SUPPLEMENT TO THE AEU NEWS • MARCH 2012

A E U h e a d o f f i c e 112 Tr e n e r r y C r e s c e n t , A b b o t s f o r d 3 0 6 7 Te l : 0 3 9 417 2 8 2 2 Fa x : 13 0 0 6 5 8 0 7 8 We b : w w w. a e u v i c . a s n . a u

EARLY CHILDHOOD SECTORNEWSLETTERThe documentation debateWith the new National Quality Framework in place, how can you stop the paperwork taking over your life?

Shayne Quinn vice president, early childhood

PAPERWORK and record-keeping for children and programs are the jobs that most eat into our

members’ personal time, our workload survey found last year.

More than 80% of you worked unpaid overtime developing or updating your portfolios, updating chil-dren’s individual records or planning and evaluating your kindergarten’s programs.

So it is clearly time to pause and reflect on how we can best meet the very broad requirements of the new National Quality Standards without wasting time and energy.

Inside this newsletter you’ll find two stimulating articles by Anne Stonehouse and Kathy Walker on the documentation debate. But what exactly does the regulatory authority — the Department for Education and Early Childhood Development — require from preschools?

The department says: “Services need to consider all the ways that they can document the program including the assessments of children’s learning. The National Quality Framework provides outcomes-based requirements that acknowledge that services may meet outcomes in different ways according to the type of service they provide and the context in which they provide it.”

It recommends that “services and educators [have] a rationale behind the way they develop, implement and document the program. Using the early years planning cycle and considering ‘curric-ulum decision-making’ will assist.”

Detailed information is provided on page 10 of the Federal Government’s Educators’ Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. You can download the guide at tinyurl.com/7jpxrzz (PDF).

Further advice is provided in the Guide to the Education and Care Services National Law and the Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011, published by the new Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority. You can

download this guide at tinyurl.com/6u2w3ds. Pages 52–54 address educational program and practice.

The paragraph on assessment is very clear that there is no prescribed method for documenting learning. Similar but more detailed advice is provided in the Educators’ Guide (pages 37–41).The Victorian

Early Years Learning and Development Framework (tinyurl.com/7dlwlkw) and supporting resources are also good sources of information. The informa-tion on assessment for learning and development and reflective practice are very relevant. ◆

Poor conditions turn graduates awayIt’s time for employers to sign up to fair pay and conditions — or risk losing the next generation of teachers.

Martel Menz deputy vice president, early childhood

“ALL things being equal, I would happily teach in a childcare setting.”

This is the sentiment of many early childhood students and graduates when they weigh up their career options. Sadly though, all things are not equal when it comes to conditions in our sector.

Early childhood graduate and AEU member Anika Haggar recently completed a placement at the union and shares her journey on the back page of this newsletter from diploma-qualified childcare worker to fully-qualified teacher.

Her desire to upgrade her qualifications to improve her professional recognition is common to many students, who rightly expect that their improved status will be matched with professional pay and conditions.

It’s not unreasonable for early childhood teachers to expect to be employed under the same conditions wherever they choose to work. However, Anika soon discovered the large disparity in conditions that can exist between childcare settings and stand-alone kindergarten.

Her experience is all too common particularly

among teachers entering the profession.Our Play Fair in Childcare campaign was launched

in response to the experience of teachers like Anika. As she says, negotiating pay and conditions with each new employer can be daunting.

Throughout this campaign we have been keen to equip members with the skills and knowledge to enter into such discussions, with our support.

At the same time we want to apply pressure to childcare employers to do the right thing and employ their teachers under industry-standard pay and conditions.

Attracting teachers to these workplaces and achieving the goals of the National Quality Framework demand that they do so. ◆

I teach

too!

Play fair in childcare

More on the campaign page 4 ➠

2 Early Childhood newsletter | march 2012

IN THE past couple of years, the early childhood profession has undergone significant changes to

professionalise and improve the quality and consist-ency of early childhood education and care.

