Early Childhood pre-service students’ transitioning into discourses of professional practice

The focus of this study is to investigate early childhood students’ discourses of play – based curriculum. In this paper we focus on how students made implicit and explicit links to the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF). Twenty-six early childhood students had volunteered their de-identified play and pedagogy assignments. We analysed their assignments and selected quotes that focused on their role as educators and related to the VEYLDF. We theorized the concept of conceptual reciprocity as students’ understanding of their role in being sensitive and reciprocal with children and families. Our findings indicated that early childhood pre-service students shared a common language as they transitioned to professional practice. This concept links strongly to students and VEYLDF perspectives of pedagogical educators being effective and affectively relating to children. The study shows how pre-service students understand discourses that are in line with the VEYLDF and the National Quality (NQ) reform agenda where professionals must know how to communicate and interact with other cultures and show responsive engagement with children, families and wider society

How do Early Childhood Students Conceptualize Play-Based Curriculum?

The study’s purpose was to discover student understanding of play-based curriculum. Traditionally, play has been misunderstood in pedagogical terms, and was widely interpreted in our study. The Early Years Learning Framework suggests educator guidance in sustaining play is essential for learning and development. As teacher educators, we wanted to reflect on Play and Pedagogy (A new fourth year unit) that expected students to create a conceptual play model for use in practice. Twenty-six students volunteered de-identified assignments. From these, common conceptual elements were identified. We selected quotes from student’s work to support identified concepts and entered a methodology of dialogue commentary to enrich analysis. Students focused discussion on adult’s pedagogical approach linking play to pedagogy through varied interpretations of the concept of sustained shared thinking. We found student conceptualisations of play –based curriculum addressed complexities of their role as beginning early childhood educators in new ways

Digital oral feedback written assignments as professional learning for teacher educators : a collaborative self-study.

Allan Luke (2008) uses a “pedagogical economy where literacy education is taken as a cultural gift”. This paper reports on the digital oral feedback provided to pre-service teachers in a literacy unit and explores the pedagogical gift this feedback is to the teacher educators marking this work. Rather than mark their written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read the assignment and recorded the sound file of the conversation around each assignment. We then participated in another conversation with a critical friend, which enabled us to explore the impact of this form of assessment on our professional identities as teacher educators. We found these conversations provided a rich context for our professional learning about ourselves as teacher educators, as well as specific content knowledge we both brought to the teaching of this unit. We found we were working as a team to provide more in-depth feedback of the assessment criteria for each assignment than we did with written feedback. Through this dialogical feedback we were able to construct the pre-service teachers\u27 assignments as an important textual gift in our collaborative professional learning about assessment, and in exploring our beliefs and practices as teacher educators

Using a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning : a case study of an Australian early childhood community

This thesis uses a cultural-historical framework to show societal, institutional and personal influences on learning through a case study in an Australian early childhood community. Scope for cultural-historical research in this community was supported by my associations over time, as a former teacher (1976-1979) and later as field researcher for an Australian Research Council (ARC) project (Fleer & Gunstone, 2005a). These associations provided temporal perspectives, which brought a dialectical frame of reference to the present case study. In particular, when community, family and institutional practices were temporally juxtaposed using dialectical methods, the research question was prompted: How do artifacts and cultural traditions become institutionalized, transmitted and reinterpreted in next generations, thereby shaping what is possible or not in early childhood education? Cultural-historical research rarely makes social pathways of childhood learning and development visible in empirical data. The literature review focused on analysis of a series of empirical studies in order to find out how other researchers interpret childhood learning and development from a cultural and historical perspective. A common theme in the reviewed studies was how researchers examined social practices over time in different institutional settings. In looking to uncover how researchers understood the epistemological origins of those institutional practices, it became evident that a new methodological tool for analysing and theorizing practices over time was required. In this case study, field research was approached using a cultural-historical frame of reference. Particular attention was given to seeking different perspectives. The use of archival materials and visual dialectics, prompted narratives around local contexts, past and present, providing examples of mediation practices that reside in institutional artifacts, rituals, traditions, and family life in the early childhood community. In a series of photo-elicitation interviews with past and present staff and one family, visual and transcript data provided opportunity to create methodological dialectics around community and societal practices, family practices, and institutional and teaching practices. From these data, it became evident that a new methodological tool that could focus on reading meaning into methodological dialectics was needed; a tool that could analyze the historical influences in childhood learning and development, and show enduring influences of cultural-historical mediations in institutional practices over time. The conceptualization of a new methodological tool for analysing methodological dialectics is the major achievement of this thesis. The methodological tool is applied and tested throughout three data chapters to varied data sets. In each of these applications it is able to show dynamic forms (hereafter: Dynamic-forms) of the cultural-historical processes at play in childhood learning and development. Influences on learning across participatory institutional practices of children, family and staff in the case study site were examined over a thirty-year time span and in this Australian early childhood community, practices were found to be transformed over time as they were iterated and re-iterated in relation to societal, institutional and personal practices. This thesis has a methodological outcome. The new methodological tool theorizes social, cultural, and historical influences in childhood learning and development, thereby adding to cultural-historical scholarship

06. Transitory moments in infant/toddler play: Agentic imagination

Studying relationships in infant/toddler play, using visual narrative methodology to identify transitory moments, supports our current research on babies and toddlers. We use Vygotsky’s theorisation of play to understand children’s affective and intellectual aspirations in play. The theoretical discussion, using cultural-historical concepts, argues for identification of transitory moments as turning points for learning. Through examining transitory moments in screen- capture snapshots from video, researchers illustrate the actual worlds of infant/toddler play where personal and collective meaning, and affect and resolution, are created and located. Our study of infant/toddler relationships in play reveals several transitory moments reflecting imaginative thought in action: agentic imagination. A case example from Long Day Care brings visual narrative together with a dialogue commentary to provide meaning of the playful circumstances in which babies’ and toddlers’ “affective incentives” (Vygotsky, this issue, p. 9) are realised and resolved in imaginary situations. This paper addresses a gap existing in pedagogical awareness of what transitory moments in play can mean for infant/toddler learning and development in early childhood education.<div><br></div><div>International Research in Early Childhood Education, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 91–110</div

Early childhood learning communities: Sociocultural research in practice

For undergraduate teachers studying early childhood education at the university level. Early Childhood Learning Communities aims to share research findings that are important in a evidence based approach to pedagogy practice. Paving the way for more accurate sorting and sifting of research and theoretical writings in early childhood education, this publication draws heavily upon the Australian research, sociocultural theory and the principles of Reggio Emilia, Italy. It invites students to act as researchers themselves, and seeks to create an early childhood learning community where the latest research and thinking generate the potential for future research and action. Offering insights gained through critical reviews of the literature that students will find make it engaging, accessible and thought provoking

Intergenerational collaborative drawing: A research method for researching with/about young children

This paper focuses on the methodological effectiveness of intergenerational collaborative drawing (ICD). A group of eight researchers trialled this particular approach to drawing, most of them for the first time. Each researcher drew with young children, peers and tertiary students, with drawings created over a period of six months. The eight researchers came together in a 'community of scholars' approach to this project because of two shared interests: (i) issues of social justice, access and equity; and (ii) arts-based education research methods. The researchers were curious how ICD might methodologically support their respective research processes. As knowledge and theory about young children becomes more complex, researchers need responsive methodological tools to ask new questions and conduct rigorous, ethical research. This partial account describes how drawing together might perform methodologically. The data reported here draws from the detailed field notes, drawings and reflections of the researchers. Conclusions arise from the analysis of these reflections, with the authors suggesting ways in which ICD might benefit research with young children