Jan Deans

Masterly preparation: embedding clinical practice in a graduate pre-service teacher education programme

This paper describes the implementation of the Master of Teaching degree which was introduced at the University of Melbourne in 2008. The programme aims to produce a new generation of teachers (early years, primary and secondary) who are interventionist practitioners, with high-level analytic skills and capable of using data and evidence to identify and address the learning needs of individual learners. The programme marks a fundamental change to the way in which teachers have traditionally been prepared in the University of Melbourne and builds a strong link between theory and practice. This linking occurs within a new partnership model with selected schools. The model was influenced by the Teachers for a New Era programme in the USA and by the clinical background of senior faculty. The programme sees teaching as a clinical-practice profession such as is found in many allied health professions; this understanding is also embraced by the university’s partnership schools. These schools are used as clinical sites, actively involving their best teachers in the clinical training component. These teachers are recognised as members of the university and are highly skilled professionals who are capable of interventionist teaching and who use appropriate assessment tools to inform their teaching of individual children.

Reflection, Renewal and Relationship Building: An Ongoing Journey in Early Childhood Arts Education.

The established place of the arts within early childhood education is rarely questioned. Nevertheless, social, cultural and political shifts in values, beliefs and practices impact on approaches to the arts, as early childhood practitioners grapple with increasingly complex views on how children learn and what factors impact on their learning. This article maps some of these shifts over the past 15 years, at one Early Learning Centre (ELC) in Australia. The centre has created and regularly re-conceptualised its vision for the place of the arts in the lives of young children. Curriculum is informed by a layered and multidimensional theoretical framework, where the arts are integrated into the childrens learning, and theories are considered as collections of partial truths. The article documents a number of significant events where the children engaged with the arts as ways of making and communicating meaning, and as a means for inquiry-based learning, for developing their artistry and as a space for relationship building between individuals and communities. Reflections on these events examine the image of the child, symbolic languages, emergent curriculum, the role of artist/ teacher and the impact of socio-cultural values on arts pedagogy and practice.

Developing Social Emotional Competence in the Early Years

During the early preschool years, children are learning more about social emotional competencies such as self-awareness, self-regulation, and social awareness. Nurturing these skills is important for positive developmental outcomes. In this chapter, we outline a body of research which identified age-appropriate use of children’s coping language in the early learning setting, the development and validation of tools to measure the coping construct, and its relationship with indicators of children’s anxiety, strengths, and difficulties. An early years coping based social emotional program, COPE-R, was developed to teach preschoolers about caring, open communication, politeness, and empathic sharing. The program, its implementation and evaluation using multiple approaches, is described. This exploratory research found that participation in the program assisted children’s social emotional competencies. Collectively, the chapter highlights how social emotional skills can be assessed and taught in an early learning setting of three to five year old children.

Empowering Practitioners to Critically Examine Their Current Practice

The intersection between Early Childhood Development (ECD), peacebuilding, and sustainable development is a complex and newly emerging area of research in the cross-disciplinary field of early childhood and international development. This paper is important for its contribution to the developing knowledge-base in its conceptualizations of the role of young children in the promotion of social cohesion and peaceful societies. It begins by discussing the increasingly high profile of ECD in the global advocacy for building sustainable development. The discussion presents a multidimensional conceptualization of early childhood that is rooted in a wider social justice and human rights agenda and encapsulated in an ecological framework that depicts the intrinsic relationship between the child, family, community, and wider society. The findings reveal the potential linkages between ECD and young children’s role in fostering peace as conceptualized in three interrelated paradigms – a rights-based, participatory, and pedagogical approach. The paper argues for the importance of advancing further research to foster greater understanding of the connections between children and peacebuilding especially in the context of fragile and conflictaffected countries.

Pre-school children's encounters with The Magic Flute

Abstract This article describes a music programme in an Australian early learning centre. Through a repertoire of songs, games and instruments, the children were introduced to music forms, including opera. Mozarts Magic Flute was presented to these children by watching the Metropolitan Operas latest film performance. Because this opera seized the childrens imagination, their interest was scaffolded for eight weeks. This musical adventure was recorded through naturalistic observations, including videos, photographs and drawings with the childrens own responses a focus of this event. The experiences of one child, Ruby, are used here as an example of childrens potential when the adult world engages them in intelligent dialogue.

All children have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON a social emotional learning (SEL) program entitled COPE-R and the role of the teacher in supporting young childrens developing social and emotional understandings, particularly around caring and empathy. Thirty-eight four- and five-year-old children and their teacher from an inner-Melbourne city long day preschool program participated in the research. The teacher was also a member of the research team hence the study falls within the realm of practitioner-research, which aims to shed further light on the role of the teacher in designing, implementing and evaluating challenging programs for young children. A qualitative case study methodology was employed to ensure that the voices of the children and the teacher-researcher were centrally located in the research. The data included the teacher-researchers program plans and reflective journal notes, childrens drawing-tellings and transcribed child interview data. Findings highlight the capacities of the participating children to engage in the COPE-R program and to demonstrate increased social emotional skill development—as evidenced through being able to identify and give voice to social emotional issues, enact relational empathy, demonstrate care for others and the environment, and recognise emotions in self and others. Also, the findings provide insight into the role of the teacher in implementing the COPE-R program, which enabled the participating children to give voice to a range of social and emotional issues including empathy, reciprocity, generosity, kindness and joy.