A comparison of Chinese and Australian early childhood mathematics

In the 21st century mathematics proficiency is synonymous with a numerate citizenry. In the past few decades young children’s ability to reason mathematically and develop mathematical proficiencies has been recognised. This paper explores the history of early childhood mathematics (ECME) that may explicate differences in Chinese and Australian contexts. Results of this review established that China and Australia are diametrically positioned in ECME. Influencing each countries philosophies and practices are their cultural beliefs. ECME in China and Australia must be culturally sustainable to achieve excellent outcomes for young children. Ongoing critique and review is necessary to ensure that ECME is meeting the needs of all teachers and children in their particular context. China and Australia with their rich contrasting philosophies can assist each other in their journeys to create exemplary ECME for the 21st century.

Action for change? Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education curricula

This thesis focuses on non-Indigenous educators’ work around embedding Indigenous perspectives in early childhood education curricula. In place of reporting examples of ‘good’ educational practice, the study questions how whiteness and racism continue to operate in diversity work that is seen to be productive and inclusive. The thesis argues for a more comprehensive framework for embedding Indigenous perspectives in before-school contexts to support educators’ efforts. New strategies for professional development are also suggested to support changes in disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy.

Producing and maintaining professional identities in early childhood

This study is an inquiry into early childhood teacher professional identities. In Australia, workforce reforms in early childhood include major shifts in qualification requirements that call for a university four-year degree-qualified teacher to be employed in child care. This marks a shift in the early years workforce, where previously there was no such requirement. At the same time as these reforms to quality measures are being implemented, and requiring a substantive up skilling of the workforce, there is a growing body of evidence through recent studies that suggests these same four-year degree-qualified early childhood teachers have an aversion to working in child care. Their preferred employment option is to work in the early years of more formal schooling, not in before-school contexts. This collision of agendas warrants investigation. This inquiry is designed to investigate the site at which advocacy for higher qualification requirements meets early childhood teachers who are reluctant to choose child care as a possible career pathway. The key research question for this study is: How are early childhood teachers’ professional identities currently produced? The work of this thesis is to problematise the early childhood teacher in child care through a particular method of discourse analysis. There are two sets of data. The first was a key early childhood political document that read as a "moment of arising" (Foucault, 1984a, p. 83). It is a political document which was selected for its current influence on the early childhood field, and in particular, workforce reforms that call for four-year degree-qualified teachers to work in before-school contexts, including child care. The second data set was generated through four focus group discussions conducted with preservice early childhood teachers. The document and transcripts of the focus groups were both analysed as text, as conceptualised by Foucault (1981). Foucault’s work spans a number of years and a range of philosophical matters. This thesis draws particularly on Foucault’s writings on discourse, power/knowledge, regimes of truth and resistance. In order to consider the production of early childhood teachers’ professional identities, the study is also informed by identity theorists, who have worked on gender, performativity and investment (Davies, 2004/2006; McNay, 1992; Osgood, 2012; Walkerdine, 1990; Weedon, 1997). The ways in which discourses intersect, compete and collide produce the subject (Foucault, 1981) and, in the case of this inquiry, there are a number of competing discourses at play, which produce the early childhood teacher. These particular theories turn particular lenses on the question of professional identities in early childhood, and such a study calls for the application of particular methodologies. Discourse analysis was used as the methodological framework, and the analysis was informed by Foucauldian concepts of discourse. While Foucault did not prescribe a form of discourse analysis as a method, his writings nonetheless provide a valuable framework for illuminating discursive practices and, in turn, how people are affected, through the shifts and distribution of power (Foucault, 1980a). The treatment used with both data sets involved redescription. For the policy document, a technique