Friendships in the early years

Having a best friend or close friend is closely connected to children’s health and well being in the early years. Having friends safeguards children from social isolation and is associated with academic attainment and social success. In early childhood, children often make friends through play or other shared activities. This chapter investigates friendships and children’s well being in the early years of schooling. Drawing on direct accounts and representations from interviews with young children about friendships, the chapter outlines characteristics of friendship and strategies children use to make friends and manage disputes as they negotiate roles in play and shared spaces. Three key dimensions of friendship are evident in the children’s accounts: friendship is enduring, friendship is mutual and friendship involves an emotional investment. This chapter provides educators with an understanding of the important role that friendships have for happiness and wellbeing in the early years.

Innovation through action research in environmental education : from project to praxis

This thesis is a work-in-progress that articulates my research journey based on the development of a curriculum innovation in environmental education. This journey had two distinct, but intertwined phases: action research based fieldwork, conducted collaboratively, to create a whole school approach to environmental education curriculum planning; and a phase of analysis and reflection based on the emerging findings, as I sought to create personal "living educational theory" about change and innovation. A key stimulus for the study was the perceived theory-practice gap in environmental education, which is often presented in the literature as a criticism of teachers for failing to achieve the values and action objectives of critical environmental education. Hence, many programs and projects are considered to be superficial and inconsequential in terms of their ability to seriously address environmental issues. The intention of this study was to work with teachers in a project that would be an exemplar of critical environmental education. This would be in the form of a whole school "learnscaping" curriculum in a primary school whereby the schoolgrounds would be utilised for interdisciplinary critical environment education. Parallel with the three cycles of action research in this project, my research objectives were to identify and comment upon the factors that influence the generation of successful educational innovation. It was anticipated that the project would be a collaboration involving me, as researcher-facilitator, and many of the teachers in the school as active participants. As the project proceeded through its action cycles, however, it became obvious that the goal of developing a critical environmental education curriculum, and the use of highly participatory processes, were unrealistic. Institutional and organisational rigidities in education generally, teachers' day-to-day work demands, and the constant juggle of work, family and other responsibilities for all participants acted as significant constraints. Consequently, it became apparent that the learnscaping curriculum would not be the hoped-for exemplar. Progress was slow and, at times, the project was in danger of stalling permanently. While the curriculum had some elements of critical environmental education, these were minor and not well spread throughout the school. Overall, the outcome seemed best described as a "small win"; perhaps just another example of the theory-practice gap that I had hoped this project would bridge. Towards the project's end, however, my continuing reflection led to an exploration of chaos/complexity theory which gave new meaning to the concept of a "small win". According to this theory, change is not the product of linear processes applied methodically in purposeful and diligent ways, but emerges from serendipitous events that cannot be planned for, or forecast in advance. When this perspective of change is applied to human organisations - in this study, a busy school - the context for change is recognised not as a stable, predictable environment, but as a highly complex system where change happens all the time, cannot be controlled, and no one can be really sure where the impacts might lead. This so-called "butterfly effect" is a central idea of this theory where small changes or modifications are created - the effects of which are difficult to know, let alone determine - and which can have large-scale impacts. Allied with this effect is the belief that long term developments in an organisation that takes complexity into account, emerge by spontaneous self-organising evolution, requiring political interaction and learning in groups, rather than systematic progress towards predetermined goals or "visions". Hence, because change itself and the contexts of change are recognised as complex, chaos/complexity theory suggests that change is more likely to be slow and evolutionary - cultural change - rather than fast and revolutionary where the old is quickly ushered out by radical reforms and replaced by new structures and processes. Slow, small-scale changes are "normal", from a complexity viewpoint, while rapid, wholesale change is both unlikely and unrealistic. Therefore, the frustratingly slow, small-scale, imperfect educational changes that teachers create - including environmental education initiatives - should be seen for what they really are. They should be recognised as successful changes, the impacts of which cannot be known, but which have the potential to magnify into large-scale changes into the future. Rather than being regarded as failures for not meeting critical education criteria, "small wins" should be cause for celebration and support. The intertwined phases of collaborative action research and individual researcher reflection are mirrored in the thesis structure. The first three chapters, respectively, provide the thesis overview, the literature underpinning the study's central concern, and the research methodology. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 report on each of the three action research cycles of the study, namely Laying the Groundwork, Down to Work!, and The Never-ending Story. Each of these chapters presents a narrative of events, a literature review specific to developments in the cycle, and analysis and critique of the events, processes and outcomes of each cycle. Chapter 7 provides a synthesis of the whole of the study, outlining my interim propositions about facilitating curriculum change in schools through action research, and the implications of these for environmental education.