Many exciting innovations and changes have occurred, significant gains have been made and more changes are underway.

However, as with any period of significant change and transition, some worrying issues have arisen. These are:

• An over-emphasis on the new “frameworks” at the expense of early childhood profes-sionals’ understanding that a framework does not replace a philosophy or practice.

• A fixation with documenting almost every single thing a child says and does that do not necessarily convey anything about the child’s learning, skill or conceptual understandings.

• Staff feeling driven to document and photo-graph at the expense of time spent playing with, talking and listening to children.

• Educators cutting and pasting terms such as “identity” or “community” into observations without meaning or authenticity because they are afraid of being checked up on and assessed.

Quality in education is about relationships, interac-tions and scaffolding. It is not about measuring outcomes based on a beautifully bound portfolio

that took all weekend to produce, or taking endless photos all session that distance staff from children’s learning, skill development, exploration and discovery.

We need to remind ourselves that early childhood is about relationships, processes not end product, and investigations and discoveries rather than endless projects. Children’s brains are not miniature adult brains. They learn by doing, imagining and creating, by time, space and relationships. Not by needing everything to be documented.

Documentation has at its core some funda-mental principles:

1. To capture what we know.2. To inform ourselves in order to move the

child further in their learning and under-standings and explorations.

3. To share some of what we know with families.4. To have families share some of what they

know with us to build a partnership between home and the educational setting.

5. To provide children with opportunities to capture and choose some of what is important for them in this process.

The obsession with documentation, not by early childhood educators, but by political correctness — photos, journals, portfolios, the list goes on — is extreme, misguided, unnecessary and unrealistic.

I would prefer to see a lot more authentic — if a bit rough around the edges — displays of children’s imaginings that speak about the child, not the adults. ◆

Kathy Walker is director of Early Life Foundations.

Children lost amid documentationEarly childhood education is about relationships, scaffolding and intentional teaching — not endless photographs, stories and documentation, says Kathy Walker.

Last chance to have your say

SEND us your views on the log of claims for the next Early Childhood Agreement by the end of this term. A template to help you write your

contribution can be downloaded at www.aeuvic.asn.au/ec_log (DOC). If you have not already done so, please use it to let us know what you think. ◆

Members meet at Morwell to have their say on the log of claims.

REGISTER NOW

THIS year’s AEU K–6 Conference takes the theme Quality: Defining, achieving and celebrating the best of what we do. Keynote speakers include Dan Gregory, regular panellist on

ABC1’s The Gruen Transfer, and early childhood advocate Anthony Seaman.

AEU members can register for only $55 (one day) or $85 (two days). Book now at www.tln.org.au/k6 to register for your preferred days and workshops. ◆

K–6 Education Conference

August 17 & 18, 2012FRIDAY 17 AUGUST

Dan Gregory

Regular Panellist – ABC TVs Gruen PlanetCommunicating Quality

and Self: Shifting the Perception of Parents

and the Community about your School/

Kindergarten’s Quality

Dan Gregory is founder and CEO of The Impossible Institute™, an Innovation and Engagement organisation.

A leader in the fifififififield of marketing and advertising, Dan has won global awards for creativity and effectiveness, working for corporations as diverse as Coca-Cola, Unilever, the NRL and Aussie Home Loans.

A regular on ABC TV’s the Gruen Transfer/Gruen Planet, Dan is a rare evangelist for truth in a world of spin. He believes that everyone is capable of having “ideas on purpose”. Dan encourages all of us to harness our personal or professional purpose to build something unique and sellable.

A passionate educator and mentor, he has worked as a director and lecturer at Australia’s premier creative school, AWARD, taught post-graduate students at Macquarie and Sydney Universities as well as privately mentoring CEOs and non-executive board members.

SATURDAY 18 AUGUST

Anthony

Seaman

Early Childhood advocate

Re.thinking Quality: What it means,

and the impact on practice.

