Educational Leaders and the project of professionalisation in early childhood education in Australia

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Highlights

  • Professionalisation of the early childhood education workforce motivates educational leaders

  • The project of professionalisation subsumes and exceeds the international quality agenda

  • Policy assumptions overlook processes supporting professionalisation

Abstract

This paper reports the ways in which Educational Leaders in Australian early childhood education workplaces are interpreting and implementing their mandatory role. Interviews with 20 Educational Leaders in two Australian government jurisdictions were analysed using cultural-historical activity theory. Our analysis suggests a significant gap between government policy orientation toward quality improvement and the project of professionalisation of the field that motivates Educational Leaders. We argue the work of Educational Leaders is primarily oriented towards raising the status and capacity of their colleagues as a pre-requisite for high-quality outcomes, and that concepts of quality operate instead as mediating tools. In this sense, a focus on professionalisation subsumes the international policy focus on quality.

Introduction

In this paper we report from the ‘Learning-rich Leadership’ for Quality Improvement in Early Education research project funded by the Australian Research Council (project number DP180100281), which is investigating the relationship between pedagogical leadership, workforce development, and the provision of quality early childhood education in Australia and England. The project responds to the policy mandating of the role of ‘Educational Leader’ in all early childhood education services in Australia since 2012 (Council of Australian Governments (COAG), 2009a,b). This policy was significantly influenced by the creation of Early Years Teacher Status in England (DfE, 2012), which was itself an outcome of increasing evidence of the relationship between effective leadership and positive outcomes for children in early childhood setting (Hallet, 2013). The overall aim of the project is to theorize how early childhood service provision can improve when leaders focus on professional learning for practice improvement in their settings.

Early childhood education is a major area of national investment for Australia (Productivity Commission, 2011, 2015). Successive governments have identified the need to increase the quality of early childhood education based on a policy rationale that high quality early education ameliorates the effects of early deprivation and builds human capital (Garcia, Heckman, Leaf, & Prados, 2017). Policy rhetoric has consistently reinforced this with statements claiming, for example, that high-quality early education will ensure “all children have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation” (Council of Australian Governments (COAG), 2009a,b, p.4). The notion that a professional workforce is a key factor in early childhood education quality was noted in Australia’s first national Early Years Workforce Strategy, which stated “[a] skilled workforce is essential to delivering high-quality Early Childhood Education and Care services and to achieving the best outcomes for children and their families” (Standing Council on School Education & Early Childhood (SCSEEC), 2012, p.2). This policy rationale reflects “a global policyscape” positioning early childhood education as a central site for human capital reforms based on neo-liberal ideologies (Hunkin, 2018, p.1). Development of educator practice is therefore a key pillar of early childhood policy developments in Australia and the role of Educational Leader is designed to contribute to this development.

The first phase of the project, during 2018, focused on the ways in which these designated Educational Leaders are making sense of the policy that created their role and their interpretations of the role in practice. In this paper, we draw on our background conceptual framework, cultural-historical activity theory, to analyse the goals that motivate (in the cultural-historical sense) the work of these leaders. We first discuss the literature related to the relationship between quality, leadership, and professionalisation in national and international in policy and research. We then outline the research design. Next, we present a deductive analysis of twenty interviews conducted with the Educational Leaders in Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, and Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory. Finally, we show how important opportunities for raising quality in early childhood education services are currently truncated within Australian policy discourse and discuss the implications of our findings for the field.

Our findings suggest there is a significant gap between the policy orientation of Australian governments toward quality improvement and the orientation toward professionalisation of the field that motivates Educational Leaders. Our overall argument is that Educational Leaders in Australia are motivated by the professionalisation of the early childhood education sector, rather than quality provision per se; in other words, while quality programs were important to the interviewees, understandings about quality function as a mediating concept for their work rather than its orienting object. This is not to say that Educational Leaders are not concerned about quality provision; rather, the work of Educational Leaders is primarily oriented towards raising the status and capacity of their colleagues since they view this as a pre-requisite for high-quality outcomes. In this sense, their focus on professionalisation subsumes the international policy focus on quality.