The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development

This document calls on governments, civil society and in particular educators to prioritize processes that develop and strengthen education for sustainable development (ESD). The world has changed since the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. While there have been significant initiatives and progress has been made, the scale of effort is still overshadowed by the scope of the problem. For instance, human-induced climate change is creating a long-lasting ecological crisis with severe economic and social consequences. Recently the global economic crisis has drawn attention to the problem of borrowing from resources that do not exist. Poverty, conflict and social injustice remain critical issues on the global agenda. A renewed sense of commitment to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 is required. Formal, informal and non-formal education and learning processes for sustainability must be strengthened and prioritized. This document supports and builds on the concepts and values that are put forward within UNESCO’s International Implementation Scheme for Education for Sustainable Development and in the Earth Charter. The purpose of ESD is to reorient education in order to contribute to a sustainable future for the common good of present and future generations. ESD recognizes the interdependence of environmental, social and economic perspectives and the dependence of humanity on a healthy biosphere. Participation and involvement are necessary components of ESD, with an emphasis on empowerment and agency for active citizenship, human rights and societal change. Re-orientation is necessary at all levels and in all phases of education, and encompasses community learning, thus making ESD a wider process challenging the form and purpose of education itself.

Going online : young children and teachers accessing knowledge through web interactions

Children accessing and using internet-connected technology is a relatively recent phenomenon, and rapidly having an impact on their experiences and activities in homes and early childhood classrooms. Technology refers to devices such as computers, smart phones and tablets - many capable of being connected to the internet - and the products, such as websites, games, and interactive stories (Plowman and McPake, 2013). These activities can be played, created, watched, listened to and read, and incorporated into traditional everyday activities. This article provides suggestions for strategies for teachers to consider when incorporating technology into early childhood education.

The construction of parents as learners about pre-school children’s development

The concept of the lifelong learner—the idea that people should be active learners throughout the lifespan—has since the 1990s gained importance in public policy. Governments in relatively wealthy countries have made the argument that the economic future of nations is tied to the ongoing participation of citizens in learning opportunities that will assist them to participate fully in society and increase their chances of employment in changing workforce conditions. More recently, policy attention has focused on the other end of the lifespan, the first years of life. With the early years now recognised as crucial for later educational success, policy attention has also focused on the importance of parenting in the early years. In the UK and Australia, for example, the effects of state interventions to facilitate ‘good parenting’ and pre-school children’s ‘readiness’ for formal schooling have been felt in a range of settings including community health services, the home and the pre-school (Gillies, 2005; Nichols & Jurvansuu, 2008; Millei & Lee, 2007; Vincent, Ball & Braun, 2010). In Australia, government policy has explicitly proposed a model of parenting as a learning process, and has urged people to cultivate their identities as learners in order to carry out their responsibilities as parents. In part the policy objectives have been to support parents to ensure that all children get a healthy and successful start to life...

Embedding EfS in teacher education : an introductory guide to using the systems change model

Welcome to this introductory guide on using a systems change model to embed Education for Sustainability (EfS) into teacher education. Pressing sustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and depletion of non-renewable resources pose new challenges for education. The importance of education in preparing future citizens to engage in sustainable living practices and help create a more sustainable world is widely acknowledged. As a result many universities around the world are beginning to recognize the need to integrate EfS into their teacher education programs. However, evidence indicates that there is little or no core EfS knowledge or pedagogy in pre-service teacher courses available to student teachers in a thorough and systematic fashion. Instead efforts are fragmented and individually or, at best, institutionally-based and lacking a systems approach to change, an approach that is seen as essential to achieving a sustainable society (Henderson & Tilbury, 2004). The result is new teachers are graduating without the necessary knowledge or skills to teach in ways that enable them to prepare their students to cope well with the new and emerging challenges their communities face. This guide has been prepared as part of a teaching and learning research project that applied a systems change approach to embedding the learning and teaching of sustainability into pre-service teacher education. The processes, outcomes and lessons learnt from this project are presented here as a guide for navigating pathways to systemic change in the journey of re-orienting teacher education towards sustainability. The guide also highlights how a systems change approach can be used to successfully enact change within a teacher education system. If you are curious about how to introduce and embed EfS into teacher education – or have tried other models and are looking for a more encompassing, transformative approach – this guide is designed to help you. The material presented in this guide is designed to be flexible and adaptive. However you choose to use the content, our aim is to help you and your students develop new perspectives, promote discussion and to engage with a system-wide approach to change.

Transformative approaches to sustainability

How to live sustainably is a topic of local, national and international importance. The Australian National Curriculum (ACARA, 2011) identifies sustainability as a cross-disciplinary strand, obligating teachers to build sustainability into their pedagogical practices. In early childhood education, the Early Years Learning Framework (2009) and more recently, the National Quality Framework (2011) provide impetus for early childhood education for sustainably (ECEfS). This article discusses ECEfS, but first, it addresses climate change putting this into a sustainability perspective.

Last word : opportunity to educate

The article discusses the importance that learning to live sustainably in order to provide healthy and fulfilling lives for future generations. The things that need to be done differently and the innovative partnerships that are required are highlighted.

Lesson studies in Chinese kindergartens

Lesson studies are a powerful form of professional development (Doig and Groves, 2011). The processes of creating, enacting, analyzing, and refining lessons to improve teaching practices are key components of lesson studies. Lesson studies have been the primary form of professional development in Japanese classrooms for many years (Lewis, Perry and Hurd, 2009). This model is now used to improve instruction in many South-East Asian countries (White and Lim, 2008), as well as increasingly in North America (Lesson Study Research Group, 2004), and South Africa (Ono and Ferreira, 2010). In China, this form of professional development aimed at improving teaching, has also been adopted, originating from Soviet models of teacher professional development arising from influences post 1949 (China Education Yearbook, 1986). Thus, China too has a long history of improving teaching and learning through this form of school-based professional learning.

