexpected journey for me.

Julia Brennan

Wow, thank you, Gai for sharing that with us. It's amazing and very inspiring.

So, we've heard a lot about the last, the most recent parts of your career, but how did your arts education journey start before that?

Gai Lindsay

Well, I guess like all of us, it starts when we're very young with whatever experiences we have in early childhood. I actually do remember my very first experience. I went to one of the first preschools in Toowoomba where I grew up a place called Little Glen. I remember it was in a big old Queenslander house. I don't remember much else about it except for this room where I got to go and do finger painting. So that's a really early memory for me and I guess throughout my primary and high school education, I was always drawn to the arts, both visual arts particularly, but also music. I've always played keyboard and flute and been a singer and been in choirs. But certainly with the visual arts it was just a language that I wanted to speak and that I wanted to learn better and communicate with and play with.

And so for me, that desire to communicate through visual tools and methods was sort of ingrained in me from early childhood. Not that anyone in my family practiced any visual arts so that wasn't an influence. But it was just something I was always drawn to and when I was making art, or enjoying the arts, or going to an art gallery, it just took me to a place that was fulfilling and peaceful and what Csikszentmihalyi calls being in the zone; that flow theory idea of just being in the right place and doing what I was meant to be doing. So no, I haven't had any formal arts training apart from what I did in high school. But then self-taught since then really, doing online courses and different experiences, and I guess just not being afraid to play with materials and try them out and experiment with them, which is what we want for children I think.

Jacqui Ward

Absolutely, that's great. Thanks Gai. I've had the privilege to listen to you speak a few times and find what you say inspirational and am interested to hear about your research. I guess you've covered a little bit there about what it has meant to you personally, but I'd be really interested to see how the arts have influenced your life professionally. Because I know you talk about engaging with the arts and the work that you did as a teacher with children right through to your PhD. Would you like to share a bit of information about that?

Gai Lindsay

Yes. So professionally, I think this connection of the arts to education, it's been incredibly fulfilling to do some deeper thinking about that and to draw upon some of the foundational theorists in this space. Going back as far as Froebel and Rousseau, who talked about learning by doing, and then, coming into John Dewey’s work, learning through play, and that play-based holistic curriculum where the arts are at the centre of everything. I love Elliot Eisner’s work, in terms of the way he said that the arts should be more centralised in our education systems, he really drew upon Dewey’s work in a lot of his thinking.

So that idea of going more deeply into why the arts are important for us has really driven a lot of my motivation in this space. And certainly, looking at the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been extremely inspiring for me, because when you look at that, and you hear that learning, that connecting to your cultural and your artistic life is considered to be a human right, that all of us should be experiencing and that all education systems should be honouring and upholding. That is my biggest motivator.

To think that too many children go through the schooling system and become adults; like the students who come to me at university, saying that they're not confident with the arts languages, that they don't see themselves as having the capacity to communicate through the arts. And I just think that's a travesty that we have to do something about because artistic expression and experience; that human drive to communicate in multiple ways, isn't limited to literacy. It's not limited to reading, writing, and what we say with our mouths. It's actually an experiencing.

Engaging with the arts is that beautiful human experience that nobody should miss out on and I think the world is much poorer when the human beings on this planet are so narrowed in their thinking, instead of expanded and arts centred. I'm probably waffling on, I get a bit excited about advocating for our rights to be whole people, not part people.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, that sounds amazing.

Gai Lindsay

People grow up to be part of people who yearn for the arts. People yearn for the arts. I mean, you look at what's going on in lockdown, during this pandemic. And when people are shut down, they gravitate to the arts and ironically, it's the artists in our communities who are being so poorly cared for at this time and yet they're the ones we're tuning in to watch the movies they make and their music and their visual arts work which is just proliferated throughout the pandemic internationally. People are reconnecting with their love of crafts and their love of making. I think that's one positive maybe that's come out of the pandemic.

Julia Brennan

And you think too with those early images of that first lockdown in Italy last year and what were people doing? Going onto their balconies to sing to each other.

Gai Lindsay

Yeah, exactly and it's that yearning in that that spiritual connection to what we're meant to be; that the arts really foster. That yearning inside us to be more than literal; to be imaginative and to be creative and to live out our full potential as human beings. And I think in our education systems that's something we have to keep fighting for because testing regimes and all of that sort of thing put so much emphasis on preparing for tests and performance in the classroom and so on, instead of remembering that education, for me, is about preparation for life; and that if we're thinking about how do we prepare and foster children's capacity to become whole human beings and thinking, contributing citizens, then the arts should be central to that because the arts welcome critical thinking and reflective practice and creative solutions to problems.

Julia Brennan

And collaboration.

Gai Lindsay

Yeah, yeah. And new ways of looking at things and just playing with ideas instead of feeling like we have to have all the answers or that we have to get the right answer. The arts embrace a notion of exploration and inquiry and play, and I think that's what we need to really be fostering. And that's why I position the arts the way I do. It's not art for art's sake, but it's art as the channel by which we explore our humanity and where we belong in the world and what our theories are of the world. And that's no less true for children and as the adults in children's lives, we have to be facilitating that. We can't assume it's just going to happen by magic.

Julia Brennan

Gai, you've kind of answered my next question, which is what you think the power of visual arts are? So, I think we might just sort of combine the next two questions because the one after that was why are the arts so important for young children?

Gai Lindsay

Well, where do you begin? I mean, there's lots of research evidence that highlights the benefits that exist when children are engaging in arts experiences. I mean, some of the literature says things like, some of the benefits of the arts are; cross disciplinary learning, Elliot Eisner wrote a lot about that, in Australia, Felicity McArdle has written a lot about that. Carlina Rinaldi in Italy has done a lot of work around that idea of cross disciplinary learning. Children can get - the research backs this up to this isn't just my opinion, so this is children gain motivation, enjoyment, critical thinking, problem solving, self-discipline, self-regulation, which we all know from recent research, is the number one quality that guarantees success at school, is the capacity to self-regulate and cope with frustration and all of that.

The arts foster positive attitudes to learning through creative learning experiences, through fostering and valuing children's imaginations. And don't we want to do that? Inspire children to want to learn, so that if we could teach science utilising drawing activities, if we could learn mathematics through music, then I think we'd see a whole lot of children much more switched on to learning than the really didactic, narrow focused learning in silos that unfortunately can happen.

I think it's also important to remember researchers like Dewey and like Robin Ewing, and like Elliot Eisner, who said that the arts foster aesthetic appreciation, awareness of beauty and that delight in appreciating that all-encompassing feeling you get when you listen to an amazing piece of music or lose yourself in an art making process. But it's also about children developing tools for communication and meaning-making, and Eisner also talked about this idea of developing skills for children to navigate a globalised world. So, they say that the jobs children will have in 30 years’ time; we don't know what those jobs are, so we can't actually prepare them for the future, but what we can do is support them to be creative thinkers and problem solvers and persistent and to tackle problems in different creative ways.

But what I found when I was doing my literature searches for my research is that all of those benefits that I just listed and that are talked about by numerous scholars, Anne Bamford actually said that in her review of all of the literature, she said that those benefits only come about for children when effective and quality provisions are made by the teachers who are working with them. And for me that really impacted the way I was thinking about my work and now my work preparing the next generation of early childhood teachers.

It's not enough to put out some activities on a table and think that you're going to achieve all of those benefits for children. The teacher, the adult who is making the curriculum decisions, they are the number one key ingredient to where their children are going to get all of those benefits that can come from the arts. And that was certainly at the centre of my PhD research. I really was focusing on what are the beliefs and choices that the teachers were making that drove their pedagogy or that informed their pedagogy and yes, it was interesting, we found some interesting things.

Jacqui Ward

You’ve said some amazing things there Gai, lots of different things that I would love to comment on, but I'm going to move on to our next question there, which is just thinking about, so we've talked about the pedagogy there, could we bring it around to the curriculum and let's sort of unpack a bit about the misunderstandings about the place of the arts in both the Early Years Learning Framework and in the curriculum in early Stage one in schools or beyond. What are your thoughts and would you like to discuss a little bit more about the way the arts are framed in those spaces?

Gai Lindsay

Yes, sure. I mean obviously in the Early Years Learning Framework one would assume that it would have the arts at the core of it and yet the arts are not really mentioned terribly much in the Early Years Learning Framework. Hopefully that might be something that is addressed a bit more in the review that’s happening now. But essentially, when you look at the Early Years Learning Framework, those visual and creative languages are sort of embedded within notions like communication and children's identity, confidence. Multiple intelligences are mentioned fleetingly, but there's actually no specific guidance for educators, and I'm talking about visual arts here, because that's what I really analysed. But in speaking with colleagues doing research in the music space, there are similar issues around the lack of specificity in the Early Years Learning Framework around what to teach.

That's where the ACARA curriculum is actually quite helpful and I often direct my early years students to have a look at that, because at the very least, it's outlining some of the possibilities around the different visual arts domains. It's spelling out what you might do with drawing, with painting, with clay, and so on. And so, I think the issue around our Early Years Learning Framework, and even to an extent that the curriculum for the primary years, is that if there isn't specific support and guidance around what quality visual arts pedagogy might look like, then educators who lack that knowledge are falling back on their own assumptions or their own individual beliefs.

And in fact, the educator’s guide highlights that. In the educator’s guide for the EYLF it says that without a guiding framework or some clear ideas about what quality visual arts pedagogy could and should look like then educator’s individual images, beliefs and values about children and what they should be and what they should become; that's what's actually influencing the planned and the unplanned curriculum.

And the problem with that, as I see it, is that then children's experiences will vary from teacher to teacher depending upon the confidence of the teacher. But also, the capacity of the teacher to interpret the curriculum documents and see where the arts actually sit, or where they would fit under the banner of communication. So, if you don't have arts knowledge, then you might read that section of the framework that talks about strategies to support children's communication and only be thinking about verbal and auditory communication rather than visual communication or musical communication or communicating through dance. So, we don't know what we don't think about. We don't dwell or we don't plan for something that we aren't aware of and that certainly did come through in my research with my participants. A lot of them said they knew the arts were important, but very few of them could articulate the specifics about what they had learned at uni or in their vocational training for example.

So it was all very broad and not specific enough, and I think that's the risk, is that without that specific domain knowledge, that subject content knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge, as Schulman called it, then we’re sort of operating in a vacuum, and what my research suggests is if people have very little memory of their of their coursework at university or in their vocational training, then when they're looking for something to implement in the curriculum, they'll go to what feels safe. And for a lot of people what feels safe is found on Pinterest, and I'm not an enemy of, I don't hate Pinterest, it serves some great purposes for collecting ideas and sharing and disseminating what can be great ideas sometimes.

But, if educators don't have the capacity to evaluate the quality of an experience, because of what they know about how children learn, because of what they know about the visual arts, methods and techniques, for example, then they'll go to what feels safe because people want a formula. They want to know, they want to feel like they're doing the right thing by children, they want to keep children busy and happy, and they want to create items that the parents will like and all of those sorts of traps that that we fall into if we're not confident in our own pedagogy. Does that answer? I'm sort of waffling again, but it’s complex.

Julia Brennan

I think that's really good and it actually is a beautiful segue into where we were hoping to take the conversation next, which is the difference between a learning experience and an activity. So busy work, as you have just identified and also that idea of the mass production of identical artworks that we have all seen and then we get into the process versus product debate, there's so many little things in there. But I think even coming back to that first point about your Pinterest teaching, and I mean I've got friends who are high school visual arts teachers and they tell me exactly the same thing is happening there too. So, let's talk about the difference between a learning experience and an activity.

Gai Lindsay

Yeah, so for me, and I've got to credit my wonderful colleague in Ireland, Evelyn Egan, who has some great resources online, if you want to hunt for her as well. Evelyn and I have had numerous conversations over the years about this difference between an experience and an activity, and certainly John Dewey talked about the difference way back in the 1940s and 50s. So, he talked about art as an experience, which sort of goes back to what we were saying before about that holistic approach to the arts, where the arts is, well, what I call it is the arts are the glue that should hold the curriculum together, that we should be integrating right across the curriculum.

So, from my research, what I really came to the conclusion of, was that art as an activity is certainly something that happens in early childhood centres and in schools. But what that looks like, for me, is those one-off activities, so it's getting the idea off the internet it's preparing all the materials, often huge labour job for the educators, because you're getting all the bits of paper ready and you're making the template, the thing that the children will copy or the example for them to follow, and it has a beginning and an end. It's often very product focused and it often isn't being built upon what the children already know, the skills they might already have or their interests.

And so when Dewey talked about art as an experience he was talking about that idea, and we certainly see examples of this in quality centres, and I'm a bit of a student of the Reggio Emelia approach, and so their approach to utilising the arts as a language sort of draws upon this idea that it's not a one-off experience. We're building, we’re scaffolding, we’re actually basing our experiences on what children have shown an interest in and then we're extending and expanding that. And I love what Dewey, in his very quaint old American style of writing... I mean, he's appalling to read really, because he's a bit like me he waffles on and on, and you fight to get to the point.

But anyway, he sort of likened those one-off activity type experiences being like food that is not nutritious. So, he didn't actually use the word junk food. I've sort of adapted what he said, but if we're thinking about that, well children love junk food so children love these activities too. So, a lot of educators will justify, we all made a hungry caterpillar out of a piece of egg carton, and some pipe-cleaners and some googly eyes and stuck some crepe paper all over it right? And a lot of people will say, “oh but the children love it, they love it!”

Well, yes they do, but children don’t know what the alternative is if we don't expose them to the richness of that; and if we don't believe that they're capable of doing a drawing of a caterpillar, researching caterpillars, learning about caterpillars and exploring them through multiple arts methods, on multiple occasions. And so, I love what Dewey challenges us to think about. That material relationships, relationships with the materials and tools that we use when we're making art should never be a one-off thing. that's like saying I'm going to learn French this Friday afternoon. And then I'm going to learn a bit of Chinese next Friday afternoon. It'll be fun! And then the week after that we'll do a bit of Spanish. How do we expect anyone to develop fluency in a language that has such great value for children, if we're just dipping in and out of these transient, meaningless, product-focused activities that don't even empower the child as an artist? That don't even teach them skills and techniques that can sustain them across numerous experiences?

So, I like to think about developing relationships with materials and you don't develop relationships unless you spent time experimenting to start with, getting to know the material, what language does it speak? What marks does it make? What happens if I do this? What happens if I use it, use this charcoal on cardboard instead of paper etc etc. So, when people are sort of saying, “Oh, I get really frustrated on social media”, because I don't know about the primary school teachers listening, but the early childhood teachers will hear what I'm saying. Because there's some social media groups where people will jump on and ask advice. You often hear people jump on and go “ladies”, to which I want to reply there are men in early childhood too let's be respectful in our language.

But the, “Ladies, it's Father's Day coming up,” I saw one of them this morning, “Father's Day is coming up, has anyone got any ideas of what we can do?” And I think people are hungry for ideas, which is so ironic because I could use charcoal with a group of children for three months straight and they wouldn't get bored. Because it'd be developing that relationship with the material and meaningfully exploring the kinds of marks you can make and how you might extend that and expand upon that. And I know in my teaching experience with young children, I just never found they ever got bored.

Jacqui Ward

I think you raise some really good points there Gai, and for me that comes down to a disconnect between even the way we refer to those names then activity-based learning experience, and when you think about it as a learning experience, you're going to think about it in a different way as opposed to an activity to do for Father's Day or whatever it might be. So, thank you for that great exploration on those ideas and concepts. I hope we've inspired lots of educators to think a little bit differently I guess about the way they plan experiences and the way they reflect on the learning that is encompassed within those ideas.

So, moving back to, I guess, now that knowledge of self and you talked about the importance of educator identity, confidence, knowledge and self-efficacy for the arts, that concept knowing what to teach and how to teach it, I think is fundamental across a lot of areas that we talk about. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you think this is so important?

Gai Lindsay

Yes. So, self-efficacy is a concept, like you said, it's that idea of knowing what to teach and how to teach it. But self-efficacy refers to the confidence of the educator to be able to take what they know and translate it into the curriculum that they offer to children. And for me, I sort of intrinsically felt, when I saw all of those issues happening in my practice as an early childhood teacher and director, when I kept hearing people say I'm not artistic, I'm not the artistic one but, but, but, but. I really felt that the core of that was educator confidence with the arts, and that disconnect that had happened for them in their early childhood or in their schooling experience.

And that played out when I was interviewing my participants, I asked them to remember their early childhood experience of art, their primary school experience and their high school experience. And without exception really, every participant could remember a moment in time when their self-belief stopped. Now for a lot of people in terms of the development of drawing, we know that at about the age of 8 or 9 is when children really start valuing hyper-realism; and that's when a lot of people really start judging themselves. It’s quite interesting that it's capacity to draw something like a photograph that we in the west at any rate, my participants as an example of that, seemed to sort of decide that therefore I'm not artistic because I can't draw things that look like.

It's either when you're sitting next to Susie who draws horses and you think they’re fantastic, probably if you look back on it she's just learned how to draw the schema of a horse and it doesn't actually look like a horse, but we thought it did, and so we judged ourselves; and find that really interesting with the arts that people are so judgmental of themselves. And so rather than feel inadequate, a lot of people they just disregard the arts and go, “Oh well, I'm not artistic”, or “Well I can't write my name when I'm 3, so therefore I’m not going to ever be literate”. Felicity McArdle talks about that in a really great little article called, ‘What if?’, ‘What if art was a language?’ or something like that. Yeah, so can you go back to the question because I think I've done my waffling thing again?

Jacqui Ward

I think you've handled it. We can probably move on to the next one.

Julia Brennan

Gai, that was magnificent and it actually just reminded me so much of we see dramatic play exactly the same thing, it stops. We see singing, I mean I just watch my 3 year-old neighbour out in the driveway singing to himself and I know that in a couple of years time that's going to stop and that judgment sets in

Gai Lindsay

It’s sad.

Julia Brennan

And I live with a professional musician who's whole life is built around that never good enough type of thing. I always have to be better. It's just an amazing field isn't it for that?

Gai Lindsay

Yeah, and the striving is good.

Julia Brennan

Striving for excellence, yeah.

Gai Lindsay

We don't want to say that we want people to be fatalistic and say well if I can't paint like the people who enter the Archibalds, then I can't be an artist. And that's what I talk to my students at uni about actually, is that idea between being a big A artist, an artist who's making their living out of the arts or entering competitions and hanging their work on gallery walls. But I like to translate it back to that idea of, well, we can all be little A artists in the same way Cziksentmihalyi talked about being a big C creative. The Einstein's, the Picasso’s of the world. But we can all be little C creatives, we can all play, we can all experiment, we can all wonder. We can all try something new.

And with my students at uni, I actually do teach them to draw, ironically, because I find that that's the key for a lot of people, that when they actually get taught lo and behold, and can actually reproduce something that they're observing, and they can reproduce those lines just by learning how to look really and learning how to sort of make that connection between the eyes and the right-hand side of the brain and the drawing implement; that sort of unlocks something for a lot of my preservice teachers, and all of a sudden they go “What? In one hour, you taught me something that I never thought I could do. Therefore, this is something that I can learn.”

And so, I guess I'd really encourage all of the listeners, anyone who's got a yearning for the arts, reconnect with whatever you yearn to do, because there's so much available in this world that we live in now. More so now that anything you want to learn, you can search for it on YouTube.

So, don't disregard your own capacity to be a little A artist. Even if you never envisage being a big A artist. I just think enrich your own life first and you will enrich the lives of children. And I don't think children's lives will be enriched unless they're seeing the adults in their lives embracing the importance of the arts personally as well as professionally.

Julia Brennan

I actually really love that Gai, because I've often used the big C and the little C creative but never the big A and little A artist. So I'm going to going to steal that if that's alright.

Gai Lindsay

Go for it. Give me credit, that's all good.

Jacqui Ward

I really liked the idea too of there being a disconnect between skills and just ability. Like it's odd that we think that isn't it? You made such a good point there about writing. It's same thing, you need some skills, don't you?

Gai Lindsay

Yeah, yeah. And like if we think about teaching children to learn to read, what does the adult do in that situation? Ok, they're teaching specific sounds. They are showing how those sounds joined together. They're making the connection between what spoken and what's written. They’re modelling. They’re reading to children. They’re demonstrating. They’re sometimes even saying stop, try that again. Let me show you how this might work in a different way. And yet with the arts, there's been this post-war idea of not interfering with children's art-making.

So, Lowenfeld and Read, two theorists who were working around about the time of the Second World War, they were really positioning art-making for children as a therapeutic post-war expression of trauma. And so, part of their thinking was to say, well, don't interfere, don't intervene, don't talk to the children or instruct them in anything to do with the arts, or you'll sort of corrupt their natural expression and creativity. And that myth, look it's true in a sense, in a therapeutic sense, it's true that there can be benefit in the adult not intervening if art is being used as a therapy.

But art isn't only therapeutic, art is so much more than that and if we're saying children have a right to learn this language of the arts, then it's our responsibility to actually support them to do that. And so, this idea of not interfering seems to have hung on in our practice. It doesn't apply in any of the other ways we teach young children where we co-construct, model, demonstrate, scaffold the learning etc etc.

And yet with arts people go oh you're either born artistic or you're not, and it's not the adults place to demonstrate or model, it might corrupt the child's creativity. I actually think that abdication of the role of the teacher happens because of that lack of self-efficacy. I think it lets people off the hook. Because everyone wants to do the right thing. Everyone doesn't want to corrupt a child’s natural creativity and yet ironically, the lack of involvement by the educator can just do that. It can actually achieve the opposite of what they're trying to achieve, by refusing to teach. So, it's really…

Julia Brennan

It’s a delicate balance.

Gai Lindsay

It’s a balance, definitely.

Jacqui Ward

Now I'm going to say that we should draw it to an end, because I think we've been chatting for ages and I don't know about you Julia, but I could be in this conversation all day long.

Julia Brennan

Yeah absolutely.

Gai Lindsay

And, you know I could! Far out!

Jacqui Ward

I just think it's been amazing, Gai and Julia it's been really great to chat. I think we've covered off on some really interesting things. I hope it inspires and motivates people to think differently about the arts and yeah, I appreciate everyone's time.

Thank you for joining us and just should also offer you the opportunity to say anything else if you wanted to wrap up with any other statements either of you.

Gai Lindsay

I guess the one thing I would say and it definitely is something that was sort of a recommendation out of my PhD; is focus on your image of the child. Do you think they're capable? Because if you do, then they have a right to experience quality arts materials and quality arts processes from the moment of birth. You do it from the start, because it's that relationship with materials and think about your own identity. I think they're the two major keys.

Visual arts knowledge can come because it's at your doorstep. You can find out anything you need to know about the language of art, but it's your own attitude and identity that will determine whether you give children that right to experience the arts in a really rich, quality way. That’s what I’d recommend. Rethink your image of the child and the image of the teacher.

Julia Brennan

Thank you so much Gai, that was really really inspiring and fantastic. I've learned so much and I've written down a whole page of things I've got to go and access now and research further. So thank you so much for your time today.

Gai Lindsay

My pleasure.

Jacqui Ward

Thanks, guys. Bye.

Julia Brennan

Bye.

Gai Lindsay

Bye.

[End of transcript]

[upbeat music]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome to Early Learning Matters podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward and I'm the Early learning coordinator at the Department of Education and I'm here today with my colleague Lisa Wicks and we are going to be talking about effective assessment in early childhood. Lisa, would you like to introduce yourself in your role?

Lisa Wicks [Transition Advisor, Early Learning]

Hi everyone, my name is Lisa Wicks. I’m one of the transition advisors in early learning.

