Portfolio

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS put to the educational leaders

1. Describe your position as educational leader:

As Ed Leader my job is to think critically about Education and Care professional

practice and what that looks like in our Centre and the sector as a whole. I lead the

development and implementation of the educational program and curriculum

through professional and collaborative relationships with my team of educators and

teachers.

How long have you been the educational leader?

Since the role was introduced by ACECQA into the sector in 2012, so about 9 years.

What is your qualification;

Bach of Education Primary

Bach of Early Childhood Education

Dip of Child Care and Education

What are the key roles and responsibilities for you as the leader?

• The development of professional relationships. Mentoring, guiding, and

supporting educators and teachers.

• An understanding and appreciation of the individual learning styles and

experiences of each educator and teacher

• The Development of a clear and shared vision of the curriculum documents

and pedagogical approaches for achieving learning outcomes for children

• A passion for professional learning, continuous improvement, and the

amazing work we do in the Early Years.

• To be an advocate for children and high-quality early learning programs.

2. Can you talk about your leadership style and how is it demonstrated in practice

Collaborative Leadership is a leadership style I embrace as it builds on my philosophy

of teams working together to achieve the best outcomes for the children and

families of our Centre.

Collaborative Leaders aim to achieve the following:

• shared goals

• building relationships that respect diversity and cultural differences.

Understanding how different viewpoints, challenges and issues that too often

divide groups can be bridged.

• Transparent and ongoing communication

• making connections with different groups, organisations and programs,

neighbourhoods, between families and other specialists, schools, and

community leaders towards achieving a common goal.

• Critical Thinking: Thinking about how others are impacted by the decisions

we make.

• support Self-Directed and Engaged Learning by developing learning

communities where people closest to the problem are supported to question,

explore, critically reflect, and interact to develop solutions and innovative

approaches.

3. Can you talk about the rewards of this position- and provide examples?

There are many rewards working with a team who share a passion for working to

achieve the best outcomes for children in the Early Years.

These include collaborating with the team and individual educators/ teachers to

critically reflect on practices to determine if there are ways that we could improve

our practices. Then actually observing how these changes in practice improve the

work we are doing with children.

I really enjoy mentoring the team, but I also love learning new things from them and

watching as they share their passions, ideas and new discoveries with the children

and families.

However, by far the biggest reward comes from the children and their smiling faces

as they arrive and depart the Centre each day. I love that we are an extension of

their family and we are a safe, nurturing, and fun place to come and play, discover

and learn each day.

4. What challenges do you face in this role? Can you talk about how you are meeting

these challenges?

I am the Director as well as the Educational Leader and time during the day for both

roles is always a challenge.

I make sure that I spend time in each of the rooms chatting with the educators /

teachers and children every day. This also gives me the opportunity to observe

relationships, pedagogical practices, and programs in action. I also meet with the

educators / teachers outside the room to plan and develop shared goals.

Also, the role of the Educational Leader can be quite isolating as there is usually only

one person in this role at each service. When I first took on the position, I felt I was

left to work things out for myself in relation to what I was required to do. This was

quite a stressful time and there was little support for the role. There are now

networks, Facebook groups and greater support from ACECQA to help with the role

and this has provided greater clarity around expectations for the role.

5. How do you demonstrate quality practice through your leadership role?

The first point of call when considering quality in the Early Childhood Education is the

National Quality Framework. The Framework is our Bible and the Exceeding Themes are

what we aim to achieve as a team. As Educational Leader I am always referring to the

Framework and Quality Areas.

I regularly chat with the educators/ teachers to determine what they need from me as

their Educational Leader. Through these discussions I am able to critically reflect on my

own practices and therefore the quality of the leadership and support I am providing the

team.

6. How has your role as educational leader influenced education outcomes for children;

what are examples of this?