A shared reading intervention with parents to enhance young children’s early literacy skills

Parental reading to children from an early age has been shown to enhance children’s emergent literacy skills. A pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) was used to investigate the effects of two forms of shared reading interventions on children’s language and literacy skills. Parents of 80 preparatory year children from outer suburban schools of an Australian metropolitan city were trained to use shared reading strategies in an eight-week home intervention. Families were assigned to one of three groups: Dialogic Reading (DR), Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing (DR + PR), or an attention-matched control group. The sample comprised 42 boys and 38 girls ranging in age from 4.9 years to 6.3 years (M = 5.5, SD = 0.3). Data were collected at pre, post, and at three months follow-up. Measures assessed children’s oral language (receptive and expressive vocabulary), phonological awareness (rhyme, word completion), alphabet knowledge, and concepts about print. Analyses of change from pre to post showed significant effects for the DR and DR + PR groups compared to the control group on three of the six measures: expressive language, rhyme, and concepts about print. At 3-month follow-up assessment, the two intervention groups maintained significantly better performance on the measure of concepts of print only. At both time points, there were no group differences between the DR and DR+PR conditions. These findings illustrate the potential of a brief home focused intervention on promoting children’s emergent literacy.

Pre-service teachers’ epistemic perspectives about philosophy in the classroom : it is not a bunch of ‘hippie stuff’

Using epistemic perspectives as a theoretical framework, this study investigated Australian pre-service teachers’ perspectives about knowing, knowledge and children’s learning, as they engaged in a semester-long unit on philosophy in the classroom. During the field experience component of the unit, pre-service teachers were required to teach at least one philosophy lesson. Pre-service teachers completed the Personal Epistemological Beliefs Survey at the beginning and end of the unit. They were also interviewed in focus groups at the end of the semester to investigate their views about children’s learning. Paired sample t-tests were used to explore changes in epistemic beliefs over time. Significant differences were found for only some individual items on the survey. However, when interviewed, pre-service teachers indicated that field experiences helped them consider children as competent ‘thinkers’ who were capable of engaging in philosophy in the classroom. They reported predominantly student-centred perspectives of children’s learning, although a process of adjudication (exploring disagreements and evidence for responses) was lacking in these responses.

Productive and inclusive? How documentation concealed racialising practices in a diversity project

This article examines how documentation concealed racialising practices in a diversity project that was seen to be productive and inclusive. Documentation examples are taken from a doctoral study about embedding Indigenous perspectives in early childhood education curricula in two Australian urban childcare centres. In place of reporting examples of ‘good’ early childhood education practice, the study labelled racialising practices in educators’ work. The primary aim was to understand how racialising practices are mobilised in professional practices, including documentation, even when educators’ work is seen to be high quality. Extracts from two communal journals that captured an action research process around embedding practices are examined to show how racism and whiteness were concealed within the documentation. This enables understanding about how documentation can provide evidence to stakeholders that diversity work in mainstream childcare centres is productive and inclusive, despite disparity between what is recorded and what occurs in practice.

Lessons from a face-to-face meeting on embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives : ‘A contract of intimacy’

This paper presents the findings from a conversation between an Aboriginal educator and a non-Indigenous pre-service educator about the importance and complexities of building productive partnerships. Although the participants focused on the challenges and benefits of building relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and non-Indigenous educators in Australian early years settings, the more significant outcome of the meeting was the personal connection two young women were able to make when a friendship began to develop. The project was intended to enable an opportunity for the participants ‘to engage in reflexivity on their pedagogic work’, something Mills (2012) understands as crucial to the support of social justice and transformation in the classroom.

The prevention of childhood anxiety and promotion of resilience among preschool-aged children : a universal school based trial

This study is the first to examine the effectiveness of the Fun FRIENDS programme, a school-based, universal preventive intervention for early childhood anxiety and promotion of resilience delivered by classroom teachers. Participants (N = 488) included children aged 4–7 years attending 1 of 14 Catholic Education schools in Brisbane, Australia. The schools were randomly allocated to one of three groups, the intervention, active comparison and waitlist control group. Parents completed standardized measures of anxiety and behavioural inhibition (BI), resilience, social and emotional functioning and behaviour difficulties in addition to parental stress and anxiety, at pre- and post- and 12-month follow-up. Teachers also completed a parallel measure of social and emotional strength at the three time points. Comparable results were obtained for the intervention and comparison groups; however, the intervention group (IG) achieved greater reductions in BI, child behavioural difficulties and improvements in social and emotional competence. In addition, significant improvements in parenting distress and parent–child interactions were found for the IG, with gains maintained at 12-month follow-up. Teacher reports revealed more significant improvement in social and emotional competence for the IG. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed, along with limitations and directions for future research.