Jacqui Ward

Well, today we're talking about assessment, which I think is quite a contentious topic and is quite often framed in the conversation about documentation, and I think it gets lost that actually, the point of documentation is often to assess children’s learning, so we're here to talk about all things around the assessing learning side of things. Do you want to start us off with a provocation Lisa?

Lisa Wicks

I'm wondering, Jacqui if you could tell us about what's in the challenges you can see and we can see every day in early childhood settings for assessing children's learning.

Jacqui Ward

That's a really good place to start. I think because a lot of people don't necessarily know and understand what the requirements are. What are the legislative requirements? So, what are we actually required to document? And there's a strong focus in on not necessarily a style or an amount of documentation, but actually, the requirement is to assess children’s learning against the learning outcomes and to provide a program that facilitates the development against the learning outcomes. I think there's also a lack of engagement in the section of the Early Years Learning Framework that talks about assessing children's learning and really critically reflecting and analysing on what that means in practice.

I think that, as I said before, there's a focus in on format, not necessarily the learning, as in do I record this in the daily diary or am I doing learning stories? Or what's the format for capturing what people perceive to be learning rather than focusing in on how am I actually capturing and measuring children's learning and also to I think this is a really interesting one that I'm coming across quite a lot is a misconception that assessment has to be an objective observation and I go back to my formal training as a teacher and I think this is often the case with a lot of educators, that they've been taught in that way to make a formal observation, it has to be a moment in time and it has to be objective about what happened and the experiences. But as we grow in our professional knowledge and understanding, I think we can move away from that type of objection and then add our own comments in there because that's our job as educators, is to assess learning and make teacher judgments. So, I think that's a common one. Would you have anything else to add there, Lisa?

Lisa Wicks

Oh, I think that last point that you made Jacqui. I totally agree with that. I think as we become more sophisticated in our own ability to observe children, we should be able to bring in that added information to tell us and inform us of what's going on with the child. I mean, the Early Years Framework asks us to bring in the external factors that we know about. So obviously bringing those in, when you are observing a child can give us more information and can help us to assess on, I guess a deeper level, rather than just what we see. What are we going to do? So, I think you know that comes with I guess maturity in our observation and maturity in our teaching.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, I agree, and I guess that sort of leads us into a nice segue about what the Early Years Learning Framework actually says about assessment.

Lisa Wicks

Is there anything that particularly resonates with you from the Early Years Framework around assessment?

Jacqui Ward

Well, yes, I guess again, having worked with a lot of different educators and services over my career and particularly this is almost always an area of, you know, that people are looking for to improve the ways that they're doing things and to make things more efficient and more effective. And so, one of the things that I would really say is, you know, like doing a really critical analysis on what you're writing about because assessment should be rich and meaningful. It should be full of information about what you know about what children can do, know, understand and often I see that's, I don't see that in when I see people's examples of what they have written about children, especially individual children.

I see lots of, you know like group observations dropped into individual children files. I see, you know occasionally that you know Johnny can hold the pencil correctly in pencil grip, or he can use scissors, or he uses his right hand or left hand. I see, you know, information like that, but I don't necessarily see in-depth information about you know how Johnny identifies with his culture and how he uses that to, you know, build relationships and all sorts of different things, so I think that's probably the thing for me is that have a think about whether or not you are capturing as I said, particularly that last bit about what children already know and what they can do and what they, and how they're understanding their world and how they're engaging with their world.

It allows us an opportunity to focus in on strengths and identify opportunities for growth. So, it's not about a deficit when you make an observation, there's often a deficit about what someone can't do, whereas if we are focus in on what knowledge that children already have, that's a great starting point for that.

Lisa Wicks

Yes, I agree, and as I listen to you talk Jacqui, I think about, when we do use assessment really effectively and use our observations effectively, we're really getting to what the essence of the child is and what the essence of the situation is, and I think I can picture in my mind very two different ways that we use observation and assessment and really, the Early Years Learning Framework is asking us to look at the whole child, so really ensuring that the way we observe, the way we assess, gets to the essence and helps build the whole child. That's key, and so I think that you know, really working at that depth is really important for all of our educators.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, I couldn't agree more, and again, building on that assessment is the starting point of our planning for learning, so that's where we start. We have a rich knowledge and understanding of what children can do and where we're going to plan our learning for that individual child, and it's the focus then at moving forward. So, we might be working on a range of things that are similar across individual children that inform our group planning. But it comes from our knowledge and understanding of individual children. And also, I guess that the information that we share with families should be based on assessment and clearly calling out the learning and what we are as educators are planning to do to support that learning.

I often get my daughter-in-law shares the observations that where my grandson attends and you know there's often a conversation or some information in there about a whole lot of different things, and I can see the learning that's happening in there. But the educators don't always point to that, and I think that's a pretty common thing, particularly when we're focused in on that sort of daily diary-style, type of approach, or, you know, learning you know journal kind of approach to things.

We're not necessarily calling out the learning, so I think that's you know one of the good places to start is having a look at, you know, the way you describing what you're doing in your space also impacts on yourself as a professional as well. Like what messages are we sending when we send information about, you know the children had a lovely time in the sandpit today.

You know when we could be sharing information with families about children engaging with early maths and science concepts about volume, capacity, estimating whether or not you know two of these smaller containers will be able to fill this larger container, those are the things that would be great to share with families, I think.

Lisa Wicks

Yes, I agree. And again, as I listen to you speak, I think about the transparency around what we're doing as early childhood educators we know that that's what we're doing, so why not share that explicitly with our parents and our families to say, yes, they are having a lovely time in the sandpit and by doing this, these are the things they're learning and I think maybe that's the next step of really being transparent and explicit about the learning that our children engage in every day when they're with us.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, I couldn't agree more and the idea too that we're calling out that you know this experience is intended to promote this learning, you know, so that that you know it's not retrospective. Well its retrospective as well, so you're assessing learning against the learning outcomes. But you know, we present information for families and for authorised officers, and for each other as professionals that says this is our intent for learning as well in terms of progressing learning against the learning outcomes because that's the next step in the planning cycle, isn't it? Assessing learning the next time around when you've you know provided some experiences for children to extend their learning?

Lisa Wicks

Absolutely, and moving into assessment and what we can do to be more effective in that, Macquarie University has recently led a study on assessment in early childhood settings in New South Wales. Really, really interestingly, the case studies that they looked at didn't find any definitive evidence that the assessment strategies that we're currently using had an impact on our children's developmental outcomes. What do you think is needed in assessment to ensure that we have this positive impact?

Jacqui Ward

Yes, I'm glad that you brought that up about that evidence there Lisa, because I think the correlation for me there and again, this is just my opinion and thoughts on it, is that it ties back to the fact that we don't actually focus in on, or measure the learning, so we're not doing the distance travelled that's actually the you know, I'm using inverted commas here because that's the phrase that's used in the Early Years Learning Framework you know, where are we saying that we can sort of show progress overtime for children?

And I think our current approaches and methodologies don't necessarily allow us to do that because we're not capturing, you know that information, we're not going back and evaluating the learning, you know, within that assessment and planning cycle, and I think it links too, to that idea that that's the you know if we think about how early childhood services perform against the national quality standard, that's one of the elements that people you know are more commonly not meeting, it's not to say that not everyone is doing it, but you know, I think we need to have a really, really good look at that, and it's also sort of led to our work in developing our tool, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on, but the tool itself has been engineered to sort of capture that distance travelled and that cycle of planning.

Lisa Wicks

What do you think? In a nutshell Jacqui, what do you think are the key aspects to effective early childhood assessment?

Jacqui Ward

Yes, I think I'm going to punch some, you know, quick things out to say that this is what I think focusing on the learning whatever you write anytime and if you are not writing about learning, stop doing it, you're wasting your time. So, is the learning clear are you making the learning visible?

Is that what's shining through about what you're talking about when you're writing something down? Because again, if it's not, it's wasting your time. Spend time observing, listening and questioning children and record that because that's the key. That's where you'll find out what children know can do and understand that's where you'll capture it. Our tool, as I said, is designed to support exactly that. You know you collecting that information in more of a sort of a summary-style approach, and think of the process of as a cyclical process, where we assess, plan for learning and then evaluate critically reflect on what we could be improved and how we could support children to learn and grow.

So, if what we've provided in terms of when we've captured the initial picture of where children are at, we've provided some experiences to support that learning to move it to the next Stage, if they didn't work, what could we do differently again, to progress that learning to again map that distance travelled?

Lisa Wicks

I really agree and I think you know I think of myself, when I'm thinking about all of these things, I'm thinking of myself in those early childhood settings doing the observations and thinking. You know, sometimes we do get really caught up in what is this going to look like? How am I going to put this in the format that my centre on my setting is expecting? But at the end of the day, if we are really focused as you said on the learning, what is a child doing? What are they learning and how can I build on that learning, so they learn the next part they grow and they develop, then that's what we really should be doing and I like the part where you just said Jacqui, if you're not focusing on learning, stop. You know, that's a really, really great message in itself, and that's a question that we as early childhood educators can ask ourselves every time we're writing an ob.

Jacqui Ward

I think you know, I think that'll be key to engaging to get you know engagement with this new tool too, that we've put forward because, you know, a lot of people, I think, can imagine looking at it and saying, oh that's a lot of work for me to do if I have to do that as well as all of the other things that I'm doing because we, as teachers broadly, I think and that includes you know, early childhood, primary and secondary. We're not really great at saying I'll take something new on, but I haven't actually sort of fished through what I could cut out if I'm going to take this new thing on.

So, I think that's going to be a key shift, you know, in practice as well to say, well, you know what, what am I going to drop off and what am I not going to do, and I'm going to say that I've rarely read you know some really high quality you know, daily diary sort of you know observations, a lot of people say to me oh but the parents really love it. I'm going to guess they're going to love it even more if you share with them some really rich information about their children's learning.

So, I think that's probably a key step in, you know, in this process, and engaging with effective assessment is really saying, what am I doing that's actually contributing to the purpose of why I'm writing stuff down, and what can I let go of? You know, so I think that's really important. And I would also add into this. You know, because one of the things that I think has really deteriorated our capacity to focus in on the learning is all the picture taking that happens in early childhood settings now, and I think you know, like again you take pictures or don't take pictures, but what's the point of taking a picture and how much time is that taking?

You know, in your day and yes, the families might like lots of pictures, but again, I'll come back to the fact that if we focus in on the learning, I think they would be much, much happier knowing what learning is happening for their child in that space then be too bothered by whether or not they got 55 pictures at the end of each day, you know so.

Lisa Wicks

Absolutely.

Jacqui Ward

Let's jump into our assessment tool.

Lisa Wicks

Yes, so can you tell us a little bit about the draft assessment tool that's been developed?

Jacqui Ward

So, we started, I guess you know, for our department preschools in the space where there was some intensive learning support that was initiated in New South Wales schools. As a result of the learning from home phase, you know, and COVID last year in 2020. So, basically, what we sort of thought about and building on the work that our other colleagues within the department were working with Macquarie Uni on and that you know, exploring formative assessment, we thought this is an opportunity for us, to, you know, develop a tool and I say it's a tool you could, you might say, oh, it's more of a template or an approach to assessment whatever you want to call it.

We think it's going to be a great scaffold and again not mandatory, just up to you whether or not you want to use it but it's being developed to really focus people, educators on assessing assessment of learning, recording the evidence of learning, progress against the Early Years Learning Framework outcome. It includes provocations to document the teaching and learning planning cycle.

It's going to be, potentially could be your one-stop-shop, assessing learning and recording the planning cycle for individual children within your service. So, we do hope that it's you know that it’s going to be a time saver eventually as people move away from other forms of documenting or what they perceive to be documenting children's learning and see it as a real tool to be able to communicate learning and all those sorts of things.

It's got some, you know it’s there as a springboard, I guess, and people can, you know, tailor it to their own needs and add bits and pieces that they like and don't like and with developing a raft of resources as well to be a bit of a guide and some examples as well, in an annotated sample and the main thing is in there that is, as I said, it's really focused in on capturing the information that we're actually required to capture in terms of legislation and quality standards, and how the EYLF expects us to assess children's learning.

So, we hope it will be awesome, but I guess it'll be, you know we've also included, you know, in our initial sort of phase some feedback from educators using it, and to find out how we could better tweak it or what other resources are needed to support people to engage with it?

Lisa Wicks

Sounds really exciting, Jacqui and I guess you know we can go back to the point that you made earlier around educators worrying about these things becoming, oh, it's something else. So just to clarify, you are proposing that this is not more work, but actually could cut down workload by efficiently and effectively using this assessment to then plan and using the planning cycle.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, look, I think you know. Again, what's cutting back down on work because it depends on what people are doing currently in terms of capturing that what they're required to capture and what systems and processes. So, I think that's probably going to be a bit up to the individual. I think probably in terms of making our jobs easier in terms of you know, like focusing people on what we are actually supposed to do in terms of writing stuff down in assessment and learning, I hope that it will do that, but again, either way, you know people can take it or leave it and they can use it as they see fit, I think it's sort of it's really focused in on that blending of formative assessment and summative assessment we haven't really talked about that today.

Perhaps that's an idea for another podcast, but you know the idea that formative assessment is about, sort of, you know, using this tool, I guess to assess whether or not your interventions that you've been doing in terms of planning learning experiences actually been working to support and extend children's learning, and some even in the sense that you're sort of summarising the learning it's happening over a period of time. You know, in a few entries and then right at the end, we've provided an opportunity for you to summarise, learning overall, and comment on what sort of teaching strategies were effective.

And that's the information that you can then funnel straight into your transition to school statement as well. So we're trying to sort of work with, you know other things that help communicate to the next people that will be looking at supporting children’s learning with the group of children that are then off to school, obviously, that's not always relevant if the children younger that you're observing and assessing, but it can still be if we think about, it's the transition to the next year wherever that child is up to, so it serves a purpose for that as well informing our work in the transition to school statement space as well.

Lisa Wicks

That's excellent, it’s really nice to know that when we're putting all of these things together for educators, we're really thinking about how all the parts fit together. So, it's a consistent approach and it flows nicely across all settings, because we know early childhood settings are varied in in how they work and how they're set up, so that's really exciting. So, in conclusion, Jacqui, how do you expect that the assessment tool will meet the expectations and requirements of effective early childhood assessment?

Jacqui Ward

I think the key to success with all assessment is the idea that educators approach their professional practice with an open stance and a commitment to ongoing learning and reflective practice. So that idea that you’re sort of thinking about what you're doing and whether or not it's effectively meeting the requirements and working effectively for your own practice of however much release time you get, or whether or not you do or don't, and you know that idea that you're thinking about how you could work this, you know, fitting the requirements around what works for you and it means looking critically at your systems and processes that you've currently got and whether or not they're meeting your needs and whether or not they're meeting the legislative and quality standards and whether or not families see that information that you're providing is meaningful evidence of their children's learning.

So, I think that's the key that we often don't ask families as you know, we ask them do they like the information that we're providing, and they might say yes, we do, but are we asking them, you know the question, that's really the key question there is. Does it give them information about their children's learning? I think they might answer that question a little bit differently. But yes, I look forward to hearing educators’ journeys with engaging with the tool and assessment in general. You know, like I think it's an area that we've got a lot of opportunity to, you know, build our capacity and be more effective in the way that we capture children's learning.

Lisa Wicks

Thanks, Jacqui. This has been a really interesting and exciting talk, looking at assessment and how we can do that more effectively in our early childhood settings. I've loved hearing your knowledge and your understandings of effective assessment, and I look forward to hearing as well how our educators work with the ideas of the assessment tool to enhance their practices.

Jacqui Ward

Awesome, thanks Lisa.

Lisa Wicks

Thanks Jacqui.

[End of transcript]

Ruth Garlick

Welcome to today's early learning podcast. My name is Ruth Garlick. I'm the preschool advisor in the early learning team and today I'm joined by associate professor Christine Woodrow. Christine is a senior researcher in the school of education at Western Sydney University and we're going to be discussing the topic of children as researchers and inquiry-based learning. Could you give the listeners a brief background of your research, and including your role in the research?

Chris Woodrow

Thank you, Ruth, and it's lovely to have the opportunity to speak with you and to share some of my experiences. I guess my main areas of research over the last decade have been in the area of leadership and professional identity of early childhood educators, family engagement, models of professional learning that support pedagogical innovation, in early childhood context and particularly in those contexts where children are disadvantaged by the circumstances in which they live.

What some of the research shows us is that children in these, there's assumptions about children's learning in these contexts and where adjustments are made, they're often made to make learning more structured and routine and yet, some of our research shows that it's probably the opposite, that is going to be more advantageous to these children. So, I became especially interested in research about equity and pedagogical approaches for children who are less likely to achieve at the same, achieve educationally at the same level as more advantaged children, their peers.

So, my role in some of this research has often been as project leader. I've become quite well known for the action research work that I've done with some of my colleagues, with early childhood educators that are looking for those pedagogical approaches that really are successful in engaging children as autonomous and engaged learners.

Ruth Garlick

That’s very interesting to me, because having been an educator for about 30 odd years, it is, it's often the case that when we're trying to support children's learning, there's a push-down curriculum and what I'm interested in is this research that you're doing, and that concept of children being supported to be researchers. So, was this something that the project encouraged?

Chris Woodrow

Look, absolutely. We've got fairly strong evidence from this project work, that has been going on in Chili, in various parts of Western Sydney, and other sites around New South Wales, in particular, that children's learning becomes, they become more autonomous, children are more engaged with their learning, and the dynamic of the classroom actually changes, as a result of more, I'd say child centred, but sometimes that gets misinterpreted, but, maybe I can say more play-based approaches.

So, intentional teaching when it's well understood what that concept is as distinct from instructional teaching, the funds of knowledge, so this idea of the educators and the children researching together, the context in which the children live, and their families also live and play-based learning seem to be key concepts that have emerged as successful.

Ruth Garlick

So, can you tell us a little bit more about inquiry-based learning and how that works?

Chris Woodrow

Yes, I can. I think it kind of builds on what I've just been saying that it, it creates the opportunity for children to be active partners in their own learning, rather than objects of teaching. So, that's what I mean about changing the dynamic. So, in partnership with educators, actually working on projects of local significance usually, and establishing directions of inquiry with their educators changes that dynamic from them being receivers and subjects of teaching and learning to them being creators of learning opportunities in partnership with more experienced others. So, it's Vygotsky and that kind of concept. Have I answered your question?

Ruth Garlick

Yeah, I get the, I get that real sense that it's not about the educator being the expert about the topic, it's about a joint wonderings and inquiry and hypotheses and searching for what people are hungry to learn about.

Chris Woodrow

Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know when I was talking about those concepts that have emerged as being powerful, I omitted to talk about sustained shared thinking, which I think has been a brilliant way of conceptualising how to engage children in that joint participation and joint creation of learning opportunities. So, it requires the educator to listen, that active pedagogical listening to children, and to respond in very authentic ways, in ways that lead children's learning.

And so, inquiry becomes the vehicle, I wonder what would happen if, can you imagine, so the questioning, that kind of engagement is quite different to what you will see in parodies of the kindergarten teacher, you know, sit down and what colour is that? We know that that's a very limited view of early childhood teaching, but you know, it is something that is a bit of a troke. I'd like to give a couple of examples that illustrate that. Would that be helpful?

Ruth Garlick

Yes, because I'm really interested in knowing how the educators go about that. So, I guess in some examples, you'll be able to help us understand the strategies.

Chris Woodrow

Yes look, one of the things that I have found has become quite an important way of conceptualising it is to re-describe the role of the teacher. So, it's not this lone weekend worker planning learning experiences for children. It's more researching the community and knowing what's actually going on locally. So, that those local experiences and the knowledge of the families and the lives that they are leading in their community becomes the rich resources for learning. So, instead of being the expert, the teacher often becomes the researcher and then engages children and families in conducting that research about what's going on.

So, one of the beautiful examples that I like to draw on is the early childhood sites that have been aware of local council elections and use that pretty lively activity that goes on in democracies to explore all kinds of things, citizenship, and engagement in your communities, but also works on literacy and numeracy at the same time but the children don't even realise that. So, one of the examples, the children collected the brochures, the flyers that were around for the different candidates for the mayor, they brought them because they were coming from different areas. The teachers worked with them in analysing them, reading out what the mayor was going to promise, looking at the photographs so doing a bit of a visual literacy activity around what they look like. And then after, discussions, you know, that citizenship idea of being active participants. Having the opportunity to vote, have a mock vote, so there you have beautiful maths about who got the most kind of dots and then waiting for the result and seeing who, you know, who got closest. But in one situation, the children, some of the children also created flyers for themselves as imaginary mayors. And so, there's a whole lot of issues around critical literacy and gendered stereotypes and those kinds of things.

So, what are you going to promise? Is it the playgrounds, is it better roads and where does gender fit in into some of that? And they obviously created texts, so young children from three to five, actually creating these texts in a particular genre and kind of understanding, not the word genre, but that this is a different form and different to the birthday card that you might be giving a parent. Others have been picking up on local activities such as, you know, traffic problems. So, you know, working out ways of solving some of the traffic problems also around schools. I do go off on tangent Ruth. So, if you'd like to bring me back to your question.

Ruth Garlick

Oh yes, no, we were talking about how the educators providing the children with that inquiry-based learning and those sorts of strategies that they were using, but it sounds like there was a lot of authentic literacy and numeracy going on within that.

Chris Woodrow

Yeah, I think it's this notion of embedded literacy and numeracy learning rather than this, what would you say structured, instructional and it's inherently interesting and it's interesting to the community as well. So, instead of the colouring in activity, I'm being very extreme, being stuck on someone's fridge, it's a project that's happening in the place and families are able to contribute things to that. They might not be anything to actually take home from it, but the day is lively and, and a little bit unpredictable. And I'm remembering, I'll never forget this comment that one of the teachers in one of our projects made about how the dynamic of the early childhood class actually changed as a result of this inquiry based learning. And she said she stopped becoming, being the policeman, you know kind of directing the traffic and in fact she became the partner in that learning. And I thought that was a really nice way of thinking about that, that she, she kind of had a much lower profile in the classroom because she was down with the kids all the time, instead of sorting out the behavior problems and so on because the kids were actually more, more engaged and I think that's a really nice thing to carry forward, to think about how your role changes.

Ruth Garlick

So, educators are being more engaged as well.

Chris Woodrow

That's right. And in fact, we have qualitative data from some of our research about educators saying that since they adopted this funds of knowledge approach, that was more engaged with families and communities and implementing their play-based learning that they actually got more enjoyment and satisfaction from, from their teaching. And for many of them, changed their views of families, you know, where they might've stood back and thought families weren't so interested in their children's learning, they actually realised that they were, that there just hadn't been avenues for them to become involved and to share that.

Ruth Garlick

And acknowledging what families have to offer.

Chris Woodrow

That's right. Yes. So, that funds of knowledge very much promotes that idea that almost all families have got knowledge and capacity and strengths, but it might not be the knowledge and capacity and strengths that's kind of recognised in, in everyday life. So, it takes a little bit harder work to think about how to engage families who might not conform to the kind of stereotypes.

Ruth Garlick

And what was the role of playing in these projects?

Chris Woodrow

Play was actually critical to it, and I guess play in many different forms. So, some of it very much free play, dramatic socio-dramatic play in some of those examples that I've given you about the, I mean, that was very much socio-dramatic play, and you could see the personalities of some of the children emerge as they took on different roles in terms of being an imaginary kind of mayor. But I think, you know, what's really important is this idea of embedded, embedded learning in children's play. So, planning carefully but planning with the children so that it's inherently motivating and rewarding.