The concept of quality, including its link to notions of professionalism, has been extensively critiqued in the early childhood education literature both internationally and nationally (e.g. Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 2007; Fenech, 2013). Central to this literature is the contested nature of the concept of ‘quality’ and the apolitical stance that governments have adopted to its link with the professionalisation of the workforce (Osgood, 2010). Building on this critique, we make a distinction in this paper between professionalism, with its attendant notions of ethics and autonomy, and professionalisation, defined as a process that combines professionalism with increased status and improved working conditions (Sims, Forrest, Semann, & Slattery, 2015; Woodrow, 2008). As we will show later in the paper, this distinction is an important one because concepts of professionalism and professionalisation may not be understood in the same ways across early childhood policy frameworks and educator practice.

Successive Australian governments have reached a policy consensus around service quality encapsulated in the National Quality Standard (NQS) (Council of Australian Governments (COAG), 2008), which forms one of the pillars of Australia’s National Quality Framework (Council of Australian Governments (COAG), 2009a), alongside universal access, the National Law and Regulations, and the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) (Council of Australian Governments (COAG), 2009b). Within the NQS, professionalism is “incorporated…through references to capability, leadership, teaching and learning” (Standing Council on School Education & Early Childhood (SCSEEC), 2012, p.6). Commentary on the introduction of the NQF showed signs of hope for professionalisation of the sector:

The emerging prominence of words such as ‘new agenda’, ‘reform’, ‘workforce development’, ‘leadership’ and ‘investment’, evident in the new National Early Childhood Development Strategy (Department of Education & Employment & Workplace Relations (DEEWR), 2011), holds promise for: a higher profile for early childhood on the agendas of government; better working conditions; stronger articulation of shared visions; and more streamlined provision through the development of unified systems, standards and regulations across the nation. (Woodrow, 2012, p. 21)

Indeed, the NQF as a development strategy included the assumptions that, “Early Childhood Education and Care is recognised as a profession” and that, “increasing qualifications will offer clear goals and reward professionalism, ultimately improving the quality of education and care of children” (Standing Council on School Education & Early Childhood (SCSEEC), 2012, p.5).

The positive dynamic between effective leadership, practice development, and improved outcomes for children in early education has been established across international contexts (O’Sullivan, 2009; Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2007) and effective leadership is viewed as critical in establishing and maintaining the professionalism of the early childhood education field (Miller, Cable, & Goodliff, 2012). In Australia, one strategy to increase quality has been the creation of the Educational Leader position, legislated in Regulation 118 of the National Law, which states: The approved provider of an education and care service must designate in writing, a suitably qualified and experienced educator, co-ordinator or other individual as educational leader at the service to lead the development and implementation of educational programs in the service (Early Childhood Australia (ECA) (2011)). However, no specific preparation and training for the role of Educational Leader was required in Australia.

Initially, the policy intention was that the Educational Leader would be a four-year degree-qualified Early Childhood Teacher thus incorporating raised qualifications with the role. This resulted in a substantial investment by Australian governments to increase the number of Bachelor-qualified early childhood teachers (Productivity Commission, 2011). However, significant challenges to achieving targets for qualified staff were forecast (Fenech, Sumsion, & Goodfellow, 2008; Fenech, Sumsion, & Goodfellow, 2006; Sumsion, 2002) and the criteria for appointment to the Educational Leader role was changed to “a suitably qualified and experienced educator, coordinator or other individual” (op. cit.). Five years after the introduction of the NQF, half of Australia’s educators held only a certificate level qualification (equivalent to six months’ study) or no qualification; 35% held diploma qualifications; and 12% held degree qualifications (The Social Research Centre, 2014). Now, ten years later, 8.7% of services on average nationally across Australia’s seven States/Territories, operate under an ongoing or temporary license waiver due to their inability to meet the requirement to have a qualified (Diploma-level or higher) educator on staff. Nearly three times higher than the national average is the Northern Territory, with 25.4% of its centres operating under a waiver (Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), 2019). At the same time, little is known about the practices adopted by Australia’s designated Educational Leaders and the effects of these practices on their teams. An emerging research base (Colmer et al., 2014; Halttunen et al., 2019; Waniganayake & Sims, 2018) indicates some alignment with research into the Early Years Teacher Status policy program in England suggesting that leaders may simply become more policy compliant (Hadfield, Jopling, & Needham, 2015), particularly in centres assessed as below quality standards (Sims, Waniganayake, & Hadley, 2018). Even less is known empirically about whether Educational Leaders are engaging in practices that lead to the required professional learning to achieve improvements in service quality in line with the National Quality Standard.

