Task Description You are required to go through the 3 interviews with the educational leaders in ECED provided and then follow the instructions under the Task Instruction section below. Rationale As an early childhood educator, it is important you have an understanding about leadership and your role as a leader. Task Instruction Three interviews with educational leaders in ECEC are provided. Choose ONE interview with an educational leader to complete the analysis; the interviews can be found under the assignment 2 information. You will prepare a critical review of the role, responsibilities and challenges of the early childhood educational leader. The information collected from the interview is to be analysed to describe the educational leader’s position with respect to:
Additional comments: 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