Ruth Garlick

And I'm just wondering if you see this type of learning being appropriate in the early years of school.

Chris Woodrow

Oh, absolutely. You know, one of the things that I've noticed over the last few decades, there's been a slippage around that. In the past, there's been an acknowledgement of the role of complex play in the school classroom in the first years of school. And I've seen that being eroded and reduced to Friday afternoons with playing with Lego on the mat, rather than that kind of inquiry-based project learning that I have seen characterised in schools in earlier decades. I also had worked with a school in one of my recent action research projects who implemented a play-based learning approach in a very disadvantaged area. The teachers were absolutely committed to this as being an important way for engaging the children, but terrified that it might create a whole lot of problems. The freedom associated with play might just break down all the discipline that they had worked so hard to maintain. And in fact, the opposite actually happened. They had to be very creative around working out ways of managing groups, small groups of children so that conflict didn't happen, but the attendance of children in that school, of the children who were in that play-based program actually improved by 50% over the time of the project.

So, I think that is pretty powerful evidence that speaks for itself, you know attendance at that school being a really big issue, it really kind of changed things around and I think those teachers are now really proud of their courage actually in doing what they believed in and seeing how it paid off and how, how well the children have done. Unfortunately, COVID was the year that those children went into school, from kindergarten, sorry into Year 1. So, we haven't been able to do any follow-up.

Ruth Garlick

Oh, what a shame. And there's always questions around curriculum outcomes, because so much of what we do in schools is around curriculum and making sure that we do get children working within or towards or achieving those outcomes. And it sounds like this is a very integrated approach.

Chris Woodrow

It sure is. Yeah. I mean, there are all kinds of meanings associated with the word integrated curriculum aren't there? But I think for teachers and schools, and early childhood settings, preschools, long day care that have the courage to really embrace this inquiry-based approach, then the rewards in children's learning and engagement are there, but it requires a different kind of assessment process to demonstrate that.

So, the pedagogical documentation that many will be familiar with, and the little narratives and exemplars of what children are able to achieve rather than achievement on scales. Those scales are important, but I think there are probably a more diverse range of ways we can measure children's achievements and outcomes, then what we are traditionally being exposed to.

Ruth Garlick

And, you know, Chris, I think that might be a conversation for another day.

Chris Woodrow

Yeah, and then you'll really wind me up.

Ruth Garlick

And that could be a lot of fun. I'm sure. Look, Chris, I want to thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your expertise around this. Is there anything else you want to add before we close off?

Chris Woodrow

I think that issue around courage is an important one, that it does take courage to go against the grain as an educator or to take a risk. And I would say that about children too, when you asked me about the outcomes for children that inquiry-based learning, play-based learning, does encourage and provide an environment for children to be bigger risk-takers. And I think it's through that joint risk taking that boundaries are expanded and unknown things kind of happen.

So, I'd say, you know, the courage of schools, school systems, and childhood centres, sometimes resisting families’ and parents’ expectations of what learning should look like. I mean, that's quite an important thing as well and I think the role of professional learning, you cannot underestimate how important it is for educators, teachers to have the opportunity to continue to improve their knowledge and understanding over time, not just one-offs, but that over time in this action research kind of opportunity.

Ruth Garlick

Yeah. Well, you've given us a lot of food for thought, so thank you so much.

Chris Woodrow

A pleasure Ruth.

Ruth Garlick

And I hope to talk to you about more things Into the future.

Chris Woodrow

I'd love to.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui

Welcome to early learning matters podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward, I’m the Early Learning Coordinator at the Department and I'm here today with Lynda Lovett, the High Potential and Gifted Education K-6 Project Officer. And today's topic is all about high potential and gifted children in early childhood. So, I'm going to start today with posing a question to you Lynda being the expert in the high potential and gifted education space. What do we mean by high potential and gifted children and what's the difference?

Lynda

Potential occurs on a continuum Jacqui. For example, our definitions are high potential students are those whose potential exceeds that of students of the same age in one or more of the domains that is intellectual, creative, social-emotional and physical. Gifted students are those whose potential exceeds that of students of the same age in one or more of the domains and highly gifted student's potential vastly exceeds that of the students of the same age in one or more of the domains.

Jacqui

That's awesome and it's so interesting because, and I’m going to expose my naivete here, to say that I hadn't thought about it being split up into domains either you know, like I thought of it more holistically or that child has to be gifted or high potential in all of the areas so it's really great that you know there's some real clarity around those different domains and therefore as educators and teachers we need to be looking for information in those areas to identify those students or to assess those students and where their learning is at.

Lynda

We have a graphic on our web section that states this, it's like a Venn diagram, that states it more clearly. It's a simple diagram.

Jacqui

So I think that's a really good point to raise early on in the podcast is that there's heaps and heaps of information that's on our website and that even though it might be more targeted at that sort of school, you know primary and secondary space, there's a lot of information and tools that will be really, really useful for an early childhood educator to have a look at as well.

Lynda

And lots more to come.

Jacqui

Yeah, that’s great. Awesome.

So I guess thinking about what does it look like in early childhood, I was thinking about, you know what you'd said there Lynda and the idea that it's really important then in that early childhood space, well in any space, but I guess there's a lot of change, there’s a lot of rapid growth and change through developmental Stages in those early years prior to school, so it's about you know early childhood educators really knowing those developmental domains well what is within normal age appropriate sort of range to know what isn't and I guess that's really true for the other end of the spectrum or for the you know for the other students that you know you might be recognising that there might be a need for identification of a child who might need to be assessed for any learning difficulties or all those sorts of things. It's about knowing what’s sort of within that normal range and therefore what falls outside of it and I guess the other thing that's a bit more challenging in the early childhood space is that we don't, we don't assess learning in the same way, and we don't have the same assessment tools for learning, so that could be a bit more challenging as well so something to have a little think about.

Lynda

I could give you a little example, tell you a little narrative about how this potential on a continuum can manifest itself in a classroom, in an early learning environment. So, we have a little boy called, we will call him Joe, and his teacher observed his high potential when he was using social cues and in the respectful way that his classmates or other students would approach him and included him. So, the teacher saw this as high potential and she built on these strengths. Now at this point Joe exceeded his age peers and the development of his social skills but still more data was collected and until that data was collected it wasn't yet obvious whether he was significantly above his age peers. Yet there's another little boy, we’ll call him Elijah, he was in preschool one day and the teacher was reading a book to the group and he put his hand up and he said, ‘I have that book at home’ and the teacher said, ‘Well that’s nice Elijah’. Elijah got up and he took the book off the teacher, he sort of pushed her off the seat, he sat on the seat and started reading the book to the group, to the class. Now the teacher thought, oh he’s probably memorised it because he's got the book at home, so she gave him another book and he could read that too. So, then they realised they had a high potential reader on their hands. Now how they differentiated between the high potential and the gifted and the highly gifted was that they gave him harder and harder readers until they found his instructional level. And then they put him on a levelled reading program it while he was at preschool.

Jacqui

That's a really great example isn't it because I think sometimes children don't always share with us, I guess, all of their skills and talents and knowledge. So, it's important that you know if we get an inkling that we don't easily write it off to say, oh yes that child probably automatically knows that book because they have it at home, because a lot of children do memorise favourite stories and they do know when to turn the pages and all those sorts of things. So, I think that's a really good example and I guess the idea that it's ok too for these high potential and gifted children to progress beyond the Stage, age and Stage that they’re at in terms of you know, their cohort you know. So, in terms of reading, it's ok that a child progresses in reading 'cause they’re still fitting within the Early Years Learning Framework and the curriculum content in the preschool but they just progressing to the next Stage.

Lynda

The where to next that we use in formative assessment.

Jacqui

Alright so next I'm really interested to hear, 'cause the policy the high potential and gifted education policy was launched this year, so I'm really interested to hear if you can give us a little bit of a brief overview and of the policy itself and how it might fit in or marry with the Early Years Learning Framework.

Lynda

Love to. The policy was made mandatory on the 27th of January 2021. People are now starting to familiarise themselves with it. The policy applies to all New South Wales public schools and that includes preschools right through to year 12 and it includes every setting, including specialist schools, SSP schools and so on. It describes a framework to develop the talent of high potential students in all domains and that's a little change from the last policy. Instead of just looking at the intellectual domain, we’re now looking at the creative domain, the social-emotional domain and the physical domain.

The policy provides advice to implement effective practises such as talent development opportunities. And that is another new term that has been introduced in this policy, talent development, and we might be able to unpack better to a later date. This ensures that specific learning needs are being met. Fundamental to the policy are issues of equity and excellence. So, in many ways, this sits beautifully alongside the Early Years Learning Framework, which also espouses many of the statements in the policy.

For example, the policy statement 1.1, uses this sort of terminology ‘high expectations’, ‘effective, explicit and evidence-based teaching’, ‘optimal learning environments’, ‘all students should be challenged and engaged to achieve their educational potential’. So, the language in that statement reflects much of the language in the Early Years Learning Framework. High expectations for example, are one of the principles underpinning effective practice. And optimal learning environments that support student learning, students of any age.

Jacqui

Definitely. I see lots and lots of links there and the beauty of Early Years Learning Framework that it, it supports us as educators and teachers to work with where the child is currently at, so whatever their skills knowledge and understanding are, there's no age and Stage kind of limitations that the, you know the other syllabus documents at school have. So really, it's a document that's well suited to you know intentional teaching wherever that child is at. I think that that it also, you know is worthwhile considering that there's an opportunity but there's equally a risk because if we don't necessarily have those benchmarks to pick up whether a child is you know is progressing in their development above and beyond a stage in particular, we might not necessarily recognise that child as high potential or gifted so I think there’s, it's something to have a think about.

I have another little story to tell, and example for my grandson, who I'm trying to say an unbiased attitude to say that he's quite high potential on multiple domains, but that will be left to be to be seen. But just thinking about him, the educators where he attends at a long day care service, did a checklist, a developmental domains checklist on him and shared it with his parents, that's how come I got to see it as well, and the great thing about that was they had done it according to his age, so a two to three year old checklist, so he's 2 1/2 that's where he fits, but if we're never doing a checklist on him that's the three to five, so the three to four year old's, we’re never going to know that he's achieving you know in those higher categories I guess.

Lynda

Which means they may never know his level of mastery. So, then they don't have a beginning point. And again, formative assessment answers this situation beautifully. Keep assessing, keep exploring until you find the level of mastery because that's your where to next point, where to start.

Jacqui

And that's what I was going to say too is that the EYLF does prompt us, as educators to use a range of assessment tools and strategies to find out where children are at, to get a really full picture of their strengths, their interests, their knowledge of what they can do, what they know and what they understand. So, I think it's a really good point here that we keep digging and we keep looking for information about what a child can and can't do. And in your example with Elijah with the book, if the teacher had just assumed that he could read that story 'cause he remembered it, we would have had an end of story there wouldn't we.

Lynda

Yes, yes. It also comes back to I think the first professional standard, standard one ‘Know your child, know your student and how they learn’. And if that is applied, if teachers really, really know their students, then they will sense oh no I actually haven't found this child's potential, how far can this potential go.

Jacqui

And you raise a really good point those Australian Professional Standards for Teachers are the same in early childhood, school, primary school, high school, they’re all the ones set of standards so they're equally applicable in the early childhood space.

So I think we've talked a little bit there about you know the idea of assessing and recognising and planning so I'm happy for us to have a think about you know moving on to say what do we do, ok with now you know we've got some assessment information we've recognised that this child could be high potential or gifted, what do we do next in terms of the teaching you know the planning cycle you know the teaching and learning planning cycle?

Lynda

Just before we go there, I just want to reiterate that the policy, the high potential and gifted education policy is about meeting specific student needs. We’re moving on now from identification or labelling a child. We want to try and get rid of that. It's about meeting every students’ needs where they’re at. And that is why this policy is so equitable and so inclusive 'cause it is a policy for all students. We have a slogan on all our promotional materials saying ‘A rising tide lifts all ships’, and that works beautifully.

Jacqui

That's nice.

Lynda

Now as for planning that really also encompasses formative assessment, it’s the where to next and importantly use the formative assessment to find the level of mastery and start from there. Pre-testing is really, really important at this Stage. At some Stage we may also need to talk about how would you pre-test in a preschool. Kindergarten, year one year two teachers know how to pre-test, but I'm not sure maybe you know if there is any knowledge there?

Jacqui

So, I guess it's just again it's about using that sort of understanding and knowledge of the developmental domains and where does that fit so I know that there is a resource that links the Early Years Learning Framework and the National Quality Standards, the Developmental Milestones resource, so I would probably use that. Like that was the resource that my grandson's educators had used, and they'd converted it into a checklist. By no means am I saying that we all need to use checklists.

Formative assessment is about saying well how do I know and understand where this child is at and how will it inform my teaching. So, a formative assessment could be a range of different things and in fact we've just had the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, and they've just actually launched a paper on our website as well which is formative assessment practises in the in early childhood services. So well worth a read there to say what tools and techniques, we don't have a standard sort of tool or technique to use, but again it's about knowing and understanding where all the, where all children are at in all of those developmental domains and then knowing sort of what sort of above and beyond that.

So, I would suggest you know in early childhood we could use a range of different you know observation techniques and all those sorts of things and examples of practice where we think this child is saying well, they look like they're operating beyond you know. What sort of in that range of what's considered to be north.

Lynda

Yes and observations are a really good place to start and then keeping your anecdotal records from those observations. While we're talking about CESE, all the beautiful thing about our policy is that it's all research based, and CESE wrote a document for us as well called Revisiting Gifted Education and the link to that document is also on our website and there's two hours of professional learning on that document as well.

Jacqui

Oh that’s great. That’s a good tip.

So, I guess in relation to you know where do we go with and I think in the school space it's called differentiated teaching but in our early childhood space we refer to that as intentional teaching. So, it's about I guess going on that journey with children as co-researchers too in the early childhood space, you know co-learners, co-investigators, focusing in on their interests and where do they want to take the thing to next in terms of, you know if a child has an interest in dinosaurs you know, where do they want to go with that?

What are they interested to find out about with dinosaurs? You know, what is it are the interested in their habitat? Are they interested in you know what food different dinosaurs eat? You know, are they interested in in all sorts of different things about dinosaurs? You know physical traits is another one that I know a lot of younger children really like to know about dinosaurs you know that that you know triceratops has the three horns and all those sorts of things.

Lynda

And that's a perfect example of interest, where differentiation plugs into student interests because if you plug into student interests, you have engaged learners they want to learn more about their interests and their passions. Our, the policy, other policy statement 1.7 makes it clear that the Department supports differentiated and evidence-based procedures programmes and practices for growth and achievement of all students P-12.

Now a differentiated approach in the early years might be spontaneous as part of a discussion with an individual or a group, it’s those teachable moments. So that's where it can be informal. On our web section educators, preschool teachers, early learning teachers and beyond, can access a tool, we call it the differentiation adjustment tool, where there are nine examples of differentiation with many examples under each and I'll give you an example using dinosaurs in a moment.

So, we're encouraging educators to apply a new strategy, say once a day, to find out what works best with their students. The first strategy is complexity and to differentiate using complexity can be as simple as asking the ‘what if?’ question. What if what if humans were alive at the same time as dinosaurs? If you go into our web section you will find many wonderful examples of differentiation adjustments that can be adjusted down to the early learning level.

Jacqui

I think that's a really great example Lynda because that's very much what we're all about, we're all about interest based learning, we're all about play based learning, and when we ask questions like that we give children an opportunity to really share with us what they know and what they understand and put their own theories and their own ideas in front of our faces rather than being in control of what we want what we want to learn about dinosaurs and you know all those sorts of things.

Jacqui

Well I think that sort of leads us nicely to our next sort of topic I guess, about the idea of you know the importance for this particular cohort of students, the high potential and gifted children moving in that transition space so moving from their early childhood service to school because the research definitely shows that that's a group that can be vulnerable to not experience a strong start to school because of the fact that they haven't had that learning recognised from their early child space or their home environment all those sorts of things. And so, when they start school, it can often feel like they're not necessarily engaged with the learning that's happening there.

Lynda

Transition is so important and it's all about relationship building. Particularly belonging, I think that's one of the your...

Jacqui

Yeah definitely. The main overarching themes yes.

Lynda

So many educators understand that there are some students who just don't seem to fit in, who do not find that sense of belonging and they work hard to understand why. So, this is a time to further investigate what is happening. Is it the curriculum? Is the curriculum challenging enough? What adjustments are put into place for a 5-year-old who can read or do Year 4 maths? Is it social issues?

Many young, gifted children are interested in weird and wonderful subjects, we often call them quirky. They are intensely curious, they are full of wonder. Can they find a like mind? Are there kids like them? What happens if the rest of the kids find them a bit odd? So how can we build these relationships and the sense of belonging when you're confronted with these issues. Is it the learning environment that is not creating a sense of belonging? What needs to happen for this belonging to occur?

So, this is where transition is vital and we’re tracking children, tracking children's observations, the anecdotal records, the results and any sort of products that they produce. Write it down, take photos, record it and use that information to communicate with the next Stage of transition.

Jacqui

And that leads us nicely into the important role that transition to school statements play in that because that's an opportunity for early childhood educators to say we've recognised all of these things in this child and put lots and lots of information in there about what strategies that the early childhood service or educators have used, that have been successful with that child. Lynda, you pointed out that there's a spot in there for you know for a child to talk about themselves, you know as learners, and draw a picture or other work samples can be uploaded in the statement as well.

Lynda

I thought that transition to school statement has a lot of potential to identify these children and make that transition smooth. For example, I think it’s got a statement that says something like shows interest in learning, focuses attention and concentrates when challenged, shows wonder and curiosity.

The responses to the open-ended question where the child is invited to tell her new teacher about herself rather than just saying my name is Mary and I live in Braidwood. I have a cat. Ask them about their learning what do they like learning, what do they know. So there's that information is all ready for the next Stage of transition.

Jacqui

That is awesome. I think also too, you know we've got lots of information in our transition guidelines. So those are a set of guidelines that are aimed at schools but also information in there might be also relevant for early childhood service. And we talk about the importance of having collaborative relationships early childhood services and schools need to work together.

They need to share information and they need to know each other spaces, so I think that's really, really important that we know especially for this group of high potential and gifted children because we need to know where that child is going to next in terms of the curriculum and vice versa they need to know where they've been at in terms of the early childhood space.

Lynda

That transition to school statement also taps into the domains beautifully

Jacqui

Yeah.

Lynda

So there's a wonderful links between early learning and high potential and gifted education. So, there's content there about the child’s social-emotional, so shows awareness of the needs of others and how well is that developed. Represents thinking and ideas in creative ways and so on. So, it just fits together beautifully. Explore the options everybody.

Jacqui

And I guess that leads us, I'm thinking now that we've probably been chatting for a while Lynda, so I'm going to wrap us up here now but I guess just really keen for everybody to have a look at our website, Department of Education website for some of the resource that we've talked to.

If you're interested to find out more, Lynda's generously offered to share her email address with us and we'd love to hear from you. There's more early childhood resources to come, as we mentioned before but reach out if you'd like to have more information. Lynda, I’ll leave it over to you to share your email address.

Lynda

Thank you Jacqui. You can actually access our web sections just through doing a search, high potential and gifted education new south wales, that's probably the easiest way and you'll find a wealth of resources on the web section. Otherwise, you go into the department's home page, just click on teaching and learning in the top toolbar, a drop-down box will appear, and you'll see high potential and gifted education. You can email us, very simple email HPGE@det.nsw.edu.au. You can also communicate with us and learn what new resources are appearing on our Yammer group and in our Statewide staffroom. Thank you.

Jacqui

Awesome, thanks Lynda.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator]

Welcome to the Quality Preschool Practice podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward and I'm the Early Learning Coordinator from the Department of Education and we're here today talking about the professional learning that we commissioned to the University of Wollongong to implement based on the KISS study, evidence-based professional learning that works on supporting and enhancing intentional and relational pedagogy. I'd like to introduce Dr Cathrine Neilsen Hewett, Kim Stouse-Lee and Faye Gowers from the University of Wollongong who are joining me today in the discussion.

Dr Cathrine Neilsen Hewett [Academic Director of the Early Years, University of Wollongong]

So, in terms of the professional development, it was delivered across two key phases. Phase one was a full day where we came together as a collective and this session really focused on aspects in evidence that support quality. So we discuss things like what aspects of quality practice make a difference for children, and we also introduced educators to measures or tools that are designed to support quality practice, quality improvement and reflective practice. Phase two was delivered across four sessions that were two hours each, and we delivered these across six sites as well as one online group, both in terms of metro areas as well as regional and remote areas, and phase two focused on professional competence and curriculum areas that we know are important for children.

We talked about things like self-regulation, emergent literacy and language, numeracy, early mathematics, science and critical thinking. The structure of the PD was important, so we prioritised collective participation in active learning. So what we encouraged was a sense of connection and cohesion across preschools, but it was also important that we had a number of educators from each preschool attend the professional development as this really created a platform for discussion and reflection. We also provided time between sessions, and this gave educators a chance to apply or to contextualise their PD to their own practice, so we really encouraged educators to make individual adaptions, and this was designed to support ownership and sustainability of any changes, so it was around ensuring their practice was in embedded in their service operation. Aspects of the practice that were really emphasised throughout the professional development included things like using observation and assessment and planning. We focused on things like relational and intentional pedagogy, how educators support the home learning environment, but also ways to foster pedagogical leadership within those learning contexts. And I guess fundamental to each session was the inclusion of evidence-based understandings of how young children learn best, so we included notions of holistic learning and really about how do we extend children's active engagement and participation in activities.

Jacqui

That's awesome, and I think we had a number of goals throughout the professional learning suite, and I just thought I'd share in relation to the first goal just a few comments from evaluations before we get into a bit of a deeper discussion on the other goals that we had for the professional learning. The first one was to improve quality practice of our preschool services, and some of the comments that we received from participants across the sessions were that it was a wonderful professional learning, very valuable, the resources and tools will become an important part of ongoing reflection on practice, that it was a very informative day and a great opportunity for teams to engage in quality improvement, that it was good to have an emphasis placed on scientific language and it will help to build children's vocabularies and encourage a more academic style of language, that there was opportunities to reflect on practice and notice what we do and how well we do it or where we need to improve, and another one that talked about the idea of everyday maths into the environment was an important part of that.

It was a really well received professional learning, and as you mentioned Catherine, I think the idea that it was staggered over time really allowed people to sort of re-engage and think and make some changes and think about ways that they could integrate all of the ideas that we talked about throughout the session, because there was some repeated ideas and themes about how the things intertwined, particularly say for example the science and maths concepts and the literacy concepts. I think the environmental scales were a great tool to support a really objective assessment of practice as well, which I thought was another really strong point. So I guess I'll hand over to you guys to talk a little bit more about the other goals.

Kim Stouse-Lee [Lecturer of Educational leadership, University of Wollongong]

So during the professional learning project, I had the opportunity to go out to some different areas and deliver some professional learning and also to lead the reflective conversations online through the team's learning platform. So through that, one of the things that I really identified was that educators then had the knowledge to support their ability to promote children's learning because they were linking it back to, well we were making the links with them back to theory and evidence-base. And for some of the participants, they talked about that it had been a long time since they'd done their training. One of the key things that came out was when they actually initially did any of their training that they hadn't covered self-regulation. So there was some new information as well that they had done some reading about, that they had noticed in their own context. So to get some theoretical and evidence base around that was really helpful for them to begin to unpack and critically reflect on what was happening in their spaces.