for reading document-as-text applied a genealogical approach (Foucault, 1984a). For the focus groups, the process of redescription (Rorty, 1989) involved reading talk-as-text. As a method, redescription involves describing "lots and lots of things in new ways until you have created a pattern of linguistic behaviour which will tempt the new generation to adopt it" (Rorty, 1989, p. 9). The development and application of categories (Davies, 2004/2006) built on a poststructuralist theoretical framework and the literature review informed the data analysis method of discourse analysis. Irony provided a rhetorical and playful tool (Haraway, 1991; Rorty, 1989), to look to how seemingly opposing discourses are held together. This opens a space to collapse binary thinking and consider seemingly contradictory terms in a way in which both terms are possible and both are true. Irony resists the choice of one or the other being right, and holds the opposites together in tension. The thesis concludes with proposals for new, ironic categories, which work to bring together seemingly opposing terms, located at sites in the field of early childhood where discourses compete, collide and intersect to produce and maintain early childhood teacher professional identities. The process of mapping these discourses goes some way to investigating the complexities about identities and career choices of early childhood teachers. The category of "the cost of loving" captures the collision between care/love, inherent in child care, and new discourses of investment/economics. Investment/economics has not completely replaced care/love, and these apparent opposites were not read as a binary because both are necessary and both are true (Haraway, 1991). They are held together in tension to produce early childhood teacher professional identities. The policy document under scrutiny was New Directions, released in 2007 by the then opposition ALP leader, Kevin Rudd. The claim was made strongly that the "economic prosperity" of Australia relies on investment in early childhood. The arguments to invest are compelling and the neuroscience/brain research/child development together with economic/investment discourses demand that early childhood is funding is increased. The intersection of these discourses produces professional identities of early childhood teachers as a necessary part of the country’s economy, and thus, worthy of high status. The child care sector and work in child care settings are necessary, with children and the early childhood teacher playing key roles in the economy of the nation. Through New Directions it becomes sayable (Foucault, 1972/1989) that the work the early childhood teacher performs is legitimated and valued. The children are produced as "economic units". A focus on what children are able to contribute to the future economy of the nation re-positions children and produces these "smart productive citizens", making future economic contribution. The early childhood teacher is produced through this image of a child and "the cost of loving" is emphasised. A number of these categories were produced through the readings of the document-as text and the talk-as-text. Two ironic categories were read in the analysis of the transcripts of the focus group discussions, when treated as talk-as-text data: the early childhood teacher as a "heroic victim"; and the early childhood teacher as a "glorified babysitter". This thesis raises new questions about professional identities in early childhood. These new questions might go some way to prompt re-thinking of some government policy, as well as some aspects of early childhood teacher education course design. The images of children and images of child care provide provocations to consider preservice teacher education course design. In particular, how child care, as one of the early childhood contexts, is located, conceptualised and spoken throughout the course. Consideration by course designers and teacher educators of what discourses are privileged in course content —what discourses are diminished or silenced—would go some way to reconceptualising child care within preservice teacher education and challenging dominant ways of speaking child care, and work in child care. This inquiry into early childhood teachers’ professional identities has gone some way to exploring the complexities around the early childhood teacher in child care. It is anticipated that the significance of this study will thus have immediate applicably and relevance for the Australian early childhood policy landscape. The early childhood field is in a state of rapid change, and this inquiry has examined some of the disconnects between policy and practice. Awareness of the discourses that are in play in the field will continue to allow space for conversations that challenge dominant assumptions about child care, work in child care and ways of being an early childhood teacher in child care.

The impact of professional development on early childhood educators’ confidence, understanding and knowledge of education for sustainability

