Pauline Harris

Developing an Integrated Play-Based Pedagogy in Preservice Teacher Education: A self-study

This paper reports a self-study of developing an integrated play-based pedagogy in a preservice early childhood teacher education subject about play. It is framed by understandings of play in childrens lives and adult learning. The self-study was initially driven by a contradiction between teaching preservice teachers about play through didactic means and learning about play through play. Other tensions subsequently arose in this self-study and required me to reframe my thoughts and actions so I could move forward. This paper documents the tensions and reframings as the self-study proceeded over the course of a semester. It reveals that developing an integrated play-based pedagogy not only involves play-based activities per se but also the atmosphere in which experiences and interactions unfold and the play qualities they embody. Ideally, students become major players in the process of the development of pedagogy.

Collaborative professional identities and continuity of practice: a narrative inquiry of preschool and primary teachers

Abstract This paper focuses on collaboration between Australian preschool and primary school teachers co-located on same sites, with a view to understanding and strengthening collaboration for supporting continuity of practice across preschool and primary school settings. Based on findings from a narrative inquiry study framed by Freire’s notion of dialogic encounters, we examine teachers’ challenges to collaboration within an Australian public education system, understood through their perspectives and enactment of their professional identities as collaborators in this physically shared space. We present a possible framework for creating a shared space in which preschool and primary teachers collaborate to support continuity of learning for children.

In Dialogue with Children: Exploring Children’s Views of Literacy Practices in Their Early Childhood Settings

In early years literacy policies and decision-making, children’s voices are quite silent despite their right to have voice in matters affecting their lives (UNCRC, 1989). Calling for a rights-based shift in literacy research, this chapter reports a study of children’s voices about reading in their second school year. This study was driven by moral and pedagogic imperatives to engage with children’s voices about their reading education at school. Constructing children as competent participants, key informants and human rights bearers (Mayall, 2002), this study is framed by a sociocultural perspective of reading (Luke & Freebody, 1990). Children’s perspectives of their participation, efficacy and wellbeing as readers at school provoke reflection on consequences of what is provided in early years programmes, highlighting importance of understanding these consequences through children’s voices and considering children’s views in policy and decision-making.

Mediating relationships across research, policy, and practice in teacher education

This self-study explores my mediation as a literacy teacher educator in the context of a professional development undertaking that involved developing and leading an early school years literacy course. I examine the tensions that arose in the light of my own professional history and explore ways that the tensions led me to reconcile conflicting messages through processes of reframing. I describe how I put my reframings into action in the way I designed and presented the professional development course. This self-study advances knowledge about teacher education in terms of its role in mediating connections between research, policy and practice, identifying some of the tensions that occur in this mediation and illustrating how, as teacher educators, we can use these tensions to reframe our mediation.

'At a school like this': implementing policy in a kindergarten reading program

This paper examines influences in a teacher’s working context on policy implementation in a Kindergarten reading program. This exploration is based on a year’s observations, interviews and artefact collection in the teacher’s classroom; and is framed by Bernstein’s notion of the pedagogic device (2000). Positioned between policy and the history of her own beliefs and practices, this paper describes the operational space that Sandra carved out. In this space, a number of messages converged which mediated the teacher’s policy implementation. These mediating messages are described in terms of teaching philosophy; children’s needs, predispositions and resources; parents’ expectations; collegial interactions; and organisational priorities, norms and provisions. In light of this study, policy implementation in the class reading program is seen to be anything but clear-cut; and recent unilateral approaches to literacy policy reform and their underlying assumptions are brought into question.