For the past 15 years Anthony has worked as an educator, innovator and advocate with a broad range of government, non-government and private organisations. His skills and expertise has seen him work with organisations across Australia and overseas including Columbia University, New York as well as in France and New Zealand.

Anthony’s achievements have been publicly recognised by his peers and the broader community and he has been awarded the Young Manager of the Year Award and the Early Childhood Australia Inaugural Advocate of the Year Award.

Anthony is currently completing a PhD at Macquarie University. His PhD is a study of courage and its relationship to leadership.

Q U A L I T Y

K e y n o t e S p e a k e r s

Defining, achieving & celebrating the best of what we do

Register at www.tln.org.au/k6

www.aeuvic.asn.au 3

The documentation crazeIt’s what you do that counts — not how well you write it up, says Anne Stonehouse.

EYLF links:Principle 5: Ongoing learning and reflective practicePractice: Assessment for learning

NQS links:Quality area 1: Educational program and practice

UNLIKE many of my colleagues, I’m not that into documentation. I believe in it – it’s absolutely

essential for professional practice and it must be done well. But it seems to me some educators and services over-emphasise it. It’s almost as though some educators think that how you write down what you’re going to do and observations of a child or children is more important than practice or pedagogy – what you do.

Some educators proudly show off piles of long learning stories, bulging portfolios and heavily ornamented scrapbooks.

My first reaction to these often is to wonder:• What did you not spend time on in order to

spend time on these, and did you make a conscious choice about how best to use your time?

• How much critical reflection does this docu-mentation both demonstrate and provoke?

• Thirdly, and most importantly, how do these records translate into practice – in other words, how do they help you do a better job supporting children’s learning?

I have ideas about reasons for the documentation craze.

I hold Reggio Emilia responsible for starting it! For as long as early childhood educators have been making the pilgrimage to Italy to worship at the

feet of Reggio Emilia gurus, many have embraced pedagogical documentation. Many educators have created detailed documentation panels and other records of children’s projects and experiences, often in collaboration with children, often as a way of helping children to remember what has happened.

And then Margaret Carr from New Zealand came along with her learning stories. This added fuel to the documentation fire. Many educators started doing their version of learning stories, only some of which are correctly labelled as such. A useful thing to do is to read Margaret Carr’s definition and description of a learning story. Some so-called learning stories are analogous to calling a poor reproduction of a Matisse a Matisse!

And then the coming of the National Quality Standard started educators worrying about what they will have to write down to satisfy assessors. Uncertainty about what documentation will be required has contributed to a false belief that more is better and that there is one right way – a magic template.

Alongside these developments, another bit of “fuel” for the documentation fire is the omnipresent digital camera. Photos – hundreds of them – easy to take, easy to display.

I wonder if one reason for the documentation craze is that deep inside, we like a product – something tangible to show others as evidence of our effort. After all, in the bad old days that was

one explanation about why so many exhibits of 25 identical butterflies (or 25 whatevers!) created by children graced the walls and sadly often the windows of services.

I wonder if we may have lost sight of the fact that ALL documentation is a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is only worth the time and effort to record anything –children’s learning and development as well plans – if those records contribute to good practice. More is not always better.

And it’s the thinking about documentation – reflecting, discussing, interpreting and analysing – and translating it into practice that makes the records worthwhile. In other words, it’s not just having the records, it’s what you do with them that matters. We need to hold onto the assertion made about NQS assessors – that they will be much more interested in looking at and talking with educators about practice than in poring over documents and records. Documentation is essential, but it’s practice that matters. ◆

This article is taken from the What do you think? series, written by early childhood expert Anne Stonehouse. Repro-duced with permission of Early Childhood Australia and the National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program.

Cert III for “grandfathered” assistantsYou may not need it to work, but there are plenty of other benefits in a new course from TLN.

THE Teacher Learning Network, the PD provider supported by the AEU, is offering the Certificate

III in children’s services to assistants who qualified for grandfathering before 2012.

