Collaboration is key: The actual experience of disciplines working together in child care

Abstract

Promoting young children's academic and developmental outcomes can no longer be achieved by the single efforts of one profession, but requires professionals to work together in inter-professional teams to understand the complexity of young children's lives. Collaboration in early childhood programs involves health professionals, educators, and other professionals sharing information, validating each other's roles, and providing input around which strategies promote positive outcomes for all children. There are, however, limited studies available within early childhood education on inter-disciplinary relationships between nurses and teachers. This paper helps to fill this void by exploring the relationship of an early childhood teacher and maternal and child health nurse working alongside one another in an Australian kindergarten. Through a narrative approach, a number of characteristics of the relationship were identified as key elements to a productive relationship. Findings are important for health professionals working with early childhood educators. By understanding the complexity within and between disciplines, professionals can work effectively to support young children and their families.

Learning from students: Facilitators’ learning in interprofessional placements

“…This study captured the perceptions of ECEs and Directors who work in community childcare settings about their supervision and learning experiences from facilitating professional placements for speech-language pathology students who were early in their qualification programs. Attention was paid to service boundaries and traditional professional hierarchies that were identified as research priorities in previous studies (Fuller et al, 2005;Garvis et al, 2016;Price et al, 2014). The five themes identified from data analysis revealed how the students were gradually integrated within the ECE community of practice, and the consequential emergence of reciprocal learning opportunities.…”

“…These were important to support students to identify the salient everyday activities and practices of the community and enabled the ECEs to demonstrate their expertise. This degree of structure may be critical where the interprofessional nature of the placement requires students to adjust for unfamiliar practice contexts, such as those that cross traditional service boundaries (Garvis et al, 2016). Skøien and colleagues (2009) also identified that a welcoming, structured placement environment assisted students to participate and gain access to a range of learning activities (Skøien et al, 2009), which was reported in the second theme as a catalyst for developing positive relationships between the ECEs and students.…”

“…Cumming and Wong (2012) explored how interprofessional practice was enacted across allied health practitioners and ECEs who were team members in an early childhood intervention program. Whilst the team members respected the expertise and contributions of others, they positioned themselves according to a hierarchy of 'scientific knowledge' and professional credibility that preferenced the knowledge and skills of the health staff as experts and marginalised the pedagogical practices and knowledge of the ECEs (Cumming & Wong, 2012;Garvis, Kirkby, McMahon, & Meyer, 2016). Although interprofessional health and education practices in early childhood education settings are increasingly valued (McDonald, Proctor, Gill, Heaven, Marr, & Young, 2015), this study highlighted that issues of power may be more apparent in education settings where frameworks to guide the work of health professionals are less developed (Cumming & Wong, 2012;Garvis et al, 2016).…”

“…In this study, Lave and Wenger's theorising about the transformative influence of sociocultural skills and knowledge that the students contribute within the community provided a framework to explore the gap in the literature related to what placement facilitators learn from students of professions that differ from their own; the perspectives of placement facilitators from education settings who work with health professional students; and to identify whether themes of power and hierarchy from previous research existed in this context. However, in their study of workplace learning, Fuller and colleagues criticised this theory for its disregard for the process of experts learning from novices, and poor attendance to issues of power and inequality that have hindered relationships and learning in interprofessional studies (Annear et al, 2014;Cumming & Wong, 2012;Garvis et al, 2016;Fuller, Hodkinson, Hodkinson, & Unwin, 2005). They recommended research to develop Lave and Wenger's theory by investigating how newcomers influence the learning, practice and power relationships of the community they enter (Fuller et al, 2005).…”

Educational systems for inclusive education in Norway, Romania, Scotland and Sweden

“…With the growing evidence base of the increasing number of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities living into adulthood, many with complex care and education needs, bringing together students from different European countries and from different disciplines is useful (Cameron et al 2014;McClanahan & Weismuller 2015). Developing the understanding of the needs of children and their families and of how different professions can and must work collaboratively now and in the future, is essential (Garvis et al 2016). Scotland explicitly sets down requirements of multi-agency working across services and is vital for securing collaborative working.…”