Cathrine

And I think Kim, one of the things that we know that we talk about how we create rich learning environments for children and that's about creating the potential for differentiated learning platforms. And I think that same approach to teaching also extends to the professional learning platform, and that was one of the aspects that I know was appreciated by educators. There was a true recognition of different starting points and where people were starting their journey, but there was also an understanding that a lot of the educators came with real strengths, so there was that recognition of what they're already doing well, but areas that certainly presented potential for growth and development.

Jacqui

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think there's an opportunity for people and I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to set the scene early in the piece on our first day, to say that it's the learner's responsibility to take what they can out of that professional learning. I think sometimes people come to a professional learning and expect things to be sort of given to them, and I think this whole program or project was all about people really sort of delving in and reflecting and really thinking about what are they doing and acknowledging the strengths, but also saying there's always areas I think for improvement.

Cathrine

And that goal that you had Jacqui, around sustainability and really about embedding practice change within the preschool is really important, and I think it's really about thinking about what we do well, but actually looking at giving educators the skills to engage in critical reflection and to draw on data and look at what's actually happening and use that to inform their practice change. Overwhelmingly we know that the research shows that professional learning that focuses on activities or practices does not result in sustained change and improvement from a quality agenda.

Faye Gowers [Lecturer The Early Years, School of Education, University of Wollongong]

I'd like to go back to a point that Kim just raised, that very experienced educators may have had a gap in their training, particularly around self-regulation. When I was out having ongoing conversations with educators, it kept coming back to the realisation of how fundamental self-regulation was to the rest of the learning, and that's where they had done their critical reflection in the time between the workshops, and they kept coming back to that, and that was where they were really seeing gaps for themselves and having to really put in the high quality practices that we talked around in the PL into interplay so then they could go on and do the literacy, the maths and the science. So that understanding that self-regulatory behaviour was fundamental to children's development was really emphasised and really taken on board by the participants and came through in much of our, I guess informal conversations in the face to face sessions.

Kim

Absolutely. There was a lot of ah-ha moments. People could see evidence of the children they were working with and they were able to contextualise it and start thinking about it from a child development point of view, and that was really empowering for them because it actually informs their critical reflection and that was one of the key things that I think the training helped to deliver, was that we were looking at the overall approach. It wasn't just a bandaid, it wasn't just ‘how am I going to respond for this one off incident or this one off child,?’ it was about thinking about the entire pedagogical approach and what strategies that were used that actually supported children's learning in the context.

Cathrine

Absolutely, and there was very much a lens around professionalisation of those educators and really supporting them in terms of their critical thinking, and I know some of the feedback that I received from educators in my group was that that they really felt very empowered through access to research and evidence based practices. But they also talked about the high expectations that were set off them and reflected on sometimes PD can be dumbed down and that that really contributed to their own personal growth as a professional, but also the way that they approached teaching and that sense that they were given permission to teach, which was really important.

Jacqui

I think it's a really good point and it was a good opportunity I think to cover off on some of those sort of more school-based kind of ideas of science and literacy and numeracy and maths, because I think in our department preschools that can be a bit of a risk of pushed down curriculum and what's happening in the school space, and I think that the professional learning provided an opportunity to look at that from an early childhood lens and as you say, evidence based approach that is appropriate for early childhood as opposed to what's happening in the school space.

Kim

I think that's a really good point about providing the shared language. Because the language of this professional learning can actually go across from the preschools into the kindergarten and beyond, so I think that's a really important point, that the educators could speak to the teachers, could speak to the kindergarten, could speak to the P-2 coordinators, and that was very empowering for them.

Jacqui

Yeah, I agree. I think that's really important that educators in that early childhood space are able to articulate their practice and the learning that's happening, so that it's not just about, 'oh they're learning through play' and very sort of generic type terms and ideas, and I that that was an awesome part of the professional learning as well.

Kim

Out at Adamstown in Newcastle, it was a really good opportunity to come together, and one of the things I'll pick up is what Jacqui said about those kind of school-based curriculum content areas, about really unpacking what the emergent science looks like, what does emergent literacy look like? So we're not actually trying to replicate what's happening in schools, but we're actually having an approach that supports children with all of those underpinning skills to actually get to that readiness for school and readiness for life.

Jacqui

Well, and mapping it back to the learning outcomes too because all of those things are embedded within the learning outcomes, but people don't always see them as overt. We think about Learning Outcome 5, there's lots of literacy and numeracy embedded throughout the key components of the learning outcomes as well.

Cathrine

That was one of the things that came through in the professional learning, is that we used to do that, but they found it tricky to locate it within The Early Years Learning Framework, and this professional development actually made those connections across those particular three curriculum areas for them, and they could see it very visible within The Early Years Learning Framework and therefore realised they were meeting those outcomes or not, but had found it difficult to locate as you say, where it sat. Because we moved away from that language under The Early Years Learning Framework, and it can be tricky to work out where it sits.

Jacqui

Yeah, I thought it was a great opportunity for people to reconnect with The Early Years Learning Framework, as well as to analyse practice through the lens of the environmental scales as well, and I liked the point that you made Catherine, it's about gathering data and in schools data is everything. Every decision should be based on data, and I think this really gave our preschools an opportunity to have some data to refer to, which was, I think also really great.

Cathrine

And I think drawing on evidence base like that is very empowering for us as professionals, it gives us a sense of confidence and if we ever have to defend to parents why we're doing what we do, that's what the research allows us to do. It empowers us to have those really difficult conversations. I think as early childhood educators, we're often very time poor, we're asked to do a lot of things and we're not only supporting children, but we're supporting families and communities, and I think one of the strongest motivating factors that came out of the professional development were the stories that came from educators about the changes that they were seeing in terms of children's engagement and children's learning in a very short time. And that can motivate you to continue in terms of that journey and that cycle of practice.

Kim

Some of the key pedagogical approaches that educators spoke to me about introducing into their practice was the OWLing, so if you remember it was the observe, wait and listen, and that's intentional slowing down. So it actually spoke to both their intentional as well as their relational pedagogy. So that was a key takeaway that a lot of people talked about implementing, and that that was a positive improvement of quality and practice in their service, so that was really positive.

The other one that really stood out for me was dialogic reading and the idea that lots of different educators had participated in different types of training around language and literacy, but bringing it back to the purpose and the creating the dialogue and empowering the child, and focusing on that language development and that opportunity to talk and have conversations was really important. So with that, grouping sizes really came to the forefront of many of the conversations that I had.

Faye

And that OWLing Kim, often when we're looking at our exceeding themes and we're thinking about how do we support families, which is probably one of those hard components in terms of really extending our education and our influence. I actually had some educators talk about how they use the OWLing as part of an information session with parents and giving parents permission to slow down and enjoy and actively listen to children. So it was really exciting to see some of those practices crossing those contextual boundaries and supporting families in those practices as well.

Jacqui

That is nice, and one of the things I was going to say is that I thought that the reflection sessions that we had in supporting educators to work through the RAPIE and the reflection on practice, I noticed the first time we had one of those sessions, Kim, that you ran, it was a bit like everyone was a little bit sort of uncertain and how am I doing that and how does that fit in and by the end everyone was more accustomed I guess, to engaging with critical reflection and understanding how that informs their practice.

Kim

And it absolutely takes practice. It takes a lot of courage to speak up even in that platform when you're being recorded and you have your peers across a wide geographical area listening and participating. But it's really, really important that we have opportunities to practice articulating our practice. It will help us with conversing with parents, it will help our relationships with our colleagues and it will certainly assist with that assessment and rating process. So I think ongoing discussions are really critical.

Jacqui

Yeah, and I think it really helps educators to connect with the why of their practice, which is key in building or enhancing quality isn't it? If you really know why you're doing something, you can really speak to that well and you really understand your practice, and the influence I guess that it's having or the outcome that it's having on children and families lives.

Faye

And if we're thinking about our QIP, and we're looking at what are our goals in terms of quality improvement, we can have multiple sources of evidence to say why this is a focus and it might be a focus because it reflects a community or familial need, or it might be a focus because we've come together as a group and this is an area that has huge potential for growth, but there's other areas that we have strength and we feel that this can compliment our area in terms of literacy development or creating an environment that fosters critical thinking in children. So I think having those scales combined with the RAPIE, which really supports that quick reflective cycle and collegial discussion, really supports as sources of evidence around that.

Jacqui

We should probably for the listeners, spell out what does RAPIE stand for?

Kim

So the RAPIE is reflection, assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation.

Jacqui

Yeah, which is just the cycle, the planning cycle, the reflection cycle, that idea that we're always looking at what we're doing in ways that we could improve our practice.

Kim

And the scale’s really come in to their own, when you're looking at that assessment part. Because a lot of educators go straight from that reflection, they've been thinking about what's happening in their service and they jump straight into that planning. Whereas the assessment part can be really supported by using the scales to take a step back, have some time, and actually gather some data about what's happening. Not only is that helpful for the planning, it's actually a really great tool when you're evaluating. You can actually see your distance travelled and the successes that you've had, and it enables you to share with that shared language, the progress that you're making.

Jacqui

And we should actually explain the environmental scales as well. So we use the ECERS and the STU, and we had copies for all of our preschools so that they could continue to engage with those scales and continue to use them as a tool for measuring the quality of practice and assessing the quality of their teaching and their environments and all of those sorts of things. I know that I was really excited because I've read, researched, skirted on the ideas of what the environmental scales are, but never actually had the opportunity to use them in practice, and I think they've been really well received. What a great tool that we have available to us.

Cathrine

And I think it is one of the compendium of tools that educators can draw upon to support reflective practice, but then they create opportunities for really rich pedagogical discussions. And I think the important thing is that they’re not a curriculum, and they don't replace The Early Years Learning Framework, but what they do is, they create an opportunity to reflect on our practice. And I know Faye might want to share with us a wonderful story of how it's actually been used in one of your preschools to really create a platform for really rich discussions and practice improvement.

Faye

So I was having a conversation in one of my face to face sessions and a teacher shared with me how she had gone back to her centre after the literacy professional development and shared that amongst her team. And they'd used the item indicators on just one of the particular items within the literacy scale, and each person had to write down the evidence against that particular item and that was done individually. Then they came back as a collective and under each item, maybe one person only had one source of evidence under that particular indicator, others might have had five. So it just went to show how strong that particular indicator was visible within their context. So for some of them they had like five or four evidences against that indicator where some only had one, and it was a very reflective, collaborative process, but also at the individual level. And they did it across all six literacy sub-scales in the ECERS, and they got a very clear picture of where they were strong, but where they also had room for improvement and it was just informing that ongoing cycle and also informing their QIP as well.

Jacqui

Yeah, and I think that was a really good component that we were always talking about the idea of, if you're working on some improvements based on the professional learning or based on use of the scales that you incorporate that back into your quality improvement plan. That’s what it's meant to be, it's meant to be a living document that is part of your everyday practice, not a document that sort of sits on the shelf for whatever. If you're working on doing some things, reflecting and changing, document it through your QIP.

Faye

I just wanted to also come back to something that you've all touched on around the scales. Something that I've encouraged people who I've worked with in the scales is using the language of the scales to help justify pedagogy to colleagues, to parents because it is such an easy language to use, particularly when you're becoming used to doing that with people. Because you can then say, this is where we're at and this is where we want to go. So engaging with the actual language of the scales is really useful in being able to write it into your QIP, maybe write it into the daily diary for families or if you do online digital posting, things like that. But then also having the language when you're engaging with the kindergarten classes as well. So if you're unsure of how to do what Kim's talked about and Catherine, in terms of justifying our curriculum, the scales actually have a really beautiful language to engage with, that will build the confidence to talk and speak about what you currently are engaging with in the service.

Jacqui

Yeah, definitely being able to articulate your curriculum decisions, your professional judgment. It's just all supporting that building of confidence.

Cathrine

I do want to just touch on that example that Faye talked about and what happened in that preschool and relate it to the notion of time. And I think when it comes to professional learning, time is both a facilitator but a barrier to practice change. And what we saw there in that example is that that was prioritised within that preschool, that this is something that they want to improve and they really intentionally thought about how they can actually support translation from the professional learning context into the classroom setting, and so I think in terms of sustainability and ongoing change, it's important to prioritise that at an educational level and give yourselves time as educators to have those deep discussions and reflective discussions. That's just as important as the time that you spend with the children in the classroom.

Jacqui

Yeah, and I think that sort of brings me to the point about lessons learned from our point of view with this professional learning. And it was something that we kind of rolled out fairly quickly and without a lot of forewarning. So it was a bit of a challenge, I think, for people to allocate the time and get release and all of those sorts of things. But it's something that I think was definitely worthwhile for people who did invest the time, but not only as you say Catherine, in the session itself, but then implementing some changes. Some of the things that we have drawn on from that are the ideas of focusing really a lot more heavily on supporting practice change, especially beyond the professional learning project, because that's how we do achieve that embedded, sustained change.

And we don't want all of the lessons learned from the professional learning to be something that 'oh in 2019, we had a quality preschool practice and that was it'. We want to keep coming back to the ideas and when we are working on future professional learning that we come back to educators drawing on the environmental scales and drawing on the ideas and concepts of the self-regulation sessions or the science session or all those sorts of things. So we are building on the knowledge of educators and we're getting them to, if we think about Learning Outcome 4, the idea of children transferring and adapting learning, applying the same kind of approach for adults, drawing in the bits and pieces of learning and applying it in other places and sessions.

Cathrine

And I think that's critical. There's always a tension between how much time you spend on professional learning and then what happens in the classroom. But in terms of sustainability, it's about dipping into that community of practice that you've created within the DoE preschools and those shared learnings, and that's really important for sustainability. But you have such a wonderful model in your P-2 educators and the potential to extend this learning and contextualise this learning through mentorship, which I think is a real value add to have those continued relationships, and I think that that's the piece in the puzzle that will continue that ongoing learning and reflective discussions far beyond the face to face professional learning.

Jacqui

Yeah, I agree. Definitely.

Kim

In our final online reflective conversation, a lot of people were already starting to think forward to next year. So they were actually taking on the professional learning and thinking about how they were going to start from the beginning of the year with high expectations and embedding some of the practices. So some of those approaches that we talked about, particularly self-regulation resonated with people about what the time in relational pedagogy would be spent or be a focus for term 1 and understanding how that was going to underpin all of the curriculum teaching and learning that they would plan going forward.

But even just some of the strategies like we talked about the OWLing, the dialogic reading, but particularly that process of science and that investigation and how that could be embedded as not just a one off whiz-bang science activity, but a way of thinking and working in the classroom for the educators and the children. so role modelling that and actually having the children participate. So it was really, really inspiring to think that teachers were thinking forward. They were thinking, ‘how can I actually put this in practice in my space next year?’ So that's a good example of already thinking about embedding it and that attitude to say, let's take this moving forward is really positive.

Jacqui

That's great. Well, thank you. I think that was a really great debrief on the project and we look forward to opportunities in the future.

Cathrine

And can I say, Jacqui, we so enjoyed working with the educators and I want to thank those educators who really committed to this journey with us. It was such a pleasure.

Jacqui

Yeah, definitely. I agree. And as I said, we did sort of call upon them very last minute and we did get some great support. So cheers to all of those people that found a way to be there and engage with it in such a joyful way and really got a lot out of it.

[End of transcript]

Vanessa Dimitroulas (Vanessa)

Hi my name is Vanessa Dimitroulas and I am a P-2 Targeted Programs Advisor working at state office and I’m joined today by Janice.

Janice Gorrie (Janice)

Hi Vanessa and hi listeners. My name is Janice Gorrie and I’m the P-2 Initiatives Officer based in Moree.

Vanessa

And we have devised a number of podcasts around the subject of how students become literate in the preschool to year 2 age groups.  Today's podcast is about the oral language development of children and how it is shaped by their early experiences and interactions with peers and adults and also considering how we as teachers can build an understanding of the child and help them to develop.

 The title we have given to today’s podcast is Oral language development and tuning in! This title has been based on the research from Dana Suskind. She emphasises the three T’s: Tune in, talk more and take turns as ways of interacting to build students oral language skills. This is important as it is often stated that there is a huge gap between the oral language skills of children due to prior experiences and exposure. I think a good starting point for today Janice would be defining oral language.

Janice

Yeah Vanessa that’s something that we can really think about because it really consists of groups and combinations of words and it’s a prime means of communication between people. And it’s not, not only the only means of communication because we have gestures and expressions and we can break it down into expressive and receptive language. What do you think Vanessa?

Vanessa

Mmm yeah I think it is a great consideration to think of that language is not just about communicating orally it’s also about the interactions but it’s also about the listening as well. It’s um yeah you have to be able to listen well and understand language to be able to interact with language as well so you know it’s a whole um, a whole scheme of things, it’s not just about you know communicating orally.

Janice

Yeah ‘cause it’s amazing when we talk about ah it consists of groups of words and how those groups of words come together and I mean you think about it from 0-5 ah how does that happen? So if we look at the whole child, and think about um, particularly if we can perhaps think about 0-5 and the brain is really um at a place where it’s ready so ready to learn, learn language.

Vanessa

I think that whole concept of brain development and being in the early years is quite an interesting concept um when we’re thinking about development of students orally because it really is how um students are, ah well I should say children, how children are interacted with from a very very early age and that is an important aspect that we need to consider here because the more interaction with a more knowledgeable other really shapes the student’s development or children’s development over time. So knowing that I think you know we can key into some of um Nathan Wallis’ research here and some of his thoughts, thinking about the importance of the thousand days and the journey and the neurodevelopment of stud, children um earlier on and you know that whole concept of that learning processes for thought is more important than knowing and rote learning things too. I think it’s that concept of while they’re young and their brains are forming, let’s helps students and children to understand this process of learning and interacting orally and extending that.

Janice

Yeah ‘cause it’s the richness of the experiences and having those prolonged responsive interactions within those experiences and those experiences must be responsive so that the children have that ability to engage with the content and they can process the content so that they understand.

Vanessa

I think that’s a really important point and I think it’s really nice to think about experiences that children are engaged in and interested in and motivated to learn about at that point in time too because I think that helps children to understand um better than something that’s you know, I sort of think about it when you see that lovely interaction with a mother and a baby and the cooing backwards and forwards and that’s a really nice interaction and it’s not contrived. You know when you start to see those contrived situations like we’re saying with the Nathan Wallis work where you know where children learn to rote, it’s not really you know a degree of processing in the brain that’s happening there rather than a quick connection whereas when they’re involved in the learning they’re interested in it we’re going to get more of a clearer pathway of learning but more complexity there to how the brain thinks.

Janice

It’s the quality of these really responsive interactions that builds the young brain and that’s Ted Meluish and he was in the EPPE study um, that was one of his comments that he said that interaction builds the brain. So that’s very significant and like you said we want that rich interaction and that rich language experience because he says that makes a difference for children in that 0-5 period.

Vanessa

Absolutely and that um, then makes me ponder then, especially from as I’m a primary school teacher, that concept of you know, what has shaped this child prior to coming to school and you know what’s the um background influences that this child’s had in their lives so thinking about that concept of family and community shaping um how this child um listens, understands and then how they communicate effectively. Um I think it fits well with um you know the um Bronfenbrenner, (Janice: Yes) who had that social theory that you know that we learn within a community of learners and we learn how to effectively communicate with where we are positioned within that. And then when we go to school, it’s sort of a different level of communicating with people.

Janice

Yep. So we can think about, think about the rich experiences that’s really governed by the culture of the family and the culture of the community. So everyone’s experience is not going to be the same but that doesn’t mean that they’re not rich experiences. And I mean as the children get older they will engage with lots of other people in their community and their family, it might be their extended family or they might be in the community, they might be going to a day care centre, they might be going shopping with mum, they’ll be different and they might be going shopping with mum in inner city Sydney or shopping with mum in rural NSW, they’ll be quite different. So the language that they develop and the vocabulary they develop through those experiences will be different.

Vanessa

Hmm, absolutely. And I think too it’s interesting to consider that um there are different levels of demands of language on children in that like we’re saying within the household how they communicate would be different to actually how they go and communicate at the shop or how they communicate with people out in you know a different context, how they communicate with other children in the playground but it also makes me consider about then the differing demands of language when they come to the classroom or they’re coming to the preschool and um what are your thoughts on that Janice?

Janice

Yeah ‘cause that’s another dimension isn’t it because we now are putting children in a much more formal situation. And a situation where for some children they have not experienced it. So these experiences that they have are really going to be made explicit and they are going to have to be taught the protocols of the experiences and also then we use language in a very different way at school don’t we, because it’s a lot about functions you know we talk about explaining and um challenging and telling stories and you know it’s just so different to what a child might have experienced at home.

Vanessa

Absolutely and I think you know, background experience shapes how a child interacts but it’s also um, like, it influences the vocab that they’re able to use and the vocab of school is um so different to the vocab that we use when we’re communicating with our parents and family at home. So I think as teachers, at times we need to remember that and, and really like we were saying the title of the podcast is tune in and really think about how to tune in to these children and know, acknowledge what they’re bringing from home but then go well here’s the language demands of what we’re considering in the school environment and this is what I need to build in the children by listening to how they are communicating but also thinking about not just about are they communicating meaningfully but what vocab are they using, how do we need to you know build up that vocab knowledge and what do they need to know.

Janice

That’s right. And going back to the tuning in and tuning in is important for young children whether they’re learning the first words or whether they’re in school because without tuning in we can’t gear our, our instruction or our conversation to that child so we don’t want it to be too easy or we don’t it to be too hard, we want it to be just right and so that’s the tuning in and that’s why it’s so important that we know our child and we know about their child and their background so that we can get that teaching spot on for them.

Vanessa

Absolutely. It makes me then think, the way you just said that Janice of Goldilocks but on top of that it always um makes me think um about the zone of proximal development as well and really acknowledging that these children are all starting with something um and it’s knowing how to tune in and hear what they are bringing but then knowing well ok to help this child develop further these are the next steps that we’re going to take because that what sits within their learning propensity, that we’re not making things too hard for students to grasp we’re making it just right. I think have you got a little story to share with us too Janice?

Janice

Ah that’s right yes. I did work with a little child from Bangladesh in a child care centre and of course you know when children come into your classes they, this little child had spoke her home language, she has no English whatsoever, and they always say don’t they that if they’re very competent in their first language then it’s an easier shift into their second language and so I wondered whether this child had competency in her first language and I travelled home on the bus and this little girl was there with her mum, oh my goodness when I listened to that conversation she was more than competent in her first language. So that gave me an insight in to that bridge then into the second language. So you know it, you can be looking anywhere, any place to find this information about children, isn’t it.

Vanessa

Mmm absolutely. And I think that being a teacher, that is our job to open up those opportunities and I think it’s also considering how, because I’ve had students that have come to school and been selective mutes, so it’s how can I open up an opportunity for this child to be able to communicate with me or maybe even that I see them communicating like you did Janice with mum on the bus or that I can see them communicating with other children in the classroom or when they’re playing out in the playground, how can I get evidence of what this child is bringing and for me I always like finding that way in but it’s knowing what their interests are, what their motivations are because I think if we can really pinpoint that in students and know what’s of interest to them then I think that’s the way in to getting students engaged and talking with students when they are engaged and developing language that way.

Janice

The playground’s a really great place to observe children isn’t it because you find out so much more about them. But I’m thinking now then about, in the classroom particularly how we create spaces for children to develop their talk you know, what is it that we need to have in our classroom that will foster talk because we do know that oral language is, is the basis for later reading and writing so we need to make sure that that platform for later literacy development is solid and very firm and very supportive of future learning.

Vanessa

Oh absolutely. And within those um creating spaces it’s nice to have that informal interactive space to work with students as well or like we said before it could be peers so they could be working with friends in little spaces and not that you’re going to be hovering over the top of children but you’re listening and you’re aware of what children are saying and bringing to conversations and you know even being that, role of being the knowledgeable other as a teacher but also um engaging in a way to keep conversations going with children too.