One of the biggest pedagogical changes we have made at the Centre is the introduction

of the Abecedarian Approach. This has had a significant impact on the educational

outcomes for the children at our Centre. As the Educational Leader this was an approach

that I had been doing some professional reading about, and I was curious to discover

whether as a team it was worth investigating further.

The Abecedarian Approach is a set of evidence-based teaching and learning strategies

that maximise children’s learning outcomes by enriching and enhancing educators’

practice. The approach consists of four elements that promote intentional and

meaningful adult-child interactions.

These are Language Priority, Learning Games, Conversational Reading, and Enriched

Caregiving.

The Abecedarian Approach really resonated with our team. We developed a shared goal

of learning more about the approach and how we could embed these practices in our

Centre. Over a period of two years our education team actively participated in

Abecedarian training and began to embrace the strategies within our daily curriculum.

We have now embedded the strategies in each room and the children are thoroughly

engaged with each of the elements of the Approach. We can observe the many benefits

of the Abecedarian Approach in the children through their developing language and

literacy. We have also noticed that children develop a greater sense of Belonging and

secure attachment with the educators / teachers through the Enriched Caregiving. We

then began to support families to use the Abecedarian Approach and have developed a

Library of resources for families to play the Learning Games at home with their children.

We have now included the Abecedarian Approach in our Centre Philosophy.

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS put to the educational leaders 1. Describe your position as educational leader: How long have you been the educational leader? I have been the educational leader at the centre since the position was established in 2013. In our centre we have done things a little different we actually have an educational leader team – however I am the ‘leader’ to meet the requirements of the legislation. What is your qualification; Bach of Education, Master of Education. Educational Leader: Samantha Service: Community Kindergarten – three rooms 66 children per day. 1. What are the key roles and responsibilities for you as the leader?

Leader of pedagogy with families and community – ensuring others understand what children are learning and understand that what they do is educational and not just playing. This is part of our advocacy to ensure that we can communicate our teaching well and that we are recognised as educational professionals. As an educational leader team – we come together weekly to discuss the program – individual children and how we can do things better. My role includes reaching out to each team member to ask them what they need for assistance – how I can help them, because I get some additional non contact time with this role. We have established a trusting and respectful partnership in our centre. Each fortnight – I go around and take a video footage or a component of a team members practice they have asked me to record (a colleague does this to me as well). We use our recordings as basis of conversation to discuss what happened – how we felt about it and how we could improve. We are continuously looking for ways to improve. Our vision in to be the best educational centre we can be for children and we are all committed to this. We regularly sit down together and discuss research and what that means for our practice. I am the person who is seeking new evidence, again because of the non contact time, but we all bring items to the table. My role is not about checking people’s programs – the programs are written – my role really is about being a coach or mentor and supporting others to be their best self. To be honest, I am probably more like a sounding board. Because of the approach of leadership we use at the centre – collaborative and distributive, I will ask different people within the team to step up and take on leadership roles depending on their knowledge, experience and skills. For instance, we wanted a new garden designed out the back playground. My colleague Sue was asked to lead this. She is amazing gardener and has strong connections with our first nations people of our locality. I made sure Sue had the time she needed to do the planning, meet with locals, and lead us with this work. At the end of the day, I ensured that the resources were available for Sue to get this project completed. We had regular check in meetings so that I could support her and we discussed how to get each team member involved. The garden looks amazing. The key roles for me would be: having knowledge and skills about ECEC – child development, teaching and learning and using my expertise to ensure our centre is

striving to ensure every child has the best educational experience they can get. We have a vision, which I supported the creation of, and each year we develop some long and short term goals about what we want to achieve. Everything we produce goes into our QIP – Quality Improvement Guide. To us, that is our guide that ensures we continue on the right path. I include our community, families and children in this journey – it is their centre too, so they are consulted and included in our discussion about the centre, and what we want to achieve.

