Jocelyn Nuttall

Practicum assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse early childhood pre-service teachers

The practicum is an integral component of teacher education courses, but culturally and linguistically diverse pre-service teachers can face particular struggles in meeting assessment requirements on the practicum in early childhood settings. This paper reports from a small, exploratory study of early childhood practicum handbooks from four Australian universities, interviews with early childhood pre-service teachers whose home language is not English, and interviews with early childhood educators who had supervised pre-service teachers from diverse backgrounds. Analysis of the data suggests that, while the universities aim to produce graduates who are sensitive to the diversity of the children they teach, similar considerations are not evident in the experiences of some diverse pre-service teachers. We illustrate this claim by describing the case of Sue, a Singaporean Chinese student, who struggled to pass a final-year practicum.

Lost in production: the erasure of the teacher educator in Australian university job advertisements

This paper seeks to understand how persistent categories of written language in institutional texts support the cultural-historical production and re-production of teacher educators as kinds of academic workers in Australia. Fifty-seven job advertisements and allied materials produced by Australian universities were downloaded across a seven-month period. These texts were understood as key cultural artefacts not only for the recruitment process but in conveying what it means to be a teacher educator. A surprising finding was the almost complete absence of the ‘teacher educator’ within these texts. Analysis revealed, instead, textual distinctions between the advertisements (shown to be preoccupied with the image and positioning of institutional priorities and the supporting materials) which were characterised by the language of Human Resources. Ambivalence around the work of research within teacher education was another notable feature, which is interpreted in relation to institutional anxieties about the Australian government’s Education in Research for Australia initiative.

The role of motive objects in early childhood teacher development concerning children’s digital play and play-based learning in early childhood curricula

Digital technologies are increasingly accepted as a viable aspect of early childhood curriculum. However, teacher uptake of digital technologies in early childhood education and their use with young children in play-based approaches to learning have not been strong. Traditional approaches to the problem of teacher uptake of digital technologies in early childhood curricula argue that more professional development is needed to help teachers learn to use the technologies with children. However, by focusing on children’s play instead of teacher knowledge about using technologies with young children, the ‘problem’ of teacher uptake of technologies in the early years may be re-phrased as a field-specific problem concerned with defining and understanding young children’s digital play. This argument is illustrated here through a recent study of teacher perspectives on digital play in the early years. Our aim is to offer an alternative response to the problem of uptake of digital technologies, whereby teachers’ motives for engaging in professional development are understood in relation to children’s play-based learning.

Travelling policy reforms reconfiguring the work of early childhood educators in Australia

Interventions in the field of early childhood education policy, drawn from global policy flows, are reconfiguring the work of early childhood educators in Australia. One such intervention is the requirement to designate an ‘educational leader’ (EL) in each service for young children and their families. This policy intervention has its origins in Englands Early Years Professional Status initiative. This paper compares the pedagogical leader imagined in regulatory reforms with the educational labour described in interviews with childcare educators in Queensland and Victoria, Australia. The paper argues these educators are being called upon to navigate the tension between ‘imagined’ and ‘actual’ policy effects and that this is a key part of the work of educational leadership. Such leadership includes re-constituting ‘teachers’ in early childhood services as ‘learners’ who are ‘led’ by ‘ELs’, requiring major shifts in professional knowledge and practice.

Connecting cultural models of home-based care and childminders' career paths: an eco-cultural analysis

Family day care or childminding involves a particularly transient workforce. This paper introduces Eco(logical)-Cultural Theory (ECT) to examine the cultural organisation of childminding and presents an ECT analysis of pilot survey results: asking minders about their daily routines and their career paths. Reasons for becoming a minder and aspirations for the future varied and were associated with the organisation of daily routines. Among minders who wished to continue childminding, daily routines were related to cultural models. Those aspiring to work in centres rather than homes tended to organise daily activities high in structure (i.e. similarity from day to day). Most reported dissatisfaction with home-based facilities, suggesting dissonance between models of care and local ecology. The childminding workforce is diverse and an ECT approach focused on asking childminders about their daily lives may yield valuable empirical data to inform professional development efforts.

Inter-professional work with young children in hospital: the role of 'relational agency'

This paper reports from the first phase of a study of the inter-professional work of hospital play specialists (HPSs). In this phase, the author aimed to test the utility of Edwards’ concept of ‘relational agency’ in inter-professional work in hospital settings. Individual HPSs in two London hospitals were observed for half-day periods, with particular attention paid to inter-professional episodes. At the end of each observation, the play specialists were interviewed by the author about the interpretations of the work of other professionals they brought to these episodes. Inductive analysis of the resulting transcripts suggests that the participants were able to clearly articulate their core expertise and identify the motives underlying the work of a range of other professionals. While the play specialists were motivated by their commitment to children’s rights, they identified medical professionals as primarily motivated by treatment outcomes. The paper concludes with discussion of the study’s implications for further research and for the preparation of professionals for inter-professional work.

The Historical Emergence of Early Childhood Education Research in Australia

This chapter of the handbook raises the question of whether early childhood education has reached the status of a mature field of research in Australian universities. It is organised around the discussion of three historical ‘moments’ between the 1930s and 2014. The authors argue these moments constitute turning points in the emergence of early childhood education research and scholarship in Australia, as distinct from research about children’s learning and development that draws on medical and psychological perspectives. A glimpse of the present moment is provided through an analysis of the recent contents of two prominent international early childhood education research journals edited in Australia. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the conditions under which early childhood education researchers in Australia presently conduct their work and the relationship between these conditions and the implications of higher education policy for the continuing emergence of the field.

A spatial re-consideration of the early childhood-school relationship

Abstract This paper undertakes a spatial examination of the early childhood–school relational space. It theorizes space as a product of interrelationships, moving therefore beyond an understanding of space as fixed and horizontal. Drawing on data from a pilot project with early childhood and junior primary teachers working in an independent (i.e. private, fee-paying) school, the experience of meeting across the early childhood–school divide is examined. We ask how space is produced and what types of relationships emerge in its production. The paper concludes by arguing that the production of open and dynamic spatial arrangements is key to creating new ways of being in relationship across the early childhood–school divide.

Digital Play: What Do Early Childhood Teachers See?

Educational technology research has traditionally focussed on the potential technologies have for supporting teaching and learning across a range of contexts. In the main, this work has attempted to understand the impact of technologies on student learning and/or approaches to teaching. While technologies were emerging as a new significant aspect of postindustrial communities (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006), such research was appropriate, because what the technologies could do and the impact they might have on learning was largely unknown. However, technologies are now such an integrated aspect of daily living and educational experience in many contexts that this research focus is increasingly irrelevant. Selwyn (2010) argues this point cogently, suggesting that educational technology research needs to mature into a “critical” approach so that the social and cultural contexts in which technology is located and articulated to educational settings should form the focus of research. Core aspects of taking a critical approach involve what Selwyn (2010) refers to as 1) developing context-rich analyses; and 2) asking “state of the actual” questions. Context-rich analyses focus on understanding the various settings that contribute to educational technologies, including in homes, classrooms, and policy. Asking state of the actual questions involves studying what happens when a technology meets a classroom, rather than simply asking “what is the potential impact of this technology on learning?” A critical approach to educational technology recognizes the social and cultural aspects of technological evolution and seeks to understand how these aspects intersect with traditional pedagogical approaches.