Janice

And as I’ve been reading, the literature’s telling me that many interactions in the classroom are the IRE, the initiate, respond, evaluate and that doesn’t allow the environment for children to do a lot of talk or to have that sustained talk so that might be just a pondering point for people to think about – are there periods of sustained conversation where children use their language for functional purposes like questioning and um interacting and um expanding on information, describing.

Vanessa

It’s quite interesting you say that um Janice because sometimes I’ve reflected on my teaching as well and its like have I actually allowed opportunity for children to ask questions or you know expand on their knowledge or am I actually opening you know asking open-ended questions as well ‘cause I do think sometimes in the classroom we tend to get into a bit of a habit where we know we’ve got information we need to share and we tend to ask questions just to you know get a response and it’s like when you get to that point you do start to ask those closed questions which I guess we can all put our hands up to at times but it is that asking open-ended questions as well and allowing children to respond in the way that they want to respond and really making note of that response as well.

Janice

I think that’s a good point and Vanessa I don’t think you’re alone in thinking about your classroom and what you do because you are under a lot of pressure.

Vanessa

As teachers I think it’s really important to use reflective practice as well as consider how we can extend our students oral language. Bridie Raban in her article “Talk to think, learn and teach,” says children do not learn language by imitation. They learn to talk by talking to people who talk to them, people who make efforts to understand what they are trying to say. And I really think that’s an important part that we acknowledge what children bring to school and we work with that and develop that in the classroom.

Vanessa

So who are you now wondering about in your classroom um that you’re unsure about their oral language skills? And what opportunities could you offer in your classroom to take note of the oral language of your students?

So remembering that the child needs to be engaged in something that they’re interested in to learn about for you to really take a good note of um the oral language that your students hold and control independently.

I think oral language is such an important aspect and it’s great to reflect upon and I’ve loved um talking to you about it Janice.

Janice

Until next time Vanessa we’ll sign off, bye.

Vanessa

Thank you bye.

[End of transcript]

Vanessa

Hi and welcome to the second literacy in the early years podcast. I'm Vanessa Dimitroulas, and I am the P-2 Targeted Programs Advisor and joining me today is Janice Gorrie. Hi Janice.

Janice

Hi Vanessa and hello listeners. I'm the P-2 officer based in Moree and today, in the second podcast, we’re going to be looking at literacy as we come into the school setting. So, the last podcast we looked at, the child and being able to tune into the child and capturing a holistic view of the child in terms of all the things that the child's been involved in, in their world, so their family and their community. And how language has grown and developed.

So today now we're going to look at language as we enter the school setting and see the path that the school setting takes and the demands that the school setting will make on a child’s oral language.

Do you want to expand on that Vanessa?

Vanessa

Yeah, I think for us in schools it's interesting to consider what children bring with them in terms of like we said, that we covered last time, how they've been shaped in their oral language, how they even listen to commands and listen and respond to conversation. But today we're really going to dig deep into the role of the teacher and considering how us as teachers can model, scaffold and support the development of the oral language in our students in schools, especially as you were saying Janice, with the demands of the school language and academic language and how that's different to the oral language that students bring with them to schools.

I'd like to actually discuss here and bring to the forefront of what The Early Years Learning Framework says is our role as educators and that we are meant to be responsive to all the children's strengths, abilities and interests, and value what they build and value and build on the children’s strengths, skills and knowledge to ensure their motivation and engagement in learning. So, I think that's really nice to have at the forefront to consider this is what we need to do as educators and as teachers in schools.

So, building on from there, I'm just questioning myself, what does this mean for us in terms of oral language and you understanding your role as an educator in school, in terms of understanding talk, the role of talk in what you plan for in your classroom, formal and informal interactions that occur throughout your day.

Janice

And I could just add there too Vanessa, we need to be guided by the syllabus in the school, don't we? And what are the demands of the syllabus? So that's a part of our role as a teacher too. And so, when I checked the English syllabus, in the early stages, it's all about the informal talk. But later on, by stage four, it's all about the talk of a scientist or a musician or an artist and the way they talk and for the purpose of their talk. So now you can see we're getting into the more academic language.

So, they're going to be quite significant demands on the young child, isn't it, as they develop through their schooling?

Vanessa

That's it, and it's the role of the educator, obviously, to take the child on the journey and be able to make those developmental steps to get to that point because it does get quite complex, doesn't it, in terms of them being able to use this different vocab as well, to be able to speak like a scientist or to speak like a musician.

I’m thinking about the needs of our students, so we've got EAL/D students, we have verbal and nonverbal, and I think the role of a teacher in understanding the needs of these students to help us to understand, but to help these students to develop and to make that progression throughout the stages of learning as well.

Janice

That's interesting, because many of the scaffolds that teachers will put in to support those children are really, really helpful for all children, that's a really important point to think about, isn't it? All the diversity you have in your class.

Vanessa

Absolutely. So, it's diversity with being able to also consider as a teacher how you can help and support that diversity. So, thinking about, I've got a couple of points here I'm considering and, you know this is great as an educator, we're always considering aren’t we how we can help and support students moving ahead and how our role as a teacher is to actually model with our own verbal interactions. You know, the idea of having that intentional talk and facilitative talk.

As we're having activities in the classroom, whether we’re formally or informally interacting and then as we were just saying there too. So, considering our role is the teacher, is the model but also understanding the talk and the demands of talk within our classroom environment.

So, I think at this point would be nice to consider taking an audit of the current classroom practices. What are your thoughts on that Janice and how we could go about that?

Janice

Well I think, isn't that a really useful reflective tool for the teachers or educators to use to just think about, well, who does all the talking in the classroom? Yeah, what opportunities are there for the children to engage in authentic conversations with their peers? And what is the purpose of the talk? Because the talk of a child at the block corner will be different from the talk of a child out in the garden looking at bugs.

So, we've got, you know, the purposes of talk and what the talks about. But also, then, the roles in relationships, so who's the child talking to? Is it peer? Is it a familiar adult? Is it the principal? The different purposes that we have for speaking and the different relationships we have with the audience, these are all crucial things. The children have to learn as they develop this academic language for school.

Vanessa

And I think that you’ve just hit the nail on the head. They have to learn the academic language, but it needs to be adapted within the classroom and planned for in ways that it's easy for students to take that language on too, in meaningful ways.

So, I’ve been recently looking at the book, The Oral Language Book by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey, where they explore oral language and the development of, and they actually talk about 3 types of talk in the classroom, which I think is interesting to think about as educators.

Janice

That we can explore language in different contexts, different ways. So, the 3 types they've got are exploratory talk, presentational talk, and conversational talk. I think they provide teachers a good framework that will help them navigate the complexities of language; I think.

Vanessa

And I think it would be nice to actually delve into what we were talking about when we're saying exploratory and presentational and conversational talk.

So, Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey talk about exploratory talk, which is understanding and developing ideas. That idea of activating thinking, the deeper thinking and use of open as well as closed questions, which I know we went into our last podcast as well and how we can use language to explore, I guess is another way of saying exploratory talk.

Then we have the presentational, where this is not just about presenting news to the classroom or presenting a talk, but it's the idea of sharing information with others in terms of a presentational style of the way that we use language.

And then there's also the conversational, where we're referring to there the building of relationships and the conversations and the language that are used between peer to peer and in our circumstance with peer to teacher as well.

Janice

Because that last one’s a really interesting one because for young children who have come into Kindergarten, many of them haven't been in such a large group before, so now they're in a large group with one teacher and talking about getting the attention of the, that adult and knowing how to get the attention, when to get the attention, what the language is around your working in groups, the language of collaboration, that's a really important part of navigating the school, the school, the way school is, isn't it? And we don't often think about that. But that's a really important part of that, that conversational talk. That's really interesting that that's been added to those 3 areas.

Vanessa

That is very important. I reflect on my own teaching and you know, probably when I was a beginning teacher, and I don't know if I necessarily understood that aspect that students would be coming to school, especially Kindergarten, with their own shaped ways of interacting at home that they needed to learn how to then interact with teachers, with a different form of language to what they were used to having in their own home environment. So, I like that aspect there too, that they've added that in.

Janice

Will we move on Vanessa now thinking about that language rich classroom.

Vanessa

Yeah, I think it's quite interesting with those 3 aspects. So, the exploratory, the presentational and the conversational, that they all need to come into place in a language rich environment and we need to think of how we can extend and support, model, scaffold within those 3 spaces as well. So, I was sort of, was sort of thinking at that point there about delving into the aspect of the 3 areas that they talk about in terms of the understanding, the information, the digging deeper, and the new understanding that we're getting within the different spaces within our classroom as well.

So, along the way of using 3 different types of talk, thinking about within our planning and learning experiences that were going, and covering as a teacher, the understanding of the information that we're making the connections with the information and digging deeper and that we've got the new understanding within the teaching of a really language-rich environment where we're reading over 6 books a day with our students. That we’re having those lovely interactions with students. That we’re considering using closed and open questions, but having meaningful conversations, thinking about the quality of talk as much as the quantity of talk as well.

Janice

Yes, that's right and added to that, it's across all key learning areas, isn't it? So, it’s mindboggling, isn’t it? It's very, very complex.

Vanessa

It is, it is. There’s so much to be covered, isn't there? Like so, exploring even a little bit further, how we can do this as a teacher in the classroom and you know, we sort of touched on that. It needs to be planned for and you know, with a good understanding of the strengths and the skills that our students bring. We also, I think, need to contemplate how we can explicitly do this along the side of having that dialogical teaching, you know, that idea of having that ongoing talk where we have the turn-taking, but the role of the teacher within that turn-taking being able to support and facilitate ideas and develop and build on ideas. What are your thoughts on that Janice?

Janice

I think, Pair Share is a good strategy to move away from the monologue in the teacher-child, teacher-child, so that we have children in pairs, or in triads, or in fours, and they have the opportunity to talk and discuss and engage with other ideas.

And so that then allows for more opportunities to talk, and also then opportunity to dig deeper. And we know that talk is really important for developing thinking, isn't it? So that we need children to be talking about topics because that helps wire the brain. It's about a way of learning, learning more.

Vanessa

I'm also thinking about how I use to teach talking in the classroom and especially thinking, having the syllabus and you know, I'm ticking boxes, I'm going through, talking and listening and I always thought that giving news was the way to cover the talking and listening aspects within the curriculum. But reflecting on what even I've read with Cameron and Dempsey, it really is almost like. I thought it was presentational, but it's really a child just in a monologue, and it's not as meaningful as what you'd hope you'd be getting from having these lovely conversations in the classroom, where we have interactions and not just staged interactions like we had with news.

It's you know, that stop at the end, now who's got 3 questions. It's a matter of having more informal interactions to help develop that oral language experience. And I guess to help students to improve in their oral language interactions with students, too. So always considering you know, about getting the quality and quantity in there of oral language interactions to develop it, but along the lines of also considering the purpose and the audience for when we're talking.

Janice

Yeah, just to add into that Vanessa, I mean maybe news might be a short unit of work when you are talking about audience and purpose and bringing children to understand that the talk, who is their audience and what is the purpose of the talk and discussing that in relation to news. But it may only be short because you’ll move on to something else around audience and purpose and then, and then it's beyond that, it is the topic that the topic comes in, so you know you might be going into maths or science or and, and then your relationships with your audience that you have.

So sometimes it’s informal, therefore your language choice is different. But if it's a very formal setting, then your language choice is different again. Yeah, so that's a really valid point you know, just thinking about maybe news in a different way, that's all.

Vanessa

Yes.

Janice

Yeah, but also bringing it into that audit of who does all the talking and other children learning about talking in terms of audience and purpose and listening to because there's a lot of listening going on.

Vanessa

So, reflecting on today's chat, I'm wondering how you will prompt and guide your students when talking and being active in the spaces in your classroom? Or how you will organise your classroom in ways to support your students in order to deepen their thinking, as well as to collaborate with others?

So, thinking about the aspects of incorporating dialogic talk as well as explicit teaching.

Vanessa

I was thinking about reflecting on the quote from Erin Reed and Julie Baxar, where they say oral language lays the foundation for the reading and writing skills children develop as they enter, and they progress through school. That they will use this oral language in all aspects in their education in a way to connect with others. And have that solid foundation in oral language that will help them to become successful readers and strong communicators and build their confidence and overall sense of well-being. Because we know that that is our aim of teaching, is to help students to develop their sense of identity as well as become functioning citizens in society which is part of our strategic plan.

Janice

I think that encapsulates it all, doesn't it? The importance of oral language.

So, we hope you've got something to take away. Think about those reflective questions. And think about what you might do differently in your class.

Thanks, Vanessa

Vanessa

Great, thank you, Janice.

[End of transcript]

Sue Dockett

Hi everybody. Welcome to our next podcast about transition to school. I'm Sue Dockett and I’m here today with Bob Perry to talk about transition to school in times of COVID. It's been a really messy year, this year, hasn’t it Bob?

Bob Perry

Yes, Sue, it certainly has been a messy year. School teachers certainly know how difficult it's been for them, preschool teachers, children, families. We’ve had lots of illness, lots of unemployment and difficulties and stress in the house. So, I think it's no wonder that children might be just a little bit uncertain about what's going to happen as they start school next year.

Sue Dockett

Yes, it’s quite likely that children are feeling a little unsettled but it's also quite likely that parents and families and, maybe, teachers themselves are feeling a little bit unsettled as well.

In our earlier podcast, we talked about transition and how we define transition, and really emphasized the notion that transition is a time to build relationships. When children start school, we’re really looking at how important it is to build relationships among the children among the teachers, among the parents, and children, and teachers, essentially providing a really safe and secure base for children as they start school. And one of the things that clearly been disrupted as we've had starts to school and then time away, and starts to preschool, and time away and all sorts of things is there’s been disruption to building those relationships.

So, as a teacher looking at Kindergarten next year, it's really important to consider how we might work to build some of those relationships that will support all of us and all involved as children start their school year.

Bob Perry

We often look at transitions to school in terms of 4 major constructs. We talk about opportunities, aspirations, expectations, and entitlements, and some of these have remained pretty much the same as they would in a normal year and others have been changed quite dramatically via COVID.

So, for example, the aspirations that people hold, parents hold for the children, children hold for themselves, and teachers hold for everyone haven't changed very much. We still want the very best for everyone. However, some of the expectations might have changed so, for example, there are some things that we just can't do with social distancing and so on.

Then, the entitlements, however, the entitlement to a successful, effective transition to school, that certainly hasn't changed, and we still want our parents and our families to be engaged with their children’s schooling as much as possible.

And then, of course, some of the opportunities that are provided by the very difficulties that we're living in, well they're the ones we need to really concentrate on. How can we turn this around to make it an opportunity to do the very best that we can?

Sue Dockett

Yes, Bob, I think you're right. Still looking at those four constructs, they still remain incredibly important as we look at this transition even though it's going to be quite different.

You’ve talked about expectations there and a number of those really have changed. In previous years, we would expect that children who were going to start school the following year and probably some members of their family would spend time at the school. We’d be able to get to know them in a face-to-face context and we’d be really on top of that relationship building.

But we know that orientation programs this year are different. It's not going to be easy to have a whole lot of children visiting schools often to build up those relationships. We know that the advice is that family members are not necessarily part of those orientation programs and even that family information sessions are probably not going to be held face to face. So, there's a whole range of changes there in terms of the expectations of what transition practices might look like, and what an orientation program might look like.

But those changes aren’t necessarily bad things. Sometimes, we almost need a bit of a shake-up to really examine what we do and why we do it and to think about how we could do things differently. Like Bob said, all children and families still have the entitlement to access an effective and really supportive transition program. So, what does that actually mean in this particular changed circumstance?

Well, going back to what I said earlier about the importance of relationships, how can we look to build those relationships that are really important in these changed circumstances. If we can't talk to parents face to face, if we're not going to see children as much as we would like, how are we going to work out what the basis for those relationships might be? There are lots of possibilities and I'm sure many of you have been thinking outside the box, but let's share just a couple of possibilities.

The first thing I’d suggest really strongly is that it's important for teachers across preschool and school to really work out how they can communicate. It may not be possible to have face-to-face meetings but that relationship between preschool educators and schoolteachers is a really important basis for getting to know children and families. That sort of communication can set the scene for being able to build responsive learning environments particularly in the first year of school.

Sue Dockett

It really is important to build those relationships with early childhood educators, but it's also really important to build those relationships with families and with children. And because we're not going to be able to meet with families face-to-face, there are lots of other strategies that are going to be called in to play. It may be that we go back to writing letters, that there are video messages or audio messages that can be shared with family. It may be that particular packs of information can be shared with families. Whatever it is we need to do to look at how we can connect with families.

It’s also really, really important to build relationships with children. Many of the strategies that you've used already in previous years might still be effective in this different time. It might be, for example, that social story books, videos that are shared between preschool and school services, or it might be virtual tours of the school, photographs and drawings that are shared. These are some ways that you might connect with children and, at least, share some of the context of the school.

Children, when they think about starting school are often really focused on the physical environment, what does it look like? Where do I go? What happens when? There are a number of ways that, as educators, you can share images of the school, whether they be photos, drawings, maps and so on. It can be a really intriguing situation to try and think about what children want to know about school and your existing kindergarten children are going to be a really important source of advice in this.

Bob Perry

To finish, I want to say something about Term 1 of next year. This is really going to be a very important time now, even more important than it usually is with new students coming school. ‘Take your time’ is the mantra that I'd like to put forward. Take time to get to know the children, take time to get to know the families, take time to get to know just how things are going to work and who your children are, after the disruption that they've had this year.

And finally, I’d like to say something about the other years. Remember that the other years will also be undergoing a transition after a very disruptive year. Many children, as they move from kindergarten to Year 1, tell us that that's a really big transition for them; sometimes even bigger than starting school. But the older children will also be impacted, so remember that they will need to be thought about as part of your overall school transition program. Thanks for listening. We hope you have found this useful.

[End of transcript]

Bob Perry

Hi I'm Bob Perry,

Sue Dockett

and I’m Sue Dockett,

Bob Perry

and we're here to talk to you a little bit about transition to school. Sue, I wonder if we can start by asking you to define what you mean by transition to school?

Sue Dockett

OK, thanks Bob. We’ve spent a lot of time, many years, and had many different experiences, and we’ve talked to people about transition to school, what's important for them and what it means to them.

We generally start by defining transitions as a time when individuals change their role or their status in their particular community, and that's a really, really broad definition that applies to each and every one of us. For example, when we first become teachers, we change our role and our identity in a particular structure, whether it be a school or an early childhood setting.

When we talk about transition to school, we talk about it in that really, really broad sense of children changing their role, their identity, even their status as they become school students or school children. It's about that broad concept of changing their role in a particular structure.

Bob Perry

We even change the name that we give the children, don’t we? We call them students or pupils when they start school.

Sue Dockett

Yes, certainly as opposed to when they are in childcare or preschool, they are much more referred to as children. But even its noticeable that children themselves change the way they talk about themselves. When we've talked to kindergarten children about who they are or what they're involved in, they’ll often say, “well my name’s so and so, I'm 5, I’m in Kinder”, or “I'm at school” and you get a real sense that their identity is changed in that context. They've become a part of that school community.

So, in that really, really broad-sense, transition is a time when we change our role, our status, our identity within a particular community, in this case, within a particular school community.

Bob Perry

OK, and the Department of Education has used some language in the guidelines that perhaps we should mention to talk about transition to school. They talk about transition to school being an active process of continuity and change, and I think we will come back to that later as children move into the first year of school. And it’s a process, and it takes time.

Sue Dockett

And it certainly involves a range of people; it’s not something that the child is just going through, on their own, individually. It’s a social process and involves a whole range of people.

Bob Perry

And in the past, we’ve talked a lot about orientation programs, and they’re still very important and the Department recognises that, but they’re the sorts of short-term things that occur so that children and families can get to know what’s going to happen. Things like uniforms, starting times, all those sorts of things, but they’re not the whole transition.

Sue Dockett

No, if we take that notion of changing your role in a particular context or community structure, we start to look at transition not so much as an event, a ‘one-off’ or even a few events such as a school tour or walking around the school. We start to think of transition as a process; a process that often begins well before an orientation program and a process that doesn't necessarily finish on the first day of school.

We talk very much in our research about transition being a time of building relationships and we talk particularly about transition to school not finishing until children, families, educators feel like there's a genuine sense of belonging that's been generated in that community. So, when a child feels like they belong to school we’d say transition has completed. We haven't yet talked about parents, but we will shortly, because it's not just a transition for children. There are transitions for a whole range of people as children make that move to school.

Bob Perry

Would you summarise then by saying that transitions really are about the development of relationships? Relationships among the adults, relationships among the educators from prior to school and school, relationships among the children. Are transitions really about relationships?

Sue Dockett

In this case, I’d certainly agree that that’s the case – that transitions are about building relationships, because it is within those relationships, that children build that sense of belonging. It's about feeling like they fit into the school environment, that somebody knows and cares for them, that they actually belong.

So, yes, I’d really reiterate that whole point that, in our work, in our expositions of transition, we are really talking about building relationships. And, yes, as you said, you can certainly do some of that through orientation programs, but there's a whole range of other transition practices that are about building and supporting and maintaining those essential relationships.

Bob Perry

So, let’s then leave it at that to start with, and we'll go on, later on, to talk about some of the other aspects of transition to school.

Sue Dockett

Great. Lots of things to talk about in terms of transition. Look forward to your company next time. Thanks.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward

Welcome to today's podcast in the Early Learning Matters series. My name is Jacqui Ward and I’m the Early Learning Coordinator with the Department of Education and today I'm joined by Kelly O'Shea, Principal of Tarro Public School in the Hunter region, and Carolyn Wilson, the Transition Support Teacher, Early intervention and we're also joined by Donna Deehan, who is the Transition Adviser within Early Learning.

Today we're talking about how Tarro Public School connects with their school community to provide a positive transition and how they've made some changes and thought outside of the box to work within the restrictions of COVID in 2020.

So, welcome today Kelly and Carolyn, it’s really great to talk to you today and thank you for generously sharing lots of information and your wisdom and your expertise in this area. We really appreciate it. I'm going to jump straight into our first point for discussion which is, why is transition to school important at your place at Tarro?

Carolyn Wilson [Transition teacher, Early intervention]

I'll take that question Jacqui. Here at Tarro, we believe that a strong start creates successful learners and that a positive transition to school is what sets the foundation for lifelong learning. We see it as the opportunity for us to make those positive educational connections and to build those trusting relationships that can strengthen the learning pathways. So, from our perspective, we consider effective transitions to embrace that holistic approach, that they generate excitement about the next step on the learning continuum, and we do that by creating that strong sense of belonging and connectedness, not only to the learning but to the school community and we definitely see it as our bedrock for success.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, I couldn't agree more, and that's exactly what the evidence based tells us as well. That it’s such an important part of having a really positive and successful experience within children’s whole schooling careers. It’s time and money well spent, I guess to invest in these transition practices because they have such a long-lasting impact.

Carolyn Wilson

We definitely agree, absolutely.

Jacqui Ward

So, what do you guys think high quality transition practices look like? What do you think they comprise off? You mentioned relationships being really important in creating that sense of belonging.

Carolyn Wilson

Yes, at Tarro and across our whole LMG really, we talk about having optimum transitions and that involves establishing not only positive practices, but us having vital behaviours and a toolkit of resources that we employ.

High quality transition practices are really those that are extensive, thoughtful and planned, and that's definitely what we do here, and we believe it incorporates that whole of the community approach.