2. Can you talk about your leadership style and how is it demonstrated in practice Collaborative and distributed. We have strong relationships with each other and we are all motivated to be the best teachers that we can be. Our leadership is demonstrated by our very clear vision – and unpacking with the whole team, children, families and community what that means and how we achieve this. Each year we consult with everybody so that we know where we are, and where we are going. We have developed a 3 year strategic plan, and we use this to ensure that we stay on course. The Centre Director is the manager (that is not me). My role as educational leader is about supporting the educational program. The centre director is about managing the centre – making sure it all happens. She has asked me to focus on the educational component – ensuring it is current, our practices are evidence led and contemporary. We achieve this by forming strong relationships with the lectures from the local university, having relationships with the schools – being committed to research and participating in conferences. We have a strong belief that we are life long learners and that there is always something new to learn. We take turns in leading different projects of work – sometimes following, sometimes leading as there is no one expert who knows it all. For instance, when we began using Floor Books – Janice went to a workshop series than led this project. We are also there for each other when things don’t work – we are human, and at times we don’t achieve what we set out to achieve. It isn’t about someone failing – it is acknowledging that something wasn’t a success and then trying to find out why. 3. Can you talk about the rewards of this position- and provide examples?

There are no financial extras – this would be nice! I have some non-contact time which is supportive so that I can be available to go into my colleagues’ rooms and observe, or go and research evidence to share on different topics. Rewards – the positive working environment that has been created. The sense of team work and belonging – I jump out of bed each day excited to go to work. Knowing that what you do makes a huge difference to children, families and society…. Really does make you feel wonderful, a huge sense of purpose. You don’t feel like you are wasting your like. I want to be the best leader I can be and work with this wonderful team because together we do great things!

4. What challenges do you face in this role? Can you talk about how you are meeting

these challenges? There is never enough time. Our work is exciting but it is also full on! You need to ensure you leave energy in the tank as you can become exhausted. The biggest challenges I face are from families and community. Because we are working with families, and everyone has been to school – everyone is an expert! We always have at least one family, and one teacher from the school that would like us to practice in a way that does not sit with our philosophy – e.g. implementing a phonics approach program. We have worked hard as a team to identify all the issues we expect to have challenges with, and we have worked

hard to gather evidence and information about our beliefs, values and the educational underpinnings of our work. Good communication is essential and we need to constantly be delivering consistent messages about what we do. Having a clear vision and talking to our vision – stating our goals and the evidenced based practice we are using to help us achieve our goals is important.

5. How do you demonstrate quality practice through your leadership role? You have to practice what you preach. I role model and demonstrate good practice. This means that I need to read a lot, participate in training (webinars, conferences) to stay up to date not only with my ECEC knowledge but also understanding leadership. I have had to do a lot of reading in this space because when I got the role there was no training, no support, no nothing. I really didn’t have any knowledge about leadership….. so I had to start reading and investigating. I was curious about what leadership style best suited me in our centre – in fact in ECEC. There wasn’t a whole lot of information when I first started. I bought text books such as Jillian Rodd and this was really helpful for me to think about my beliefs, values and how best to influence and support others. In many ways, the respectful ways I work with children, are extending to adults. I scaffold, model, and use demonstration with children when I’m teaching, and I use similar strategies with adult. Being respectful, ethical and listening are key traits I hold dear, including the understanding that it takes many to have success…… there is no I in TEAMS! 6. How has your role as educational leader influenced education outcomes for

children; what are examples of this? It has meant the centre director could spend her time focused on the centre management – staffing, rosters, staff performance, bills, accounts, enrolments…. All of the administration stuff, and I could focus on the educational program. Our educational program is far more advanced than it was, and we have very much grown as a team. For instance, we never use to assess children’s learning. We now assess children’s learning and we tuning in to children’s real individual learning needs and understanding their progress. I have coordinated all our efforts, so that now, rather than working as an individual, we have collective effort. We are more likely to share knowledge and support each other. If someone is stuck about how to help a child – I can assist them, or connect them to someone else in the team that can. It also means I have the ability to make stronger connection in the community if we need to reach out for community support with a child too.