Changing Policy, Changing Culture: Steps Toward Early Learning Quality Improvement in Australia

Abstract

Across Australia a combined government effort is underway to reform early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision. A National Law Bill passed in 2010 heralds a new legal, regulatory and accountability framework that embraces all types ECEC provision. As a result, service providers face rapid change to address a new orientation and higher regulatory standards. This paper reviews the Australian system change in light of the tools selected under a human capital development conceptualisation, international debate about ECEC provision and what is at stake in the reform of ECEC systems. Questions are raised about the capacity of national reform enterprise within complex systems to change local practice. The tools selected to address quality in an ECEC system affect both the implementation of ECEC programs and the outcomes. Local leadership and community engagement in ECEC provision is paramount if improvements in the quality of provision are to be assured.

Integrating Health and Educational Perspectives to Promote Preschoolers’ Social and Emotional Learning: Development of a Multi-Faceted Program Using an Intervention Mapping Approach

“…ECEC services across Australia are diverse, with educators from varied educational backgrounds, with a range of qualifications, professional learning, and experiences. Early learning programs contrast in terms of their overall quality [84] and educators work with children and families with unique strengths and challenges [85,86]. The comprehensive nature of the needs assessment in Step 1 assisted the intervention design group to define program goals.…”

Imbalances between workforce policy and employment for early childhood graduate teachers: Complexities and considerations

“…Complexity in early childhood programme provision and policy agendas is a consistent theme in the international and Australian literature (Bown, Sumsion, & Press, 2009;Brennan, 2007;Melhuish, 2016;Pascoe & Brennan, 2017;Penn, 2011;Press, 2009;Tayler, 2011). In particular, complexity around programme provision, which is identified as either care or education, has clear implications for workforce policy and employment.…”

Learner engagement under the ‘regulatory gaze’: possibilities for re-positioning early childhood pre-service teachers as autonomous professionals

“…Recent commentary on previous quality improvement mechanisms and new reforms suggests that a focus on control in ECECS has resulted in a mistrust of the practices of ECTs (Cooper 2011;. With self-reflection and external auditing continuing to feature, these 'quality' controls are said to remain anchored in value-laden, maternal, and neoliberal discourses which do little to minimise risk (Barkham 2008;Bown, Sumsion, and Press 2011;, which fail to acknowledge the political and intellectual dimensions of ECECS (Hoyle and Wallace 2007;Manning-Morton 2006;Tayler 2011). In other words, regulation does not typically achieve its intended purpose and serves to discount the views of the ECTs in such policy debates about quality ECECS.…”