It involves all the stakeholders, all the partners in all sectors. It definitely needs to be flexible and responsive, and we focus on making sure we've got a place for every face.

It’s important that we deliver on personalised learning and planning and that we provide those supports and adjustments that are required and key to this is making sure that we're mindful and respectful of the values, the needs and interests and strengths of not only our local community, but the families participating in our programs and the children transitioning.

So, in terms of Tarro Public School and certainly we've adopted this across our whole LMG, we embrace the ready, ready, ready approach and that’s ready schools, ready families, ready communities, equals ready children. In fact, we've developed a simple pro forma that we're sharing across our LMG and using as a measure of this and what we do to make sure that we're actively considering all of those domains and addressing them when we're planning for our transition programs.

Jacqui Ward

I think that sounds amazing and I really think it's fantastic to have a school, sharing practice about the idea that sort of blows that notion of children and school readiness out of the water, because if we think about Bronfenbrenner's theory about children and how they learn, they do learn within the context of their family and community, and so those people and their supports, that support them as such, are key players in making sure that transition is as smooth as possible and their learning is recognised and there's a continuity of learning for children.

That is awesome to hear. Thank you.

So, I guess moving on to the million dollar question here. What do you see is particularly important for transition for the 2021 Kindergarten cohort, because it's been a bit of a different year for us all and for those little ones that might not have had their 600 hours of universal access to a preschool, or they’ve at a minimum had it disrupted. What are your thoughts around that?

Kelly O’Shea [Principal, Tarro Public School]

Well, we were treating 2021 transition like we would have regarded any transition really, it's important for any cohort of transition. The purpose of transition from Tarro’s perspective is that it creates a meaningful connection with children and their families. So, for the 2021 cohort transition it's particularly important because we need to provide the children and their families in the community with an opportunity to engage in stability in our increasingly complex and changing global environment. So, by this I mean that we need to connect families with the school and develop a solid partnership and ensure that our families are being supported to participate in unique transition practices because we still need to set up our incoming Kinders for success.

So, what we're doing at the moment is certainly nowhere near what we would refer to as the norm. However, as a school, we are recognising the needs within our community and addressing these in a variety of ways. Whether that's virtually or making over the phone contact as opposed to that personal contact that we've done previously.

Jacqui Ward

I absolutely love that too, that you've said, so that ideology is the same, isn't it? It's about thinking about different ways to do the same kind of practices and drawing on the strengths of what you've already done. Yes, amazing, that's great.

So, what are the sort of special considerations at this time do you think from your point of view as a school, and obviously the families and children? You can speak to those separately or together. What sort of other things have you had to go ‘ah what about you know’?

Kelly O’Shea

So really, it was about finding ways to maintain the robust delivery of the key elements of an onsite transition program. First of all, we had to identify platforms for communication, and we had to connect in multiple ways with our children’s services providers to gain the information we would normally gather from our programs.

So, that might have meant providing photos of our incoming Kinders so that our staff here at Tarro were becoming familiar with the faces and the names, because normally they would get to see our little Joey’s friends in the playground, but that's not happening at the moment. In terms of our families, in the considerations for our families, we had to be mindful of the pressures and the stresses that are impacting our families at the moment, and addressing these, and reassuring them that in spite of transition looking and feeling different, we’re still well prepared.

We're acknowledging the anxiousness around the current state and the impact that it's had, but we're still sending out information that is providing them with the resources that they need and to get them prepared and their children prepared for school.

We found that doing this, providing information in a family friendly way which was easy to understand and consume. So, we're using visuals, putting out video clips were offering social stories. We're also offering opportunities throughout the year to conference, like a Zoom for Q and A. Zoom for incoming Kinder parents. We’re trying to engage them on a variety of platforms that they're comfortable with using and that they can easily access to give them what we would have given them in person, virtually.

And for our kids, we're really fortunate that we've already established contact with many of our incoming Kinders through our transition support teacher role because Cass has visited our local services. She's been doing that since the start of the year. Which is one of our priorities that Cass makes contact with our incoming Kinders and we know, what we need to work on with them and so our next step in that is to have a roadshow visit where the Kinder teacher for next year will go with Cass to the centres and spend time with the children and provide the kids with a little show bag of activities information related specifically to Tarro and what they can expect from coming to big school.

Jacqui Ward

That sounds so beautiful. What a lovely way for children to feel so valued and cared for, you know that you guys are reaching out to their space. You know where they've come from and what a great opportunity I think, to make some really, build some great relationships and connections with the early childhood teachers and educators.

That sounds amazing and I guess. As you said, there's still room to do all of those sorts of things. They’re just looking a little bit differently and I think you make a really good point. There's a lot of anxiety out there for families about what their child is missing out on, and I think we need to make sure that we make a big effort to say, “It's okay”. It's not missing out, it's just looking different in this year and it is part and parcel that supporting people I guess, to be a little bit more resilient in this time, which has been a stressful year for everybody hasn’t it?

Carolyn Wilson

And Jacqui, offering that reassurance via our children’s services and the staff that we work with in partnership has been really critical to that, so I'm certainly gathering feedback around and the questions families are asking and the anxieties that are presenting, and so we're making sure that we're including that, not only in Tarro’s delivery of information but across our whole LMG. We're addressing that, so it's really acting as a guide for what to make sure we are including and making sure that those questions are answered in an upfront manner, so parents have that reassurance.

Jacqui Ward

I love that. Yes, that's really something that I guess again an example of a high performing practice, isn't it, that you're being responsive and that you're adjusting things as you go, because I think that's one of the things we need to think about. Transition to school, it's not formulae, because in one context or in one particular cohort, things might work for that particular group that don't work for another. So, we do need to be thinking about being adaptive and responsive and innovative at all times.

Carolyn Wilson

It's not a static program, it has to be fluid and always responding to the context.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, that’s awesome, we might move on to thinking specifically about your community and your demographic there at Tarro. I'm really interested to hear what sort of data or evidence do you guys have in terms of measures of success, because this is one that I think schools find a little bit tricky and if they were thinking about putting a strategic direction on their school plan, including transition, what does it look like? What are your success measures? So, what do you guys use in terms of your data or evidence?

Carolyn Wilson

We're very lucky at Tarro. We have people who are passionate about joeys and making sure that all our little friends are well looked after and catered for in terms of data collection. Maxine Chapman is my community liaison officer, and she is actually the coordinator of all of our joey’s programs and she works with a joey like a member of my teaching staff with the joey's teacher and they complete observation checklists and they collect work samples on each student.

At the beginning of joeys, the work samples of simple things like, are they able to write their name unassisted or can they recognise their name in print? However, as the program continues, this data becomes an important point of reference for the joey’s teacher as they'll start the following year knowing exactly where each child strengths and areas of development are. And I guess it's like any program we run at Tarro. We're continually asking for feedback and evaluating success through a variety of means and joeys certainly falls under this category.

One of the main benchmarks we used to evaluate the success of joeys is how successfully the Kinder cohort begins the following year. 2020 has certainly been our best year yet as we had all of the puzzle pieces working cohesively to ensure it was successful. We had an experienced early childhood educator as the joey's teacher. Cass was completing observations in gathering feedback from the EC services and as well as providing joeys and their families and the school with the support where it was required.

Maxine was building relationships with the families to ensure that all needs were catered for and that each family felt comfortable within the school setting and how joeys was operating, and I made sure that I was available to chat with parents and carers during the joeys sessions. I would often pop down to the hall and just informally chat to people about how things were going, just to get their feedback and I always attend the LST meetings regarding our incoming Kinder friends so that I know what supports we need and I can play my role in supporting families, supporting Cass, supporting Maxine to make sure that we have a ready school for ready kids.

Jacqui Ward

That sounds amazing and I love the fact that you've got that real focus on the importance and the value of information sharing. I'm really interested to hear, how does the transition to school statement from early childhood services fit in your picture, in that sort of data collection?

Carolyn Wilson

Well Jacqui, one of the things that we're really fortunate to have are those connections with our feeder children services as a result of this dedicated role operating across the LMG. So, we've really taken a proactive approach to gathering information about our students transitioning to school and we invite all of our centres to share the relevant information through whatever channel suits them best.

I'm certainly routine in contact and visiting our services across the community. We hold regular network meetings, and we share information across other platforms. We also advocate the use of the department's Early Childhood Transition to School referral for any children with additional learning and support needs and tools like the transition to school statements, end of year reports, observational data interviews and checklists are just some of the ways that we are routinely receiving and exchanging information in support of transition to school.

Now with COVID, we've certainly had new challenges with the information gathering and we've worked through our services to individualise the best ways to ensure the practices continue. I guess for us, and I think Kel’s talked a little bit throughout this, the key to it has been the multi-pathway approach that we don't rely on one format for transition planning and information gathering. But rather we ensure our services have got multi options to share and engage with us.

Now many of our centres are providing summative statements and they're happy to provide that at various times throughout the year, but our best results really are coming from establishing the face-to-face partnerships. It’s the combination of the school delivered programs like joeys, that Kelly spoke about, the community outreach role that I provide, and the early ongoing contact that we have across that whole 12 months period prior to starting school that's making the difference. It really is allowing us to engage in that collaborative, consultative process to bring about the best outcomes for all of our pre-K students.

Jacqui Ward

That sounds great. I guess one last thing I'd like to ask you is how has the transition work that you guys have been doing featured in school planning? Have you got an element on your school plan that particularly focuses in on this particular area?

Carolyn Wilson

Yes, absolutely, it's part of the combined planning that the school engages in.

Kelly O’Shea

Yes, so from Tarro’s perspective, Strategic Direction 3 around community and involving the community in regular opportunities to engage in a range of activities to support learning and develop that collaborative partnership. Our real focus for this direction is to create an authentic learning partnership where parents and carers are part of the learning process that happens, so we run parent workshops during joey sessions, and the idea behind this is that we’re building foundations for this learning partnership by encouraging parents to engage and be present and be interested in what's going on.

Jacqui Ward

That sounds amazing.

Kelly O’Shea

Yes, and it's to support them to provide them with the knowledge to successfully support their child without the fear of being wrong I guess, because a lot of parents don't want to work with their child because they think they will show them the wrong way, if that's not the way they're doing it at school. But it's also trying to take away that intimidation, particularly in this community that some of the parents may feel because they've had bad experiences or not positive experiences with school themselves.

Jacqui Ward

That’s such an important aspect, isn't it? Again, the evidence base tells us if families are involved in students’ learning, then the children have improved outcomes so that's such an important aspect of that, and I love the fact that you know children pick up on the anxiety from families as well, so that's going to impact on how ready they are to start school. If a parent is not feeling as well supported and transitioned as well so you know, you can't look at a child without looking at that child within the context of their family and community, I think. So, I think that's really amazing what you guys are doing. I wish I had a child attending Tarro Public School, it sounds amazing, and it really sounds like you guys should really be applauded and recognised for all the great work that you are doing.

Is there anything else? I'm just mindful that we've probably gone on for a while now. Is there any last sort of messages that you'd like to share with anyone about what you're doing and anything else?

Carolyn Wilson

I think the last thing I guess we'd like to share is around that continuous improvement and really this COVID period has reinforced the importance of being responsive as you were saying to our community, and being responsive to the partners within it and being prepared to do things differently and being open to change and I think if we're talking about continuous improvement, then that's what we need to be focusing on. That it's about creating sustainability with the changes we put in place by always being prepared to adapt and adopt new and better ways of doing things.

Jacqui Ward

I think that's a great message and hopefully we've all learned in our lives, but also within our schools that that's really an important message of this, the whole COVID and learning from home situation, that we need to be brave and I guess, give something new a try and you never know how that might impact children and make a difference, I guess in children and families lives.

So, thank you both Kelly and Carolyn, it's been amazing talking to you today and I really appreciate you giving of your time. Carolyn Wilson and Kelly O’Shea

Thank you very much.

[End of transcript]

[Music]

Lisa Wicks [Transition Advisor, Early Learning]

Welcome to the Early Learning matters podcast. My name is Lisa Wicks and I am the Transition Advisor in Early Learning. Today I am joined by Kate Lord, Kindergarten teacher at Woy Woy Public School and Whitney Williams, Preschool teacher at Guliyali preschool. Today we are talking about the effective use of the Transition to School Statement to support continuity of learning.

The first question I'd love to ask you, can you tell us how you use the Transition to School Statements at your school?

Whitney Williams [Preschool teacher, Guliyali Preschool]

As an early childhood teacher, it allows me to pass on information about each child’s personality, their strengths, and interests, as well as their skill sets like their communication skills, their social skills, and any dispositions for learning they may have as well.

Kate Lord [Kindergarten teacher, Woy Woy Public School]

And I suppose, how I use it as an early childhood teacher in Kindergarten is by using that information that Whit has given us to implement it in the classroom to better set up the learning environment and that student for a successful start to their Kindergarten year the following year.

Lisa

How do you collaborate with each other to actually do that and look at the information?

Kate

I can drop in there. So, we usually have structured meetings where Whitney has brought the Transition to School Statements to our meetings with all our Early Stage 1 staff. Whitney will then go through those children looking at, I suppose their different learning needs that they have, their interests, things like that because then that guides us when we're looking at class placements for the next year and then how to support those children best in the Kindergarten classrooms.

Lisa

Whitney do you to have anything to add to that?

Whitney

I think also having the Early Stage 1 teachers come over for duties and they get to know the children personally. And it really starts that relationship building at an early stage.

Lisa

What do you think is the most valuable aspect of your collaboration around the Transition to School Statement?

Kate

I think that a shared understanding of that child, and I suppose, Whitney, has had that child and nurtured that child for that year. So, she knows that child best as well as their families in that statement. And I feel that by passing that information on, we've got a really solid understanding of that child and how to support them best. So, we've got that common ground.

Whitney

I think too, with the children that are coming with a lot of prior knowledge, the early childhood teachers can pass on information about where the child is sitting, so they can really foster that continuity of learning for each child individually.

Lisa

You talked about continuity of learning, which is great. Whitney, when you talk about the Transition to School Statements, do you find that you address the learning that is occurring and where children may be in terms of learning going into Kindergarten? Knowing what the outcomes are for Kindergarten and how they are sitting or what they need help with or what they're strong in in terms of addressing those outcomes?

Whitney

Yes, certainly. I think the statement really affords itself to making connections between the Early Years Framework and the Early Stage 1 curriculum in the syllabus so, it really does help say whether it's literacy or numeracy we can add points like that so that the Early Stage 1 teachers know where the child is sitting.

Lisa

And Kate, do you find that you can use that information to look at a starting point? Combining that a little bit with Best Start, do you find that that information helps guide you even more when you look at the two things together?

Kate

Oh absolutely, because we've got that prior learning and we can continue that into that classroom and then build on what we see with Best Start, and that knowledge of play-based learning that is happening in the preschool. We transfer that into the Early Stage 1 classroom to make it a secure little environment for those children to be starting to give them a nice, secure environment so that they can feel that they can take those educational risks, and even those social risks and feel comfortable in their new little place.

Lisa

I'm just wondering, the information and the way that you share your Transition to School Statements, do you think that enables you to go back and revisit with each other how the children are going once the children start school? So, if there is something that has come up, you might be able to go back and talk to Whitney about why this might be occurring or how you could better address something, based on Whitney's knowledge of that child?

Kate

Absolutely, and Whitney will usually have a tool belt of things that she's tried before that have worked well, and what parents have said before that have worked as well. So, Whitney does have this tool belt of amazing strategies that might not be necessarily documented in the Transition to School Statement, but that communication with her is so, so valuable.

Lisa

So, just to wrap up, I'm wondering if, Whitney, you could talk to us about, the strength you find in sharing your information and your curriculum and your pedagogy with the Early Stage 1 teacher, how you think that helps? And then Kate if you could do vice versa?

Whitney

I think the biggest or the most valuable thing about that statement is, we're reassuring the parents that all that important information is being passed on to their new teachers for the following year and it really helps put their minds at ease knowing that that information, strategies we use in the preschool, systems of work, they can be put in place in the Kindergarten setting to support their children as they transition into formal schooling. Particularly for children with additional needs or behavioural needs, anxious children as well. I think that is it's really valuable for all children.

Kate

Absolutely, I totally agree, and going from Whitney said about the parents and the families because they're also going through that transition process as well. Making sure that when those parents come into our classroom and that they can see that, oh, actually, that communication has been made between the preschool teacher and the teacher, because I can see that the things that my child was doing in preschool are also now happening in the Kindergarten room. Just to make sure that they feel happy, and in the end it's about that continuity of learning and making sure that we build on what those children actually know and can do to have a strong successful start in their primary school development.

Lisa

Thank you so much. It is so lovely to talk to people who are really using the statements in a way to support children because that's what our jobs are to support children in their transition to school. I've loved talking to you both today, thanks and I shall talk to you again soon.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward [Early Learning Coordinator, Department of Education]

Welcome to the Early Learning podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward and I am the Early Learning Coordinator in the Early Learning team and I'm here today with Therese Winyard who is our Transition Advisor specialising in early intervention. Welcome Therese, I am very excited to talk to you today.

Therese Winyard [Transition Advisor, Early Intervention]

Yes, thanks Jacqui. I'm very excited too, to be talking about how we can help our young children with disability in this time where we're looking at a lot of children probably going to be at home and that we're looking at ways to help their continuity of learning. So, we really need to consider how we can support a young children with disability through this time.

Jacqui

I agree because I think it's definitely been raised as a bit of a concern or a challenge for people to think about how do we support young learners? And there's an extra layer on that with this isn't there, to think how do we support young learners with a disability? I would be really interested to draw on your expertise here to think about what things do we need to consider for supporting children with a disability in this remote context. What do you think some of the priorities are?

Therese

Well, I think some of the first considerations are really looking at the complexity of children with a disability being at home. Teachers and parents of a child with a disability, often the situation can be very difficult and for families with children with disability, it's not the only child that they have at home. Often, they have siblings, other children who might be at school and the families are trying to keep their learning going.

They may have another child with a disability because in so many cases where there's one child with a disability in a family, often there can be more. So, I think families are going to be feeling very stressed at this time. it's going to be a challenging situation for everyone, for the teachers and for the parents. But I think it's going to offer us lots of opportunities to develop ways of working together really well.

Jacqui

I think that's a really good point to raise, and I think that's probably across the board, I can imagine myself as a parent. I don't have children at school at this time, but if I did, I've got 4 children, I can only imagine what it would be like to try and support all of them with learning from home. So, I think it's really important to reinforce that it's really about learning in everyday ways and incidental learning and learning through play and learning through routines and all those sorts of things.

I think that what you're saying there is so, so important. Not just at times when children are home from school, but in the whole way that early intervention is best delivered in these times. The current thinking really is about the power of working with the families anyway at home and that they know how to support their children in their day-to-day routines, learning through everyday activities at home.

There's lots of complexities that we need to think about for families with a child with a disability. So, what are some of the things that we could support families in that way? So, how do we work with that support for continuity of learning?

Therese

Yeah, well I've got a few strategies here that I'd like to go into, but just before I do, one of the things that I think is also part of the complexity and also part of ways to work with families of children with disability when they're at home, is remembering that often these children have a large number of services through the week. So, we may be their early intervention teacher, or we may be their preschool teacher, but in other times during the week, they may also be going to speech therapy, they may be going to occupational therapy, they might be going to swimming lessons somewhere fitted in there.

All of those things are going to be missing and so many of these children have such a strong reliance on the routine of the week, that they're going to be feeling really lost and really anxious. So, really one of the most important strategies often to think about in that regard, is to think about how these children might be feeling and start to address that in ways that they're going to be able to understand easily.

And one of those ways that works really well, tried and proven is social stories, stories that explain to the children why they’re at home, why their school's closed, to put their mind at rest about the germs that are around and why everyone is feeling anxious, including everybody at home, starting to feel anxious about the situation. It will pass, but young children with disability pick up on this and social stories explaining how that works is a fantastic strategy.

Jacqui

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, I'm a big fan of the social story. I think as you say, it's such an important thing. I think a lot of people shy away from unpacking complex topics with children, any of the young children, especially children with a disability, because they think they can't understand those sort of high-level concepts, but they actually still need to have those concepts broken down by the trusted adults, don't they?

Therese

Absolutely, Jacqui, and they're really feeling the stresses that are around them at the time, and it's amazing how much a simple social story read over and over again can really support them to understand what's happening and make them feel safe and secure.

And I think it's important, really important too, if we do have this remote learning context to think particularly about those relationships with these children and families. They're going to need, really need our teachers to be supporting and contacting and touching base, probably more so I think than other children. I think probably for some of our other preschool children, maybe they'll go off and do their own thing for whatever time that the preschool is closed. But I think in this case it's really important not just about the learning but about the wellbeing.

I think that's the first consideration actually in this situation at the moment, that will remain. When you've got people feeling safe and secure, then they can start to look at moving along the line to look at how families and teachers can work together to start to get the learning continuing at home because it's such an important time for young children with disability and we want that to be able to keep on, and they need to work together to make that happen.

Jacqui

And I think that's exactly leading into our next point, is what sort of advice do you think we've got for teachers and families to focus in on some strategies? Maybe they are things that people are already using, it's just about implementing them differently.

Therese

Yeah, that's right, it may well be what people are already using. Early intervention teachers particularly are really good at working with families to work out their individual education programs and what those goals are going to be in the individual education programs. It's really important that those goals relate to things that are in the natural environment that the families can actually continue to support at home, so that it's not actually a really, set up environment that's going to be a bit like homework for children at home where families and children are being stressed and where families are feeling that they need to sit the child down and make them do these particular tasks.

It's more about having really strong goals that we're really looking at working on but working out ways that they can happen in the natural environment, in natural learning situations and in ways that families are already doing in their own spaces.

So, making the learning, if you want children to be able to match things, well match the socks. All sit down and start sorting out the socks together and get the ones that all look the same and put them together. That's just an example of ways that it can be done at home and done in natural ways. Also, what's really important here is that we don't destroy the relationship between the parent and the child because the parent's trying to make them learn.

Jacqui

Oh, for sure. That's exactly what I was thinking. If I was at home with my children, and I was trying to make people do stuff and they were going like 'Homework, oh not doing that'. You don't want to create sort of more anxiety and more stress – you want it to be a joyous opportunity to share in children's learning.

Therese

Play comes into it as well. Playing with children, encouraging parents to play with their children. Also trying to bring in all the goals of all the other people who are working with the child into sort of one group where the family feel that they're working on everything that they need to be working on in natural ways and while building a really strong relationship with their child and not making it stressful.

Jacqui

So, it might be a good opportunity to revisit those individual plans and saying, ‘How can we tailor those?’, still focusing on the learning but doing it in a different way.

Therese

Because a lot of the work that will be in the individual education plans will be things that the teachers were imagining they were going to do in the classroom, and so finding a way to make them relevant to the children at home and the ways that it can be done in that natural home environment is really very important.

Jacqui

I couldn't agree more, and there's also some great resources on our department website as well. So, there's the learn from home website and it's got lots and lots of resources in there for children, preschool all the way up to Year 12. There's lots of parent resources, there's whole lot of different links to other websites, so it's a really good one-stop-shop for resources.

Therese

And we'll be gradually building that resource as well, Jacqui, so if you've been there once, go back again because there'll be more there as we move through the coming weeks, that's going to be a priority to focus on.

Jacqui

Well, we better wrap it up. Therese, thank you so much for taking the time to have a chat and I hope that our educators out there find this information useful.

Therese

Thank you, Jacqui. I've really enjoyed actually doing this podcast and I think that it's great to get some ideas and considerations out to people working in early intervention or in preschools with children with disability. You know what, I think sometimes the best ideas and innovations come from people like this. And I think we might end up seeing families and teachers actually building strength in working together.