In recent times, Australia has recognised and enacted a range of initiatives at service, system and community levels that seek to embed sustainability into the early childhood sector. This paper explores the impact of a professional development (PD) session that provided opportunities for early childhood educators to learn and share ideas about the theory and practice of sustainability generally and early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) specifically. The PD was entitled ‘Living and Learning about Sustainability in the Early Years’ and was offered on three occasions across Tasmania. A total of 99 participants attended the three PD sessions (one 5 hour; two 2 hour). The participants had varying levels of experience and included early childhood teachers, centre based educators and preservice teachers. At the start and end of the PD, participants were invited to complete a questionnaire that contained a series of likert scale questions that explored their content knowledge, level of understanding and confidence in regards to ECEfS. Participants were also asked at the start and end of the PD to ‘list five words you think of when you consider the word sustainability.’ A model of teacher professional growth was used to conceptualise the results related to the changes in knowledge, understanding and confidence (personal domain) as a result of the PD related to ECEfS (external domain). The likert-scale questions on the questionnaire revealed significant positive changes in levels of knowledge, understanding and confidence from the start to the end of the PD. Differences as a function of length of PD, level of experience and role are presented and discussed. The ‘5 words’ question showed that participants widened their understandings of ECEfS from a narrow environmental focus to a broader understanding of the social, political and economic dimensions. The early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector has been characterised as having a pedagogical advantage for EfS suggesting that early childhood educators are well placed to engage with EfS more readily than might educators in other education sectors. This article argues that PD is necessary to develop capability in educators in order to meet the imperatives around sustainability outlined in educational policy and curriculum documents in ECEC.

Small acts of resistance : the role of intergenerational collaborative drawing in early childhood teaching and learning

This chapter focuses on ‘intergenerational collaborative drawing’, a particular process of drawing whereby adults and children draw at the same time on a blank paper space. Such drawings can be produced for a range of purposes, and based on different curriculum or stimulus subjects. Children of all ages, and with a range of physical and intellectual abilities are able to draw with parents, carers and teachers. Intergenerational collaborative drawing is a highly potent method for drawing in early childhood contexts because it brings adults and children together in the process of thinking and theorizing in order to create visual imagery and this exposes in deep ways to adults and children, the ideas and concepts being learned about. For adults, this exposure to a child’s thinking is a far more effective assessment tool than when they are presented with a finished drawing they know little about. This chapter focuses on drawings to examine wider issues of learning independence and how in drawing, preferred schema in the form of hand-out worksheets, the suggestive drawings provided by adults, and visual material seen in everyday life all serve to co-opt a young child into making particular schematic choices. I suggest that intergenerational collaborative drawing therefore serves to work as a small act of resistance to that co-opting, in that it helps adults and children to collectively challenge popular creativity and learning discourses.

Research in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability : International Perspectives and Provocations

Sustainability is a global issue that urgently needs addressing, the most serious consequences of which concern children and future generations. This insightful research text tackles one of the most significant contemporary issues of our times – the nexus between society and environment – and how early childhood education can contribute to sustainable living. By offering international and multidisciplinary research perspectives on Early Childhood Education for Sustainability, each chapter explores and investigates the complex topic of sustainability and its relationship to early childhood education. A particular emphasis that runs through this text is young children as empowered citizens, capable of both contributing to and creating change for sustainability. The chapter authors work from, or are aligned with, a transformative education paradigm that suggests the socio-constructivist frameworks currently underpinning Early Childhood Education require reframing in light of the social transformations necessary to address humanity’s unsustainable, unjust and unhealthy living patterns. This research text is designed to be provocative and challenging; in so doing it seeks to encourage exploration of current understandings about Early Childhood Education for Sustainability, offers new dimensions for more deeply informed practice, and proposes avenues for further research in this field.

Community arts in early childhood

Community arts can take many forms, including murals, installations, festivals and performances. The work can be produced by artists solely, by artists working with community groups, or by community groups. Community arts can be on a grand-scale covering whole streets, parks or even towns, or small- scale, such as a mosaic in the corner of a play area. It can be extremely impacting and a permanent fixture, or fragile and small and designed to blow away in the wind. But, common to all these different forms of community arts are the criteria that community arts are made in, for and/or by, the local community.