Nevertheless, analysis by the statutory authority responsible for overseeing implementation of the NQF, the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), points to the significance of the Educational Leader’s role. They argue that uneven leadership practices are a “major contributing factor” to variation in national quality assessment results (Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), 2016, p. 39). This finding is in keeping with international research that links leadership in early childhood education with increased quality, cited above. However, this research also provides evidence that workforce conditions have failed to respond to the professionalisation agenda in a way that supports pedagogical leaders to navigate the complexities of the sector (Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), 2016). As Osgood predicted in 2010 in the UK context, the apolitical stance that governments have taken to the concept of professionalism in early childhood education has resulted in the development of an ambivalence towards the complex nature of the work of early childhood educators and their negotiation of their professional identities as leaders.

Reflecting these policy dilemmas, much international research has related to how professionalism is discursively constructed in early education policies (Davis, 2014; Heikka, Halttunen, & Waniganayake, 2018; Sims et al., 2015; Sims, 2017) and how it is understood by early childhood educators (Colmer, 2017; Colmer et al., 2015; Hard, 2006; Woodrow, 2012). In contrast, less attention has been paid to the process of professionalisation. In relation to the introduction of the Educational Leader role, the literature reflects an assumption within the field that such a role would provide opportunities for advocacy for the sector and its professionalisation (Rouse & Spradbury, 2016; Woodrow & Busch, 2008) even though the research on the relationship between professionalisation and leadership is complex. On one hand, research conducted in schools has defined professionalisation as a process of individual transformation from teacher to educational leader (Macpherson, 2010). On the other hand, research on educational leadership in early childhood education has highlighted tendencies towards compliance to policies that operate to impose standardisation and restrict professionalism (Murray & Clark, 2013; Waniganayake & Sims, 2018; Woodrow, 2008). Clearly, how professionalism is understood by educators and represented in policy has implications for professionalisation, but there remains a gap in understanding how processes of professionalisation are mediated and concretely enacted from the perspective of Educational Leaders.

Based on this identified gap, this paper contributes to understanding and conceptualizing the connections between educational leadership and the process of professionalisation of the early childhood education sector in Australia since, although policies to support professionalisation in early childhood education are an international concern (Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), 2017), these policies are inevitably recontextualized in local contexts. As stated earlier, we understand professionalisation as a process, as distinct from the concept of professionalism, which can be thought of as a description of an ideal state. Professionalisation is usefully understood as expansion of the field’s capability to “be and do” in alignment with “valued professional states of being” and “valued professional acts” (Molla & Nolan, 2019, p. 552). Distinctions have been made between externally imposed professionalism and generating professionalism from within the workforce (Miller & Cable, 2008; Sims et al., 2015), and Australia appears to be taking the former approach (Sims et al., 2015). Although professionalisation is cast narrowly in Australian policy documents as “promoting the professionalism of the early childhood education and care workforce to the wider community” (SCCEEC, 2012), the potential for broader concepts and practices of professionalisation are not precluded by the National Quality Framework (Council of Australian Governments (COAG), 2009b).

This potential is significant in the light of the commitment to professionalisation that extends beyond a commitment to quality that we identified in interviews with Educational Leaders. Before presenting our evidence for this claim, we elaborate the project’s research questions, background theory, and research design.

Section snippets

Research concepts and design

The project aims to gather the empirical evidence necessary to theorize how effective leadership enhances service quality in early childhood education through practices that foster the learning of educator teams, evidenced through practice changes, to raise service quality.

Findings: The project of professionalisation

In our deductive analysis from the interviews with Educational Leaders across Australia, we identified consistency in the twenty Educational Leaders’ motive objects of activity. One overarching motive object of activity characterized the participants’ talk about their work as Educational Leaders, which we have termed ‘the project of professionalisation’. In this section, we present excerpts from the data, specifically illustrative personal accounts and articulations from the interviews with

Discussion

The core of our argument in this paper is, first, that the Educational Leaders in our project are motivated by the need, as they see it, to professionalise the early childhood field; second, that concepts of quality (embedded within the NQF, NQS, and EYLF) function as cultural tools or (sometimes) as a rule (i.e. ‘quality’ is discursively constructed as normative) that mediate the work of professionalisation, rather than being the central motivating force for Educational Leaders’ work. The

Conclusion

In this paper, we have reported our analysis of critical incident interviews with twenty Educational Leaders across Australia using concepts from cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), with a focus on their motive object of activity. We have shown that the participating Educational Leaders are not passive subjects in response to the government’s quality agenda, but active agents motivated by the opportunity to build a professionalised workforce through their leadership activity. The

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