Jacqui

I agree and opening up ideas and ways of doing things differently.

Therese

It's an opportunity actually, and we have to think of it that way. So, it's crucial that our children in early intervention keep learning and it's crucial that the parents and teachers work really well together.

Jacqui

Great. Thanks.

Therese

Thanks, Jacqui.

[End of transcript.]

Donna Deehan

Welcome to the Early Learning Matters podcast series. My name is Donna Deehan and I am the Transition Advisor in the Early Learning team. Today I’m chatting with the Rosehill Public School preschool team, and we are going to have a look at how the team have moved into a remote teaching space and kept their connections and learning strong with their preschool children and community.

So today we welcome today, Tony, the school principal; Jennifer, the preschool supervisor; and Emily and Maria, the preschool teachers. So, thanks so much for joining me today, I’ve been really impressed with your posts on Twitter and the resources that you’ve been uploading to the Statewide staffroom. You seem to be adapting quite well to the remote teaching situation.

So, Emily and Maria, I’ll just start with you, when the situation changed, what was one of the first things you considered, or put into place, as the next move forward?

Emily Crews

We were so lucky to already have had our parents on SeeSaw as a means of communication, for sharing of daily learning. We sent out access codes for the add on of Seesaw class so the children could share their learning directly to us. We sent out a matrix of learning experience ideas so the children could develop in the areas of creative arts, construction, literacy, numeracy, dramatic play and fine motor and gross motor development. We suggested learning experiences that were play-based and at a capacity to be completed in a home environment, such as baking in the kitchen, hanging washing on the line, and dressing up in mum or dad’s old clothes.

Maria Lazzarro

We also sent a guide for a daily routine for the children to follow while learning from home. We advised a mix of play-based learning and matrix activities which we will talk about soon. We also encouraged things like maintaining healthy food choices and even asked children to share photos with us of their healthy food choices at home so we could keep consistency at home to what we do at preschool.

Donna Deehan

Oh, that’s great thanks, I’ve seen some of your matrix’s and learning experiences up on the resources in the Statewide staffroom. They’re great.

Thanks girls, so Jennifer and Tony, what was your role in those beginning days? How did you adjust your staff to support the preschool with remote teaching?

Tony D’Amaro

So, we met with stakeholders P-6 to develop a whole school plan which involved a short term plan and a medium-term plan. The short-term plan involving Term 1 and the medium-term plan was for Term 2. In terms of a long-term plan, we hope the long term plan is in Term 2 returning to school, but we’ll see how we are going.

We identified the two main home learning platforms that we wanted to use, that being Seesaw for P-2 and Google Classroom 3-6 as well as Zoom and Adobe Connect when applicable as well across the school. The preschool team then worked together on what that would look like for them. For example, Seesaw was already being used but a plan was formed to take the use of this platform by the educators to a whole new level.

The team commenced making videos immediately which consisted of stories and songs, and it has rapidly evolved from there. I’ve been particularly impressed with the way the educators have been able to connect with their students and provide consistent and regular feedback on their learning and we have received some excellent feedback from our families on this.

As a whole school we communicated to our parents thoroughly through the school eNews app and Seesaw on what our learning would look for the children and quickly identified the staff P-6 who might have been maybe at risk and needed to work from home, and this then evolved into a rotating work from home roster indeed for all staff after implementation.

Distance learning protocols were created for parents, students and staff and this has been shared with the whole school community. In addition to this, we have developed a detailed roles and responsibilities document for staff, to ensure a consistent approach across P-6.

Jennifer Cenk

So, after we developed the Whole School Plan, together with the preschool team, we developed a specific preschool plan, a short-term plan to take us through to the end of Term 1 and then our medium-term plan moving into Term 2.

Look, we all worked hard on writing the plans and sharing and gathering resources, we participated in professional learning, while some of us were working from home and some working on-site at school. The use of Google Docs was vital I think in working together to develop our plans.

In the first week, we communicated with our parents with the information they needed on how they were going to continue preschool learning remotely.

We developed a roster, as Tony was saying about the different staff working on-site and working from home, but we developed the protocols that we sent home to the parents about the distant learning and the use of technology which we thought was very important, so they are all understanding the different protocols.

Educator’s expectations of what it’s like to work from and home and what it’s like to work on site, because things are very different with less children. We developed that and we are currently working on a preschool expectation document in regards to programming, communicating with parents and providing feedback, so we know specifically what everyone’s exact role is.

We are also collaborating at the moment to develop a Planning and assessing learning remotely local procedure.

We regularly communicate through Zoom or Adobe Connect – within these connections we check up on the teachers and educators’ wellbeing, which is really important to be making sure that we are all on the same page and how everyone is feeling through this process is really important to be supportive, and we’ve been very supportive of each other.

Donna Deehan

Yeah, that’s wonderful Jennifer. It’s so important isn’t it, to keep everyone well and organised and keep checking in.

Tony, as the principal and nominated supervisor, how did you support and guide this process of moving to online for the preschool?

Tony D’Amaro

Jennifer and I and indeed the whole preschool team have been able to continue to work closely together even though we haven’t been on-site together. Clear transparent communication is so important at all times but even more during these times. We meet daily through forums such as phone, FaceTime, Zoom and Adobe Connect, where we connect and touch base on where we are at as a team, how we are going with things, we discuss issues and brainstorm solutions together.

I find the educators have been extremely proactive at keeping Jennifer and I in the loop and giving us the opportunity to add extra value to their work. In addition to this, team meetings are still being held at least once a week and actually even more regularly when required during this unprecedented time. We regularly visit the team in person and connect down there at the preschool too, as we normally would when we are both working on site, even though there has been no or very little children present in person on-site, we still make sure we get down there in person and connect with the educators, so they don’t feel isolated.

I have also included the educators in a lot of the information that has been sent out to principals as well, from Murat and Mark Scott. They’ve sent a lot of information out to principals. I have made sure that I’ve shared this information so educators can access this firsthand as well. I have also ensured that Jennifer and the executive team, and our school technology coordinator are present at the webinars as well, that Mark Scott and Murat have coordinated.

Donna Deehan

Thanks Tony.

So, Emily and Maria, can you tell us what is happening right now within your program? You have got such amazing tools and your weekly matrix with choice for parents. So, what would yesterday or today look like in your situation for preschool now?

Emily Crews

We start our daily educational program by sending the children a good morning video via Seesaw. We film these videos whether we are working on-site or working from home, so the children are aware of where we are when we are not at preschool. We usually discuss the weather with the children, we sing our usual day of the week song. We also ask the children a question.

For example, this week as a part of our Harmony Day celebrations, I asked my class how they count to 5 in their home language. Both my SLSO and myself gave an example of counting to 5 in our home languages. After watching the morning message, the children respond with a voice comment to the video saying good morning and answering the question that’s been asked for that day. So, this week they’ve been sending them counting to 5 in their home language.

We’ve noticed that this exercise has increased their confidence to speak, especially for our children who are reluctant to speak at preschool or are from a non-English speaking background.

We use a feature on Seesaw that allows us to send out learning experiences as tasks to the children. We usually post 3-4 learning experiences a day for the children to complete and these include fundamental movement skill games, art and craft ideas and videos of us reading stories to the children.

I’m sure Maria can speak about more specific examples of learning experiences we have shared, also our distance learning matrix and our modified preschool routine for distance learning.

Maria Lazzaro

Thanks Emily. We sent out a matrix of learning experiences ideas so children could continue to develop at home in areas of creative arts, construction, literacy, numeracy, dramatic play, fine motor and gross motor development. It is all choice-based to give the families a range of ways to support learning at home. For areas like fine motor, we are encouraging peg activities, threading pasta or small objects, using tongs to pick up objects. We sent some playdough home in our take-home pack, so we promoted using that with safe kitchen tools.

For creative arts we’re encouraging construction from recycled packaging they might have at home or any Lego or blocks, any building materials. We’re promoting gross motor, sending munch and move tutorials on developing fundamental movement skills, and then the children can send us a video back of themselves practicing those fundamental movement skills. And we’re just trying to set activities based on what we think the children can access in the home environment.

Donna Deehan

So how are you receiving and recording that feedback from families, against the outcomes?

Emily Crews

So, our families can send us photos and videos of their children engaging in the learning experiences that we share with them as part of the program, as well as other spontaneous experiences they have engaged in. These items that they send us are categorised on the Seesaw app, into an individual folder for each child.

We are currently working on utilising a feature on SeeSaw that allows us to classify children’s work samples against the outcomes from the Early Years Learning Framework.

We are also engaging in some critical reflection on how we can prepare questions for parents to answer via Seesaw in regards to their child’s participation in a learning experience. So, for example, how their child is developing their pencil control and ability to write their name.

As a team we are also continuing to critically reflect on how we can utilise all the data the parents are sending us and the work samples we receive to write learning stories and summative assessments on each child as a part of our medium-term plan.

Maria Lazzaro

We have also set up a weekly tracking sheet so we can monitor individual participation. If we see that a child is not participating, we are sending an inbox to the parents on Seesaw first so we can contact them directly there. If that’s not really working, we’ve been following up with a phone call to the parents just to see how they are tracking at home or what their personal situation might be.

Donna Deehan

Are you able to log in, or access, the online teaching program?

Jennifer Cenk

Yes Donna, we have created a shared Google drive for the preschool team to upload our weekly plans and the matrix activities that Maria was talking about, as well as all the resources that we are using for our online learning, distance learning.

We do communicate through there, all our communication with parents go on there related to distance learning. I have access to the Seesaw class, which is really good to view the teacher’s videos, activity posts and see what the children have been sharing in response to them.

I also contribute some videos myself that the educators upload, which greetings, thanking the parents for their support, wishing them well and a safe holiday. I can also provide voice response feedback to the children about their learning.

Donna Deehan

Tony or Jennifer, have you thought about where this will go in your strengths in Quality Area 1 and 6 in your QIP?

Jennifer Cenk

Yeah, we believe that our distance learning teaching strategies that we’ve put in place would definitely be a strength in our Quality Area 1. We have really tried hard to continue the best of our ability to really follow our normal preschool program. For example, Emily mentioned before about response to Harmony Day.

We had already planned Harmony Day activities and Easter activities and we continued these through SeeSaw. Our medium-term plan which goes into next term, will support even further the planning cycle with consistent documentation of observations and analysis of the learning to support children to achieve the outcomes of the EYLF. We will be seeking child interests to further implement learning plans and individual goals for children to work on while they are at home.

In relation to QA6, look our families are supported, respected and valued in their decision making for their child and ability to engage in remote learning. We believe that the journey we’ve taken so far and will continue to take has allowed us to engage meaningfully with families and we will be adding strengths to our quality improvement plan for areas 6.1 and 6.2.

Donna Deehan

So, were there any issues or challenges with families accessing the internet or computers, or any challenges and if there were, what did you do as a school to overcome them?

Jennifer Cenk

We had a whole school strategy to overcome this. We began with a survey on what technology parents had available and if they had internet access at home. We have loaned a few devices to families in the big school. We haven’t had to do that with our preschool families yet. Our educators in preschool have provided support to our families with the use of SeeSaw Class.

Tony D’Amaro

The preschool team also made up and distributed packs for the community which complements online component to take the pressure off in regards to the technology burden, or possible technology burden on parents. The packs included things such as playdough, coloured paper, craft activities, charts with letters and numbers, Easter activities, each child’s name in foundation print, just to name a few.

Donna Deehan

Emily and Maria, can you fill us in on some of your challenges or big learning curves you found? And perhaps what you did to overcome them?

Emily Crews

I had some challenges with families in my class that come from a non-English speaking background and may not be as confident in using technology, sort of similar to what Jennifer was saying. So, I worked closely with these families through the phone conversations and meeting with them at preschool to provide step by step instructions of how to download and use Seesaw. And we’ve also spoken with some critical reflection about potential getting an interpreter if they need some help long-term using Seesaw. We understand that technology can be challenging and take that into consideration to ensure all of our families can support their child to learn from home.

Like we said with the at-home learning packs, we also have provisions to provide offline learning for children if that’s required. We also have families that wish to protect their child’s digital profile. I had a couple of children in my class in that situation, so I spoke to each of these families personally over the phone to discuss how we can support their child and continue a relationship with them still.

Most of the families were happy to post only audio messages and photos without the child’s face, just to continue their values and their wishes to support their child and not give their child that digital profile. We are just making sure that that’s in alignment with our philosophy and the code of ethics, we want to acknowledge that each family has a right to make decisions about their child we want to be sensitive to the vulnerabilities of children and their families and respond in ways that empower and maintain the dignity of all children and their families.

Maria Lazzaro

Another main challenge is us not being able to work together face-to-face. So, Emily and I collaborate really closely together and now we are working on site on separate days so that’s quite difficult, so we are now face-timing a lot, we are on the phone a lot, online a lot, which is different to what we normally do. We have also started our own WhatsApp team chat just with our SLSOs and us just to check on each other's wellbeing and see how everyone is going. And we are also just continuing our regular team meetings over Zoom with our executive, with Jennifer and Tony and with our team, which is really good to stay in touch and so we are all on the same page.

Donna Deehan

In that same vein, what were some things that worked, that you didn’t expect would work, what went a bit easier?

Emily Crews

So, the morning messages that I spoke about earlier, I found that out from one of our kindergarten teachers at our school. She was filming a morning message and she just happened to show me that she was sending out a message everyone morning and I thought we’d give that a go so the children could just see us and maintain their relationship with us. I thought it was just a one-off thing, I didn’t think it would become an integral part of the day to promote that confidence and the language development for all our preschool children.

Upon further critical reflection, we also started giving feedback to our children via voice messages rather than text comments as they can hear our voices and receive feedback and praise verbally as they would in their preschool environment.

Maria Lazzaro

So, we have found our families are really taking distance learning on board and they’re actively assisting their children to participate on their attendance days. The children are responding in my class as well to the morning videos. I also agree with Emily that it’s a great way for them to build their confidence and their language. I also have students that will not speak English at preschool, only their home language, but now at home through these voice messages, they’re actually speaking some English, just with the support of their parents.

Donna Deehan

Sounds like the families are reacting well, what about families that don’t engage, you have touched on that a bit, but what strategy are you using for any families that just don’t want to engage.

Emily Crews

Our families have been pretty flexible and have responded quite positively to the educational program we have provided. They regularly send us photos and videos of their children engaging in learning experiences and they thank us for the support that we provide.

Maria Lazzaro

For the families who aren’t engaging like we mentioned before, we’re tracking them and contacting them by phone and checking in. We also understand that families are juggling work responsibilities, other children, so we’re trying to be mindful of everyone’s individual situation as well, and we want to offer support where we can as well.

Donna Deehan

What has surprised you most about remote teaching from the preschool perspective?

Emily Crews

So, when Tony announced to our staff that we were moving to online learning, both Maria and I, we pondered on whether this would actually work and be possible for our pre-schoolers. But after some critical reflection as a team, we’ve discovered how talented our educators are and the skills they have to make this possible.

We have educators creating gardening and cooking videos, singing songs, playing instruments and reading stories. I personally feel like we can deliver our educational program to make online learning experiences as authentic as they can be when the children are at preschool.

Maria Lazzaro

I have just found we have just been very flexible and adaptive, and we are just posting out suitable activities to promote play-based learning. We are just making sure we have been mindful about what resources we send out and that the parents have access when they are planning at home, when they are working at home.

Tony D’Amaro

And I’ve just been so impressed with how seamless the transition to online learning has been for all stakeholders for me. And the positive feedback that we have received from our families has been absolutely overwhelming.

Jennifer Cenk

What surprised me mostly was, simply put, we could do it! I am so proud of our preschool team. We have achieved things in the last 3 weeks that would have usually taken us ages to learn and to put in place.

Donna Deehan

Do you think the parents and carers have an understanding (or some understanding) of the EYLF outcomes? We are all very new to this situation – but maybe it is something that can evolve over the coming term?

Emily Crews

We’re also going to include the EYLF outcomes as a refresher in our take-home pack for Term 2 and we are also going to put in links to the EYLF in home languages as well. We also discussed in our team meeting this morning that we will look at adding the outcomes to the activity tasks that we send out on Seesaw, and we hope that this will also consolidate parent understanding.

We thought we’d do a tutorial video for parents too about the importance of play-based learning as well and just educate them a bit more on that and how they can implement more play at home and how their child is still learning, even though they think it’s play, they’re actually learning. So that’s our next goal we are working on.

Donna Deehan

Well, this unusual and unprecedented situation has certainly allowed us to continue to connect with families and perhaps even deepen that as you were just saying, working forward, and have a better chance of helping develop some shared understanding of the outcomes.

Jennifer and Tony, well done on leading such profound change in the way your preschool operates you’ve just embraced it beautifully and kept a really strong continuity of learning and your school community has responded so positively, well done. And Emily and Maria, collaborative and reciprocal relationships all around. Thanks so much to you all, keep going, keep uploading and keep informing us all via Twitter and I really appreciate you sharing your journey with us today. Thanks

[End of transcript.]

Jess Townsing

What are the most important aspects you teach the families when they begin working with School of the Air and their learning journey?

Jan Schorn

Firstly, is not to think about school, preschool as a classroom or a room. So, we find a lot of, well it depends on their age, but because we've all been in the classroom, in our own school life, a lot of your mums will be like, “Oh no, I haven't got a spare room, I haven't got an area”.

So, the biggest thing we try to tell ours is that their whole environment is the preschool. It may be all on the back veranda, the cubby house is the play area, the sandpit, well our kids use the creek as the sandpit. You may do your songs and rhymes and things while you're in the car travelling (not that we'll be doing a lot of travelling) or outside playing, but mainly don't think you have to have a classroom, use your whole environment. And the more the kids are outside the better, so what activities you can do outside.

We also have said not to panic because a lot of the activities, like I said, songs and rhymes can be done in the car or when you're just out having a cup of tea and a lot of the activities you could be hanging clothes on the line. So, your four-year-old is playing with the peg basket, well there you can do colours, fine motor. So, a lot of the activities that you can do, even pegging the clothes on the line with you is fine motor.

Cooking, all the activities you do at home, making beds. So, it doesn't always have to be a separate activity. And if you've got lots of kids in the classroom, sometimes you can do the same activity at all different levels, and they can get something out of it. Got to remember that it's child-led, so we don't want to see worksheets or go and buy booklets and have them just tracing booklets. When we mean child-led, that is what we will talk about when we set up the environment. So, we set up areas where the children can create and come up with their own ideas.

Jess Townsing

Fantastic. Thank you. And it's really interesting, isn't it? Because in a classroom environment, we're always trying to make it homelike. So, now these children are going to be at home.

Jan Schorn

And another thing we do always tell our parents is that, remember your attitude. We know as teachers that if we walk in the classroom and go, 'well, let's do some playdough' with that attitude, the kids aren't going to want to do it. So, we do tell our parents that, some of them don't like getting messy and getting the paints out and whatever, put it outside on the grass so you can hose it.

But make sure your attitude comes off with them. So, you're like, 'Oh cool, we're going to do some painting'. That will help. Because if you are like, 'Oh, I don't want to do it', they will not want to do it. So, attitude is also very important to express to mums and the people that are looking after the kids.

Jess Townsing

Yeah, that's a great point. Thanks Jan.

Okay, let's continue with this theme Jan. What do you teach the families about setting up their environment?

Jan Schorn

Firstly, we do actually have a booklet that goes out and it's the first week of school in the year and it teaches them how to set the environment up. But the main thing is we get them to make provocations. Now, don't have a heart attack because whenever you first hear the word provocation, everyone's like, “I don't know what it is”. That's what your mums will do. You'll say to them, we're setting up provocations and us as educators go, “Oh great”. But as a Mum, so we just say it means provoke. It's very much like in the olden days when I was first at preschool, we used to set up a table, so it was the dinosaur table or the maths table. So, we explain to them that's all it is, an area to provoke learning.

But we also stress that the preschool is provocations set up everywhere, but if you don't have the room, because you may not have a good yard that you can leave stuff out or you might have a dog that'll chew it or you might not have a big house, we turn the provocations into tubs instead of tables. So, you'll have a construction tub, a reading tub, a maths tub or literacy tub or science tub, art tub. And then we will do a timetable, suggested timetable and they'll say, it'll be like 'get your maths provocation out’.

So, they'll get their maths tub out and that's what they're doing in their learning space, and they may decide that learning space is in a room or is on the lawn or is on the mat. So, that's how we try to get them to set their environment up so that they don't go, “Oh, I've got to quickly find the maths things”. They set it up, so their tubs are already done and then it's all there.

Jess Townsing

Fantastic. Thank you.

So, as you were saying, Jan, there's different times in the day where they might get their numeracy kit out, or literacy. What do you teach families about a timetable for the day?

Jan Schorn

We do have a suggested timetable, but it is actually up to the individual family. Some of them are very little, they still have afternoon rests. So, they do choose to do it all in the morning before lunch. Some choose to do some before and some after lunch. It all goes on the child. But we do say to them being Term 1, we try and do at least an hour, hour, and a half a day.

As I said, that could be all 30 minutes or it may not be, and that's including hanging the washing out. So, that activity with the pegs is that half an hour of colour coding, grouping, fine motor. So, we do say, first term we're a bit lenient because they're just getting used to it, an hour and a half. And then after first term it leads to, as again depending on the child and the day, 2 to 3 hours each day. We also do suggest that if they are doing say, 3 activities in the morning, after one activity to do a few brain breaks.

So, you can do yoga, rhymes, actually some of ours just say go outside and jump on the trampoline and they use a timer a lot so they give them a timer and go “When that goes off you can come back in”, they're on the trampoline, run around the house block. Just little brain breaks, if you do Google or Pinterest “Brain breaks for preschool”, you come up with lots of ideas, which we do suggest to our parents a lot to use Google and Pinterest if they want ideas for provocations and little ideas.

But brain breaks, we do heaps of and also if you've got the space for the day, you can leave that up, so if you're playing with your farm table or farm provocation and you're finished with it, if you've got the space, leave it there for the day because they can come back and forth and play with it. Don't pack it up unless you have to because if you have a look at children in a preschool, they go back and forth to the activities a hundred times. But then it all goes on your house and your home, like whether you're in a flat or a house. But yeah, definitely brain breaks.

Jess Townsing

Great advice, thanks Jan.

[End of transcript.]

Jessica Townsing

Okay. I'm just chatting with Bree Staker. She is the School of the Air (SOTA) teacher out in Broken Hill and an expert on teaching children out of home. We're just going to give some advice to preschool teachers across the state. So, Bree, how do SOTA teachers stay connected to their children without seeing them face to face?

Bree Staker

We connect with our children and our families in a number of ways. The first thing, video recordings, using Screencast-O-Matic, this is where we provide feedback to the children and what they've done for the week, phone calls and by going live on our closed SOTA preschool page, Facebook page. By using the live Facebook option, we are able to read to our children and create small group learning opportunities where the children can ask and answer questions just like if they were face-to-face.

Jessica Townsing

Okay. I'm here with Jan Schorn. She's also a SOTA teacher at Broken Hill and we're just going to continue with the same questions. So how do you build and maintain relationships with children and families, Jan?

Jan Schorn

Well, as Bree said, we use Facebook, Screencast-O-Matic and recordings to the kids, Edmodo and a lot of platforms like that, and then maybe the families we use, we are continually emailing each other if they've got questions, if we want to send them something and occasional phone calls as well.

Jessica Townsing

Fantastic. Thanks Jan. Okay, I'm back with Bree and we just had a few more questions. We'd really love to hear about some of the strengths that the model of School of the Air offers. Can you elaborate?