Assistants in that position are exempt from the requirement to gain the Certificate III in children’s services in order to work in the early childhood sector.

But gaining the Certificate III can be about a lot more than just being eligible to work.

Those who took part in our program last year reported feeling empowered by the learning

they did and saw the certificate as proof of their expertise in the industry. They also found the chance to speak to other assistants and share their experiences very valuable.

Under the TLN model, we work with participants to make sure they are credited for those units of the course for which they can already demonstrate knowledge. For many, this means they need to complete only four or five of the 16 units that make up the Cert III.

To fit with your busy life, the program involves

reading up, watching online videos, joining in a group telephone call each Thursday night and completing assignments. The 0–2 placement has also been shortened in recognition of the experi-ence that this group of assistants already has.

At the end of the course, participants receive their certificate from Victoria University, a trusted name in the industry.

More information in a web video is available at cert3.tln.org.au or call Max at TLN on (03) 9418 4993. ◆

The NQS Professional Learning Program is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).

www.facebook.com/eylfplpFollow this discussion and many others on the Facebook page:

Graduate early childhood teacher Anika Haggar thought she’d get the same pay and conditions as other teachers. She was wrong.

4 Early Childhood newsletter | march 2012

Treat us with RESPECT

I’VE long had the desire to help children during the foundation years of their life and to have a

positive impact on the next generation. I know the importance of the early years in a

person’s life: how experiences then can have a major impact on how a person perceives the world as an adult. I felt the most effective way to fulfil my passion would be to pursue a career in teaching in early childhood services.

So I enrolled in a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education at Deakin University, which recognised my prior learning through a pathways course. I wanted to improve my qualifications in order to feel greater appreciation for my professional work with children.

I expected that once qualified I would receive the same entitlements and working conditions as other kindergarten teachers employed under VECTAA. I expected to get roughly 8–12 hours of planning time a week to plan quality educational programs, and have energy, enthusiasm and passion for my work as a result of sustainable teaching hours.

And I believed I would definitely get school holidays as part of my annual leave.

But in many childcare centres, kindergarten

teachers work 7.5 hours a day with children and receive only two or three hours of planning time per week, making it near impossible to plan a quality program let alone complete the increasing paperwork, which I have to take home to finish on weekends.

I’m experiencing burnout and dissatisfaction with my work. This situation is worsened by getting only four weeks’ annual leave.

I believed that once I became a qualified teacher, I would feel more energised and able to engage in more quality teaching. That is far from the truth in a

childcare setting.It is demeaning to kindergarten teachers that

some receive basic rights and entitlements while others don’t. As a teacher in long day care you have to negotiate, bargain and argue your professional rights with every potential employer.

It is beyond my comprehension why I should receive significantly poorer working conditions and pay than another person who has exactly the same qualifications, knowledge and experience.

The Play fair in childcare campaign is an important part in changeing this. ◆

The next step in our campaignOVER 70 childcare centres already offer industry standard pay and conditions, based on our

VECTA Agreement, but we want to see this list grow. We recently wrote to all childcare providers inviting them to join a list of preferred employers.

This list, published on our website at www.aeuvic.asn.au/childcare, highlights those centres that employ their early childhood teacher under VECTAA.

As we visit students at each of the universities, we’ll promote this list as a useful tool when applying for jobs. Agitating for change is best done collectively — when members with the support of the AEU stand up and fight against this inequity.

You can find our campaign here: www.aeuvic.asn.au/childcare. ◆

Checked your emails lately?REMEMBER, if you have given us your email

address, we use it to send you bulletins and other important information. If you haven’t yet provided your email address, please send it to shayne.quinn@aeuvic.asn.au. ◆

Grants availableTHE Foundation of Graduates in Early Childhood Studies invites applications for the Forest Hill

and Warrawong Grants. These grants of up to $10,000 are available to not-for-profit early childhood services and organisations. For application criteria and further information, go to our website tinyurl.com/7rw43q7. ◆

I teach

too!

Play fair in childcare

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