Researching ECEC Professional Development: Using Kelly's Repertory Grid to Examine Changes in Educators' Constructs about Curriculum Design in Early Childhood Settings

Abstract

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON how educators from child care, community-based kindergarten, preschool and lower primary settings changed their tightly held constructs about curriculum design after undertaking an in-service professional development (PD) program. Kelly's personal construct psychology (PCP) provided the framework for the PD and for identifying and analysing the educators' constructs and the changes that occurred. Initially teachers from all settings mainly focused on children as objects of their curriculum decision making. After the PD program the focus on children's input changed to a more negotiated approach to curriculum design—especially by teachers in childcare and kindergarten settings. Differences between cohorts were also found in changes to thinking about parents' and administrators' input into curriculum decisions which related to their ECEC contexts. Outcomes from the study can be used to demonstrate ways of analysing changes in thinking about curriculum design after engaging in PD, and the effects of educational context on these changes.

Multiplicities in early childhood reform engagement in Victorian long day care centres: Discourse, position and practice

“…Additionally, workplace institutions have their own set of discourses that are made available to their staff. So if EC workplace discourses position professional development and reform engagement supportively, then the personal constructs of ECPs may be ‘open to change’, whereby engagement in more innovative approaches of interpretation can occur (Nailon, 2013, p. 86). This suggests that PD programmes for reform engagement need to more adequately consider the diverse positions and subjectivities of ECPs, which are shaped by the knowledge, teacher education and workplace discourses made available to them throughout their professional lives.…”