Bree Staker

Yes, I can. So, first of all, one of the biggest strengths is that each of the children get one-on-one learning in some cases they've got siblings and maybe a little more, but the ratio is really good. The other strength is that we get a lot of family engagement in the children's learning, and the most important part is that the children get to spend more quality time with their families and be more involved in activities around the house such as playing board games, helping out with the chores to get some life skills and playing lots of other games with their families.

Jess Townsing

Okay, Jan, let's continue with this. How do SOTA teachers gather feedback and assessment from families to extend children's individual learning?

Jan Schorn

Well, first to start with what we do is we send out our booklets, which is like a preschool class's weekly program, and in that booklet, we have learning intentions and suggestions for the feedback from the supervisor. So, that would be like, how did your child react when challenged, could they use scissors, that sort of feedback, and then the supervisor will document all that for the activities and also send photos of or videos of the children.

So, once we get that feedback, we go through it and then if we feel they need an individual challenge, for example, the supervisor may have said they can't use scissors or they're crying and walking away from the blocks when they fall down. We then send an individual, we call them challenges and that can either be by email or a recording or sometimes we even send, like they may not be good at taking turns, so we will send a game out for the family to play games and we give them on a document of challenges to do.

We also do class challenges for individual learning, so recently we had a classroom and we'd seen the children, so through observations and OT screening we found out the kids weren't good at scissors. So, on our Facebook page we then, one week we sent a scissor challenge, the next week we sent, they had to dress themselves because they weren't good at buttons, so each week we give them a challenge. So, that's how we try and do the individual learning by individual challenges, but the booklets for the week are more the same.

Jessica Townsing

That's really interesting. Jan, thank you. To extend on that, how do you assess children using this feedback that you gather?

Jan Schorn

So, we record on a document that Bree and I have made, and it reflects all the EYLF outcomes. So, we get the feedback sheet back from the supervisor. We allow them to design that in any way they like, for some it's on PowerPoint, some it’s on Word because we don't know their computer skills. Then what we do is we open up their document and our document and if they're good at wording, sometimes we only have to cut and paste over to what outcome it was.

So, for example, it might have been, the child can use scissors easily, so we would then put that into the document under fine motor and we'd put term one, week five, Tom could use scissors. But if it's a long paragraph and long-winded, we will summarise that and type it in ourselves, not copy and paste. So, yeah, that's how we do it, and then later, the document that we've made up that we're cutting and pasting into becomes our learning statement for the end of the year.

Jessica Townsing

Great, so that informs your reporting on the child's progress through the year?

Jan Schorn

Yes, so you don't have to double up and rewrite a whole program. You're actually putting pictures and the outcomes they're meeting into that document straight away.

Jessica Townsing

Great, so it’s an excellent bank of evidence that you have by the end of the year.

Jan Schorn

Yes. We also keep our records, so every child has an individual folder, and in that, whenever we get a feedback, a photo, a report, anything to do with that child, we keep it in there.

Jessica Townsing

Excellent. So, a digital folder?

Jan Schorn

Yeah, so just a digital folder, which can be, we keep them on Google drive at the moment because they end up quite big because you've got videos and photos, but yeah, that can be kept on whatever the school chooses to keep it on. So, every child has a photo of everything they've sent in.

Jessica Townsing

Fantastic. Okay, I'm back with Bree. Bree, what do you do if families don't send you any feedback?

Bree Staker

Okay, so this actually does occur. We've had this happen. So, what we've done in the past is that we ring families, or we'll email them, we'll just check in with them to make sure that everything's okay and if they do need support, we'll provide them with support in a method that suits them. So, for instance, if they have several children and it is difficult for them to be sending in large amounts of feedback, we'll offer them advice, so perhaps just sending some quick videos or even just some photos.

Jessica Townsing

Fantastic. Thanks Bree.

Jan Schorn

And don't let them have to think about it because we've got to remember they're not the teachers. So, we take that away from them. So, this is what we want you to answer after this activity, and if you're very specific, they seem to do it and it's easier for them.

Jessica Townsing

Great. Thanks Jan.

Bree Staker

And I guess also just trying not to overwhelm the families with too much information as well, it's a good way to support them.

Jan Schorn

We also do say 'don't repeat things' because in our booklets, even though it's a different activity, we still may be concentrating on fine motor. So, if they miss something and they're away or they just didn't do that activity because it was all too hard, we tell them, do not catch up, just keep going on because those outcomes will be met in another booklet or another week.

So, we try to take the pressure off them, no catch-up, and every week will be different because every home is different. So, you've got to just take that off of them. One week you might get four photos in the next week you might get a novel. So, we just go with the flow and don't put pressure on them.

Jessica Townsing

Okay, just to close off our discussions, Jan and Bree are going to give us some advice on how to work with 40 children across the week with remote learning.

Jan Schorn

The best advice we can do is what we've done. You have to decide what order you put things into, which is most important. So, you have videos that you need to return from the children, you have feedback that needs to be given and recorded and you have programming to do. So, each school or each group will make up their own order of what's most important. But firstly, sit down as a group and decide what comes first, second, and third and then what we have found work, we divide the class and I know some other centres do have focus children for the day.

We actually don't hone-in on a child, but we will say we will do a reflection of two children a day. So, you might have to do whatever, and then what you do then is you divide the roles so you're not doubling up. So, you might give each teacher five kids to do or a week or divide the roles what you're doing. Someone might be programming, someone might be doing the feedback, feedback and videos go together.

Divide the teacher's roles so you're not all burning out and then the biggest thing for distance learning is time management. We usually have a timeline, an achievable timeline, which is important because don't make yourself think you're going to actually get stuff back to 40 kids in a week, you're not. I can guarantee you. So, get an achievable timeline and when you want to have, so every child by four weeks has had some contact maybe, or something for that example. Make sure your timelines are achievable, and that's mainly what we've done that has helped not doubling up and helped make it a little bit better.

Jessica Townsing

Great. Thanks. Jan, And Bree, do you want to add any advice to that?

Bree Staker

Yeah, another piece of advice that I would have is just keep calm, don't freak out because at the end of the day, you're all professional educators and you know what you're doing. It's just about delivering it in a different way.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward

Welcome to our first edition of the Early Learning podcast focusing on The Early Years Learning Framework, a revolutionary document. My name is Jacqui Ward. I'm the Early Learning Coordinator and I am here today with Jess Lavers, a P-2 extraordinaire, and we're just going to chat about a few things that we think are really important for people to know about The Early Years Learning Framework.

Jess Lavers

Thank you, Jacqui. What a lovely entrance.

Jacqui Ward

So, I thought we'd first talk a little bit about the history because I think, as Jess mentioned before we started, when you start in the profession at any given time, you don't necessarily know where it all came about. I think it's really important to note because there were a lot of changes at that time, there was a groundswell of political support for early childhood in response to the evidence space that early childhood is really important for life trajectories.

Jess Lavers

And a lot of research went into The Early Years Learning Framework, so it's important for people to understand how that came about.

Jacqui Ward

That's right, and a team of academics worked on that, and sector representatives as well. Also, that research I guess was framed in the idea of trying to create a uniquely Australian learning framework, which I think is awesome because it really reflects our context in terms of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Jess Lavers

And multicultural families and children, and it really focuses on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and looks at that document throughout.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, which is awesome. The other thing is, I guess, moving on to the idea of how the document is structured and one of the reasons why I like to point this out is because I find that people tend to go straight to the learning outcomes or perhaps they are more familiar with the principles, and they kind of forget about the rest.

Jess Lavers

And forgetting about the 3 guiding words that represent The Early Years Learning Framework, so we have ‘Belonging’, ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’ for our young children.

Jacqui Ward

And they're tricky ideas I think and really sort of spending some time getting to know what they mean, what do they mean for educators, what do they mean for families as well is really important. And I think the principles then are really important as well to always be helping us to sort of, keep us on track professionally.

Jess Lavers

Yeah, and they really link to family, community and culture and if we do think of belonging, being, becoming, the principles, the practices and the learning outcomes, we also need to remember that this document was developed for children from birth to 8 years.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, definitely, which is a good point. There's lots of great ideas there that link into school ideas, concepts, syllabus content, general capabilities. There is a little mapping across both spaces I think as well.

Jess Lavers

And if we look at the structure, the purpose of it is to encourage preschool educators to focus on what children can do, as well as supporting and guiding individual learning programs.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, I think you make a really good point there. Often when I look at people's documentation and records, there's not a lot of information about that child's current knowledge. Children bring a wealth of knowledge to their preschool or to their school or wherever, and we need to draw on that to build on that knowledge.

Jess Lavers

Focus on their achievements and their strengths and their interests, and then take them to their goals from that.

Jacqui Ward

And then I think the next level that is often sort of skipped over or misunderstood, is the practice section. And for me this is like the most important bit of The Early Years learning framework because it really teaches people how to implement high-quality pedagogy. So, if you don't read that section, then you don't really know how to teach in the early childhood space.

Jess Lavers

And the practices really guide you on how to implement those learning experiences to cater for all individual children.

Jacqui Ward

And the concept of learning through play is really unpacked in there. There's some poignant words I think, about intentional teaching, cultural competence. There's lots of great things that can support you in your professional judgment and decision making. The whole document itself, if you're ever having some challenges on, 'I don't know what to do in this space', you can find the answers in The Early Years Learning Framework.

Jess Lavers

And it guides you with your assessment for learning for the children. So how are we going to do that? How can you reflect that? Let's read the practice that says, ‘Assessment for learning’.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, there's lots of great information in there, isn't there? It talks about gathering rich and meaningful information and planning. The whole document talks about planning for complex learning and rich ideas, which kind of brings us to the learning outcomes bit as I said, which is something people are more familiar with. But I tend to see references a lot to LO 4 or LO 4.1. And I go, ‘What does that really mean when people write that?’

Jess Lavers

And I think there's a real focus for educators to go to Learning Outcome 5 or Learning Outcome 4, but it's important to reflect on, have I looked at Learning Outcome 2? Have I thought about my families in their culture and their beliefs in my programming for children, and reflecting on all the learning outcomes, not just focusing on one particular one.

Jacqui Ward

Definitely. And I think the idea that you break up the learning outcome into the key components underneath. Those are big overarching ideas, those five learning outcomes, and the key components underneath are the bits that really give you the detail about what you're looking for.

Jess Lavers

What the children are achieving, and then in the right-hand column it guides educators on, how can you extend that, what can you do next for the child? So, it really guides and supports educators to provide a high-quality learning environment for the children.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, definitely. And it's not about what to teach, so that's a difference, I guess with The Early Years Learning Framework as a curriculum for early childhood. It's not giving you content in there, but it's giving you ideas and concepts and dispositions for learning, as opposed to general capabilities.

Jess Lavers

What I really like is that educators can write their own notes underneath that. So over time, as their understanding of The Early Years Learning Framework develops, they can then start writing their own points about where they would take that learning and have that at a team meeting where you're discussing your points.

Jacqui Ward

Definitely, and I think that brings us to that final point about the fact that it's not a onetime only read, The Early Years Learning Framework. It's a cyclical process of engagement where you read something, you reflect on it, and as your practice deepens, your understanding deepens. Your thoughts change about whether or not when you first read something like that, you might go, 'oh yes, I'm very responsive in my teaching', and then as you think about it and you unpack all the words in The Early Years Learning Framework, you think, 'Yeah, there's lots of times in my day where I'm not being as responsive as I could be'.

Jess Lavers

It really helps educators to reflect on their practice in that way. I also find that The Early Years Learning Framework, using that language when you're communicating with families, so using the language of the principles and the practices helps you to build those relationships with families. And then when you are documenting children's learning, using that language in your documentation, and then speaking with the families using that language, it really connects families to their child's learning.

Jacqui Ward

I couldn't agree with you more, Jess. That's one of the things that I always say. Instead of quoting the numbers or quoting all of the words within it, it's articulating those ideas in your own language, but still using those sort of concepts.

Jess Lavers

Like, 'Johnny is an effective communicator' and then using those indicators to explain how he's an effective communicator.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, that's right, 'he's engaging with lots of different texts, he loves to read some of the factual books as well as the signs around the room, he's doing all sorts of different things'. So, you're kind of breaking down that children engage with a range of media to make meaning. Well, I just want to say thank you, Jess. I think this has been a great, little introduction to the document itself. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

Jess Lavers

I just want to thank you, Jacqui, for letting me be a part of this podcast. I think The Early Years Learning Framework educator modules that are coming out are really going to support our educators in department preschools to provide high-quality education and care for our children.

[End of transcript]

Jacqui Ward

Welcome to the Early Learning podcast. My name is Jacqui Ward, I'm the Early Learning Coordinator and I am here today with Sheree Bell, our Preschool Advisor and we're here talking about The Early Years Learning Framework and this episode is about the overarching themes.

So, I'm going to just start the conversation off by talking about the theoretical foundations of those 3 big ideas of belonging, being and becoming. I think they're strongly underpinned or strongly rooted in socio-cultural theory, particularly Bronfenbrenner's theory about the idea that a child belongs to a family, a neighbourhood, a community, a culture, all of those sorts of things. I think that's really important to understand.

And again, lots of educators often talk about, 'where do I, how do I link in with theoretical perspectives?' I think understanding theory as it relates to things is important. I think they're fundamental ideas that we need to think about.

I also like to link here with the 3 big themes to Maslow's ‘Hierarchy of needs’ as well, thinking about children having those basic physical needs and the next level being those social and emotional needs for security and safety and things like that and I think the belonging, being, becoming really kind of slot in there. Over to you, Sheree, your thoughts.

Sheree Bell

I think it's really important what you said there about drawing on those theoretical perspectives and considering those, because The Early Years Learning Framework, the belonging, being, becoming is more than just a have-to-do. It draws on those theoretical perspectives, and I guess challenges and supports educators to critically reflect on those. Because as you said, those 3 overarching themes, belonging, being and becoming, really underpin everything else that then goes on.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, definitely. You can't do anything else until you've got those sort of fundamental ideas covered. You can't focus in on children's learning and the learning outcomes unless you've got children who do feel like they belong to a space that they feel comfortable to learn, they feel like their culture, their identity is reflected in what's being taught and what's being covered.

Sheree Bell

That's right. It's not just a catch phrase. It's actually part of the title of this whole document and it kind of sums up everything about early childhood and everything that it's about and everything that you are going to see in early childhood services.

Jacqui Ward

I think one of the things that I've done over the years in professional learning is unpacking those 3 ideas and what they mean for children. What does it mean for a child to feel a sense of belonging? Because I think educators really need to critically reflect on what does it look like, what does it feel like for you? We'll talk a little bit more about that later, what it means for educators.

But in order to ensure that you're creating that sense of belonging, I think belonging, we kind of think about that in the early stages when children first start at their preschool. I think that for me, the initial stages of planning and observations and what not, should be all about creating a sense of belonging for children and also for families, which we'll also talk about those a little bit longer.

As I said, I think educators really need to think about, sometimes children present with a whole lot of issues and challenges and sometimes it can come back to the idea that they don't necessarily feel that connection. They don't feel that they belong, they don't have enough time to be. Being is all about allowing children time in the here and the now, to focus in on what you're doing, allow time for conversation, for sustained shared thinking, all of those sorts of things.

And becoming, I think is one of the B's that educators are way more familiar with because they're always thinking about what's next. But I think for me, the becoming B, is really about focusing in on what kind of people we want children to be. So, it's not just about 'we want them to learn these skills and we want them to progress in their learning outcomes', but we're actually supporting children in the early years to formulate who they're going to be as adults and who they're going to be throughout the rest of their schooling and all those sorts of things, we're supporting them to become the adults that they're going to be.

Sheree Bell

Yeah, that being, I think all 3 of these themes, even though we kind of talk about them separately, it is very important to kind of pull them back together and see how they support each other. And that being, it's important for the children in our context, they're 4 years old, to be 4, for the year, in order for them to become and have those learning paths, and that learning trajectory then throughout their lives.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, definitely. And I think it is important to see them and balance your time. How much time am I spending on creating a sense of belonging? How much time am I spending on being with children and allowing children to be and enjoy their world and play and all those sorts of things? And how much of my time and my program is focused on becoming? So, there's a balance because you wouldn't want one to overtake the other. I think that 3 of them need to be in a nice sort of mix.

Sheree Bell

Well, that's right. All 3 of them are integral to identity, which again is the core of The Early Years Learning Framework as well. We're looking at, shaping, promoting, guiding and supporting children's identity through those three themes in our early childhood services.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, and you make a nice connection there that all the learning outcomes do link indirectly or directly to those three core ideas. So, that the belonging, being and becoming are those big scale outcomes, but the learning outcomes then sort of trickle down from there. And one that stands out for me, you've talked about identity, I think about wellbeing too. Wellbeing is really strongly connected, I think to especially belonging, but also being.

I think children are very rushed in our modern world, rushed all the time. I remember reflecting on my parenting, I was thinking, my catch phrase was 'hurry up', so I think children at preschool can even experience that, 'it's time to do this, it's time to pack away here'. It's time always. There's always lots of change. And as we know, some children don't cope very well with even the smallest of transitions. So, it's all things to think about.

Sheree Bell

Well, I think that allowing that time to be, also supports building those relationships and those partnerships with the children. They're allowed to be in that space, you're with them, you're allowing them just to be themselves. Learn about them in that space, and that's a really integral part of building that relationship to get to know the children really well, as well as their families.

Jacqui Ward

I think we always need to be thinking about belonging, being and becoming more broadly than our work with children. I know The Early Years Learning Framework is very focused in on those concepts and how they relate to children, but I think we need to think about them for families. In particular we have a strong role in supporting families to be the best parents that they can be, they look to us for advice and guidance on a lot of different things. But most importantly, to support them in the way that they can support their child's learning, which will be fundamentally important throughout their child's whole schooling career.

So, I think that's really important to think about what it means for a family to have a sense of belonging at the service and what opportunities are there for them to be at the service and be involved and spend time with educators if they need to, if they need to have those conversations.

It often happens in a time that we're busy doing other things and we think it's a bit inconvenient to have a long conversation with someone, but sometimes that's what families need, to just be with an educator and talk to them. And again, as I said, supporting them to become an advocate for their child, to become a facilitator of their learning. That's a tricky thing to learn how to be as a parent, and we as early childhood professionals I think, can start them on a really good path there, or support them on a really good path.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely, and I think it does go both ways as well when we're thinking about that sense of belonging, being and becoming. Absolutely, we're supporting our families and children, but we're also learning from them as well, our families. It's really important to acknowledge the knowledge that the families are bringing in about their community, about the diverse cultures, the linguistics, everything like that, that supports them to belong and be within the community. We want them to bring that in and share that as well, so that we can absolutely use that to support the children and families when they're in our context as well. So, I think it's that 2-way partnership.

Jacqui Ward

I couldn't agree more, I know we're a bit off topic there, but it's a nice link into that first principle, isn't it? ‘Secure, respectful, reciprocal relationships’ is 2-ways. It's always 2-ways, and how are we going to know how to create a sense of belonging for children if we don't actually know what it means for that child to belong? We get that information from families, don't we? And we get it in an authentic way rather than being tokenistic. Rather than saying, 'Oh, this child's country of origin is India, so we do all these sort of tokenistic things', as opposed to saying, 'How does that family celebrate it? How is it relevant for that family's context?'

Sheree Bell

I think it just kind of showcases really about The Early Years Learning Framework and how interrelated all of the parts are. Like you said, we've got these large overarching themes of belonging, being and becoming. Three fairly simple words that have a lot of meaning attached to them and then with that, the principles, practices and outcomes, you said that before, none of those are separate, they are all integrated and it's very difficult to separate them.

Jacqui Ward

Well, that's the good thing I think for educators is that you don't need to separate them, because when you're doing one thing well, you kind of, often then are doing the other things as well, even if you don't necessarily realise it. Which also is a nice segway into the idea of belonging, being and becoming for educators, and I think about some of the workplaces that I've been into and when you start somewhere new. I'm sure everyone can think back to a time where you started somewhere new, when you felt so out of place, if you were like me, being a bit proud and not wanting to ask too many questions.

So, how do we create a sense of belonging for our educators? And particularly relevant I think is what I've come across, is making sure that it's a culturally safe place for educators as well. So that educators can also bring some of their own identity and their own experiences because children love it when we share ourselves with them, and families do as well.

I think lots of things to think about, like professional development plans and all sorts of those things in a really formal way but I think if we think about becoming for educators, what does it mean? You can try and get to a little bit more of the core about what does it mean to be a great early childhood professional, all those sorts of things. I think these words help you bring it back to real authentic things.

Sheree Bell

Oh, absolutely. When you're considering ‘becoming’ as a team, you're looking at your journey as a team together, you're looking at what role you together can play in the children's learning. I always keep coming back to the centre of that triangle in The Early Years Learning Framework where it really places children and families and their learning right at the centre and having that belonging to the team as educators really supports that journey for the children as well as the team. I think that sense of belonging as part of the team, educators, leadership, whoever might be in that space as part of that team, it's not only important for health and wellbeing, but like you said, it brings out a respectful and connected environment amongst themselves so then they can share.

Jacqui Ward

Yes, and it's absolutely fundamental to high quality practice. A well synchronised team that works together, communicates well, all has the same focus on values and philosophy and all those sorts of things and quality practice, amazing things can happen for children's learning. So, it's a really important thing I think to unpack as a team as well.

Not that we are enforcing this or anything, but it would be great I think, if after you've listened to this podcast, you might think about doing a little exercise at your next staff meeting about what does belonging, being, becoming mean for children, for families and for educators? And thinking about how does that influence your next year's work to come, your quality improvement, all of those sorts of things.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely. It's a very interesting task to do that. I've seen a couple of services who have taken that on board and thought, 'what does belonging mean for us as educators?' and just really tussling with those ideas and collaborating and thinking about what it does mean for them as well as the children.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, and I think sometimes we can be a little bit fine grained in our work. We can really focus in on very specific things or very specific outcomes or very specific elements of the National Quality Standard. Whereas I think when we take a step back and look at bigger picture things, we can often see there's lots of opportunity for connection, integration, all those sorts of things, innovation, all sorts of things. I think there's also an opportunity when you do that, to then look more broadly at how belonging, being and becoming, those concepts are integrated across the National Quality Standard. Also, with things like the Code of Ethics, when you're thinking about those big picture things, how are those ideas represented in those core guiding documents?

Sheree Bell

I think the National Quality Standard, the belonging being, becoming is just, again, it's integrated, it's throughout the National Quality Standard in each of those quality areas. From supporting children's agency in Quality Area 1, to health and wellbeing in Quality Area 2, selection of resources and setting up learning environments in Quality Area 3 etc. These overarching themes provide that lens for educators to select the pedagogical practices and make decisions, all with the common goal of supporting children's learning.

Jacqui Ward

Yeah, definitely, and we've kind of pointed out, we've already made some links to Quality Area 7, with the professional development plan and the relationships with families and also with children. Again, the Code of Ethics is a really great one to reflect on when you're thinking about big picture items because I think if you are questioning yourself as to, 'How am I incorporating the ethics, when I think about how I'm supporting children to belong?', you're likely to look at those ideas again with another lens or from a different perspective, which I think is also great.

Sheree Bell

I think that document too, really supports the advocacy work that you talked about before. Not only advocacy for the children, for families and community, but also for the profession, which again brings everything together.

Jacqui Ward

Definitely. Well, I think that's it for me, anything else to add from you Sheree?

Sheree Bell

No, thank you. It's been very interesting. It's like you say, sometimes we can be quite finite, so to really look at the big picture and go back to those overarching themes was great.

[End of transcript]