An orientation to early childhood education for sustainability and research : framing the text

This publication arose from the interests of the chapter authors, ‘a small group of thoughtful people’ almost all of whom participated in one or both Transnational Dialogues in Research in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability, held in Stavanger, Norway in 2010 and Brisbane, Australia in 2011 (Refer Appendix 1 for list of participants). These meetings were the first time that a critical mass of researchers from vastly different parts of the globe - Norway, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand at the inaugural meeting, with additional participants from Korea, Japan and Singapore attending the second - had come together to debate, discuss and share ideas about research and theory in the emerging field of Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS. Some of the researchers who joined these Transnational Dialogues, had met serendipitously at earlier conferences and meetings, or corresponded via email, but many had never met face-to-face. Now a significant number are contributing authors in this text. It is a testament to these researchers’ interest in this agenda that they mostly self-funded their travel and other costs to attend the Transnational Dialogues research meetings. While most chapter authors come from the field of early childhood education, a few are more aligned with education for sustainability/environmental education, while a much smaller number are already working at the intersection of early childhood education and education for sustainability. What we share as a group is a range of perspectives and orientations to research and to the research focus at the heart of this book - young children and their actual and potential capabilities as agents of change for sustainability. As researchers, regardless of experience and perspectives, participants knew they had something extra to offer - their expertise as researchers - providing scholarly insights into the work of practitioners, applying critically reflective lenses to curricula, pedagogies and assumptions, testing of ideas and theories, and presenting a sense for where ECEfS might fit or, indeed, go beyond norms and orthodoxies. This is a text, then, for both researchers and those whose primary interests lie in daily interactions with children, families and communities.

Examining early childhood education through the lens of education for sustainability : revisioning rights

This chapter calls for rethinking about the rights base of early childhood education. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (UNICEF1989) has been seen as an important foundation internationally for early childhood education practise. In this paper, I argue that whilst the UNCRC (1989) still serves its aspirational purpose, it is an inadequate vehicle for enacting early childhood education in the twenty-first century given the pressing challenges of sustainability. The UNCRC emerged from an individual rights perspective, and despite attempts to broaden the rights agenda towards greater child participation and engagement, these approaches offer an inadequate response to global sustainability concerns. In this chapter, I propose a five dimensional approach to rights that acknowledges the fundamental rights of children as espoused in the UNCRC and the call for agentic rights as advocated more recently by early childhood academics and practitioners. Additionally, however, discussion of collective rights, intergenerational rights and bio/ecocentic rights are forwarded, offering a expanded way to think about rights with implications for how early childhood education is practised and researched.

Investigating early childhood education for sustainability : insights from history and literature

Seemingly straightforward tasks often have a way of becoming complex. This was the case for our guest editorial team charged with creating Early Childhood Australia’s Best of Sustainability publication drawn from the the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood and Every Child. The complexities we encountered ranged from the varied terminologies and understandings of constructs such as education for sustainable development, environmental education and education for sustainability, through to the fundamental lack of published research on which to draw as the basis for a special issue. It is timely to explore these complexities as we face the global challenges of The Critical Decade (DCCEE, 2011) including rising sea levels, extreme weather events and food security. At a local level, the early childhood field in Australia is seeking to interpret sustainability with systemic support from the National Quality Standards(NQS) (ACECQA, 2011), while elsewhere environmental/sustainability education is encouraged through national curricula documents (for example, Singapore Ministry of Education, 2008; Swedish National Agency for Education,2010; Ministry of Education of Korea, 2011). Both The Critical Decade and the NQS provide imperatives to drive early childhood education’s engagement with sustainability. In other words, sustainability in early childhood education is no longer optional, but essential (Elliott, 2010). While some twenty years of advocacy has led to this somewhat subdued celebratory position, in this publication we do recognise the historical contexts that have led to early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS), as we (Elliott & Davis) phrase it, becoming almost ‘mainstream not marginal’ (Davis, 1999)— a stitching together of the isolated ‘patches of green’, first identified a decade ago by Elliott (NSW EPA, 2003). Here we weave together, through these articles, a story of the evolving history of ECEfS from our particular perspective. In so doing, we also acknowledge that there are other perspectives or ‘paths’ for this field as identified by Edwards and Cutter-McKenzie in their concluding paper to this compilation.

