Partnership : Beyond Consultation

In recent years, in Australia, there has been an increasing acknowledgment that work practices need to be developed around the concept of partnership with less intrusive and coercive management regimes. All participants are recognised as agents of the productive process, albeit on different scales and at different rates. Partnership does not preclude an understanding that some will be more advanced in their skills and understandings than others, that some will be in need of greater assistance than others. What is distinctive is that involvement in development will be collaborative, rather than coercive; cooperative, rather than competitive; enabling rather than disabling, oriented to means as well as ends. The emergence of better understandings of partnership in the conduct of various enterprises in Australia has not come about by chance. In the last decade there has evolved a specific socio-political context which has made the restructuring of work relations imperative. Lepani (1992) has argued that Australia has to find a new place in a greatly changed global economic order and be poised to innovate in the knowledge that our most flexible resource is human rather than material (Boomer, 1988). It is in this context that the National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning (NPQTL) was formed. Three major working parties were formed: Work Organisation and related Pedagogical Issues; National Professional Issues (registration, accreditation, qualification); and, Teachers\u27 Professional Preparation and Career Development (pre-service and in-service education)

The practicum as workplace learning: A multi-mode approach in teacher education

This paper has as its focus the portrayal of, and justification for, a multi modal practicum curriculum which is directed to address the needs of qualified teachers. The subject “The Reflective Practitioner in the School” is one which takes the concept of workplace learning most seriously. For too many years teacher education has treated the practicum curriculum as a pre service “practice teaching” subject sequence and has not concerned itself with ways in which in service professional development can be constructed as continuous with the pre service practicum program

The professional knowledge that counts in Australian contemporary early childhood teacher education

Australia is typical of many western countries where the provision of quality early childhood services has become a government priority. The government initiatives in Australia include repeated demands for 'well-qualified' early childhood educators. As a result of these demands the preservice preparation of early childhood educators is under intense scrutiny. This scrutiny raises many questions regarding the knowledge base considered to be essential for early childhood educators and leads to further questions about who has the authority to produce this knowledge. This article explores these questions by firstly examining some of the ways Australian early childhood teacher education is situated within the current knowledge environment. This is followed by a discussion regarding the debates about what early childhood educators 'need to know'. The third section of the article traces some of the historical features of Australian early childhood teacher education, for the author argues that contemporary questions about 'which' knowledge is to be included in early childhood teacher education are best understood alongside their historical precedents. The article concludes by considering the implications of the debates for contemporary early childhood teacher education and suggests that a way forward involves reconsidering the traditional binary between theory and practical knowledge

An ecological exploration of the Internet of Toys in early childhood everyday life

Throughout this chapter, the focus is on the importance of children’s agency in their use of Internet of Toys (IoToys). We think about children’s capabilities as part of digitally mediated eco-communities. Informed by the socio-ecological model, children’s, practitioners’ and parents’ dispositions helped contextualise the factors that shape children’s use of IoToys. We provide the following key messages throughout the chapter: 1.A discussion of passivity or empowerment as part of children’s digital lives with IoToys, in line with Craft’s (2013) work. 2.A reanalysis of perceptions of childhood in the digital age, linking to the sociological models of childhood and the role of children as competent and agentic. 3.An account of socio-ecological influences on digital lives, likened to Rogoff’s (2008) three planes relating to individual, interpersonal and community alongside a discussion of how the interpersonal plane can be reimagined to include interactions between child and machine. 4.A note of caution against the passive child agenda and recurrent moral panic

Groundwater-Smith, Susan, Practitioner Research and Practical Knowledge: Their Relationship to Curriculum Enquiry, Curriculum Perspectives, 11(October, 1991), 51-55.

Discusses issues involved in teacher inquiry and action research

'Nettlesome knowledge' and threshold concepts: An afterword

N/

Afterword: Learning from change: Risks and rewards

N/