Tamara Cumming

Reading between the Lines: An Interpretative Meta-Analysis of Ways Early Childhood Educators Negotiate Discourses and Subjectivities Informing Practice

Considerable attention has been paid across international contexts to structural factors affecting the sustainability of the early childhood workforce. While attention to these elements is vital, it can nevertheless overshadow less tangible elements that may contribute to, or assist in addressing, problems of workforce sustainability. In particular, an existing body of literature suggests that discourses and subjectivities play an important role in informing early childhood practice. In this article we report on an interpretative meta-analysis of 38 empirical studies from 9 countries, which are concerned with ways early childhood educators negotiate discourses and subjectivities informing early childhood practice. We found that early childhood educators participating in these empirical studies used a highly complex set of strategies to negotiate the relations of power that operate within and between discourses and subjectivities informing early childhood practice. We conclude that understanding more about ways early childhood educators negotiate discourses and subjectivities has the potential to inform efforts to address problems of workforce sustainability, and is worthy of further study.

Challenges of "Thinking Differently" with Rhizoanalytic Approaches: A Reflexive Account.

Growing numbers of educational researchers are using rhizoanalytic approaches based on the work of Deleuze and Guattari to think differently in their research practices. However, as those engaging in debates about post-qualitative research suggest, thinking differently is not without its challenges. This paper uses three complex challenges encountered in the authors doctoral research – concerned with the early childhood education workforce – to reflexively explore some of the implications of thinking differently with rhizoanalytic approaches. In particular, the author discusses ways of making correctives to: repetition and thinking differently, ways that subjects are produced as-and-in-assemblages, and, immanent ethics. The paper concludes with some possible implications of these challenges and correctives for research practices, and for debates about post-qualitative research.

Drawing out critical thinking: testing the methodological value of drawing collaboratively

Early childhood research has long established that drawing is a central, and important activity for young children. Less common are investigations into the drawing activity of adults involved in early childhood. A team of adult early childhood researchers, with differing exposures and familiarities with drawing, experimented with intergenerational collaborative drawing with colleagues, students, family members and others, to explore the effectiveness of drawing as a research process and as an arts-based methodology. This testing prompted critical thinking into how drawing might facilitate research that involves young children, to operate in more communicable ways, and how research-focused drawings might occur in reference to a research project.

Educators’ perspectives on facilitating computer-assisted speech intervention in early childhood settings:

Early childhood educators are frequently called on to support preschool-aged children with speech sound disorders and to engage these children in activities that target their speech production. This study explored factors that acted as facilitators and/or barriers to the provision of computer-based support for children with speech sound disorders (SSD) in early childhood centres. Participants were 23 early childhood educators at 13 centres who participated in the Sound Start Study, a randomized controlled trial that examined the effectiveness of the Phoneme Factory Sound Sorter® (PFSS) computer program (Wren and Roulstone, 2013). Following the trial, participants completed a telephone interview discussing their experiences implementing the program. Transcripts from the interviews were analysed and three categories emerged as factors that influenced the provision of support: (1) personal factors that related to the children (engagement with PFSS, inclusion/exclusion experience), peers, and educators (service provision, educator engagement, support of child PFSS use); (2) environmental factors that related to policies and philosophies (child-centred practice, technology), the physical environment (inclusion/exclusion), and logistics (time, technology); and (3) program factors that related specifically to PFSS (program format, specific games, game duration). In order to best meet the needs of children, parents, educators, and clinicians, these factors need to be taken into consideration in the provision of speech and language therapy services in early childhood centres.

Early Childhood Practice and Refrains of Complexity.

Early childhood practice has often been described as complex in both policy documents and research literature; however, less attention has been given to exploring the nature and consequences of complexity in early childhood practice. At a time of intense policy attention in many national contexts, there is the potential for closing down, as well as for opening up conceptualisations of early childhood practice. To help keep possibilities open for multiple conceptualisations of practice, in this paper, we explore how complexity works and what it produces in early childhood practice assemblages. To do this, we draw on data fragments from research with 10 early childhood educators in NSW, Australia, and read these data with concepts from Deleuze and Guattari. We suggest four ways that our readings help articulate, and contribute to understandings of the complexity of early childhood practice.

Towards a holistic conceptualisation of early childhood educators’ work-related well-being

Both the concept of well-being and the work of early childhood educators are complex. To date, research concerning educators’ well-being has lacked a comprehensive conceptualisation that reflects these complexities. With increased research, policy and practice attention, a clearly articulated conceptualisation is now needed to guide empirical research and practical efforts to better support educators’ well-being. In this article, the authors draw on multidisciplinary perspectives to propose such a conceptualisation. Philosophical, psychological, physiological, organisational science and sociological sources are explored and critiqued for their relevance to early childhood educators’ well-being. Key aspects of these sources, and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, are brought together to argue for a morally anchored conceptualisation which acknowledges that educators’ well-being is indivisible from the contexts in which it is experienced.

Re-Thinking Discourse of Teacher Professionalism in Early Childhood Education: An Australian Perspective

The professionalism of early childhood teachers has been the subject of increasing attention globally for over a decade (Moss in Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 7(1), 30–41 2006; Osgood Narratives from the nursery: Negotiating professional identities in early childhood. Oxon, UK: Routledge 2012; Urban in Professionalism in early childhood education and care: International perspectives. Oxon, UK: Routledge 2010). While understandings of professionalism have often been harnessed to discourses of quality in early childhood research literature (Urban in Quality, autonomy and the profession: Questions of quality. Dublin, Ireland: Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education 2004; Penn Quality in early childhood services: An international perspective. Berkshire, UK: Open University Press 2011), there has also been increasing attention to the ways discourses (based on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault) produce understandings of being professional, becoming professional and constructing professionalism. Foucault (The archaeology of knowledge (A. M. Sheridan Smith Trans.). London, UK: Routledge 1972/1989) conceptualised discourses as ways of speaking, thinking or understanding that come to be accepted as truths. This means that discourses regulate possibilities for what can be spoken, thought or understood.

Changing and Sustaining Transdisciplinary Practice Through Research Partnerships

Transdisciplinary practice has been strongly advocated as an effective approach to working with children and families in early years’ settings. However, practitioners continue to experience barriers to changing practice, and difficulties challenging their professional identity. These personal-professional challenges can make transdisciplinarity difficult to sustain. Accordingly, in this chapter we suggest some possibilities for working with research partnerships as a means of changing and sustaining transdisciplinary practice. Our discussion is based upon case studies from two Australian early intervention sites, where practitioners from early childhood education, social work and allied health areas come together for the benefit of families and children. We discuss some of the benefits and drawbacks of working with case study methodologies, and the potential of action research methodologies for supporting the sustainability of transdisciplinary practice in early years’ settings.

Troubling Dissemination Experimentations With the Salon as Conference Event

Salons became popular in Europe in 17th century as sites of philosophic and literary conversation. A group of female academics interested in Deleuzian theories experimented with the salon to challenge presentation and dissemination norms that hierarchize and centralize the human. For Deleuze and Guattari, assemblages are shifting and decentering, so how might assemblages of chairs, tables, bodies, lights, and space help to trouble thinking about the methodological conventions around academic disseminations? The authors discuss the salon as a critical-cultural site: Cumming presents Deleuze and play-dough, an exploration of how the playful dissemination format of the salon prompted a re-reading of a methodological vignette from earlier research. Knight, an arts-based researcher, uses video art as a creative methodology to examine conceptualizations of rhizomes and assemblages at the salon as a dissemination site. The authors conclude that the salon, as a critical, cultural site disrupts hierarchized ways of approaching and presenting research.