The decision-making processes of early childhood teachers when working with children experiencing parental separation and divorce

In this study, the pedagogical decision-making processes of 21 Australian early childhood teachers working with children experiencing parental separation and divorce were examined. Transcripts from interviews and a focus group with teachers were analysed using grounded theory methodology. The findings showed that as teachers interacted with young children experiencing parental separation and divorce, they reported using strategic, reflexive pedagogical decision-making processes. These processes comprised five stages: (1) teachers constructing their knowledge; (2) teachers thinking about their knowledge; (3) teachers using decision-making schemas; (4) teachers taking action, and; (5) teachers monitoring action and evaluating. This understanding of teachers’ reflexive pedagogical decision-making is useful for identifying how teachers and educational leaders can support children experiencing parental separation and divorce or other life challenges.

The ‘state of play’ in Australia: Early childhood educators and play-based learning

This article provides an overview of the Education Meets Play study that will investigate early childhood educators’ use of play-based learning, now mandatory under the National Quality Standard. By building on what can be gleaned about educators’ approaches to play-based learning prior to the implementation of the Early Years Learning Framework, the study will contribute to the evidence base concerning the implementation and effects of Australia’s early childhood education and care policy reform initiatives.

Pre-packaging preschool literacy: What drives early childhood teachers to use commercially produced phonics programs in prior to school settings

Language-rich environments are key to overall quality in early childhood settings, including frequent child–staff interactions around picture books and dramatic play. In a language-rich environment, explicit teaching of literacy concepts, such as phonics, is embedded in authentic and meaningful situations where alphabet letters and sounds are taught in a context meaningful to the child. Recent research, however, suggests that the use of commercial pre-packaged phonics programs (such as Letterland and Jolly Phonics) is widespread in prior to school settings in Sydney, Australia. Little is known about why early childhood teachers choose to use such programs with children aged five and under. In the present study, thematic analysis of data from interviews with five early childhood teachers using commercial phonics programs found that their reasons were pragmatic rather than pedagogical. Motivations included the idea that the programs reduced their workload, provided tangible evidence to parents of their child’s ‘school readiness’, and served as a marketing tool to attract parents. Further analysis found that the teachers were unable to articulate what phonics and phonological awareness are and how they are learnt in early childhood.

Effect and process evaluations of an early childhood obesity prevention intervention

The thesis develops a summative evaluation framework of the NOURISH Randomised Controlled Trial, and applies this to a selection of maternal feeding choice outcomes of the programme. The research is based on an ecological model of the complex set of factors that need to be acted upon to address childhood obesity. The novel approach extends the standard RCT effect evaluation, while also conducting an in-depth evaluation of the process of programme development and implementation. Research findings identify adaptations of intervention delivery that could improve its effectiveness and translatability, in a new cycle of the programme.

Consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in early childhood education: The impact of colonial discourses

In Australian early years education, consultation and partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are central to embedding Indigenous perspectives. Building sustained and reciprocal partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people supports access to local knowledges and perspectives to inform curriculum planning, as well as protocols and community processes, and contemporary responses to colonisation. Drawing on data from a doctoral study about embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education curricula, this paper examines interactional patterns in consultations between non-Indigenous early childhood educators and Indigenous people in real and supposed form. Data is read through whiteness studies literature and related critiques to identify how the educators positioned Indigenous people in interactional patterns and how the mobilisation of colonial discourses impacted the potential for reciprocity and sustained partnerships, despite the best of intentions. Colonial traces of positioning Indigenous people as informants, targeted resources or knowledge commissioners were shown to be most salient in interactional patterns. While these findings are contextualised within Australia, I suggest they have applicability in examining approaches to embedding Indigenous perspectives in education curricula in other colonising contexts such as Canada and New Zealand.