Standard 7.2 Leadership - Case study 3
Effective leadership builds and promotes a positive organisational culture and professional learning community.
This stand-alone preschool/kindergarten is in the outer suburbs of a major city. The service director has been a participant in a network of local early childhood education and care services for many years. They enjoy the professional support and sense of belonging that participating in the network provides, noting the level of trust, respect and collaboration that has built up over time. The network also provides a useful forum for exchanging ideas and information as well as a space to engage in critical reflection to guide ongoing and continuous improvement.
The service director, who until recently was also the educational leader, was instrumental in developing an Educational Leadership Mentor Exchange Program within the network, with a focus on collaboration and sharing high quality pedagogical practices. This action arose from one of the goals in the service’s Quality Improvement Plan (QIP), which had been to strengthen relationships and collaboration between local services as part of a professional learning community, and to support educational leaders within the community to promote positive outcomes for children and families.
Another goal highlighted in the service’s QIP for Standard 7.2 that has also been achieved was to separate the role of director and educational leader at the service by appointing one of the other early childhood teachers to the educational leader role. Educators had previously been encouraged to reflect critically and honestly on the role of the educational leader, including how the role was supporting them and whether any changes might be needed to better support them in their program and planning. The resulting feedback suggested that due to the considerable additional responsibilities of the director’s role, perhaps the role of the educational leader could be allocated to someone else to enable a closer focus on the role and more time for mentoring.
While new to the service, a teacher has now been appointed to the role of educational leader. The teacher, who had worked in the education and care sector as a diploma-qualified educator and recently completed her early childhood degree, is particularly interested in how theory is applied in practice. They have a sound knowledge of the vision, principles, pedagogical practices and learning outcomes in Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), and a strong understanding of evidence-based quality practice approaches to promoting the ongoing learning and development of the team. During the application and selection process, the director also considered the teacher’s ‘people skills’ and whether they had the ability to lead others.
The educational leader, while keen to make the role their own, welcomed the ongoing support provided by the service director. Prior to the teacher taking on the educational leader role, the two leaders had conversations to determine what this support might look like. The director was keen to provide ongoing capability building opportunities so that the educational leader could continue to build skills, knowledge, and confidence. One strategy used was to incorporate a line item into the service budget for educational leadership, to assist in the implementation of the role. The educational leader had expressed interest in subscribing to an early childhood magazine as well as a peer-reviewed research journal, as a means of keeping up to date with contemporary thinking and practice, as well as sourcing material to guide reflective conversations with the team. These subscriptions could now be covered by the newly allocated ‘educational leadership’ budget.
Together the director and the educational leader created learning goals for the role, with timelines and measurable outcomes related to performance. These were incorporated into the individual learning and development plan for the educational leader as part of the service’s performance review system. Regular catch ups were scheduled between them to discuss and celebrate progress towards these goals, and to raise and resolve any issues and concerns together.
The educational leader was mindful of how their new responsibility might impact on their relationships with colleagues. They identified a goal to ensure that the transition from teacher to teacher/educational leader was a smooth and positive experience for everyone. Another focus was to develop their skills in mentoring, so that a more individualised approach could be used when supporting each educator.
The director suggested the educational leader read ACECQA’s The Educational Leader Resource to learn more about the role, encourage further reflection and stimulate ongoing discussions. To keep this manageable, it was decided to review one section at a time. The educational leader was keen to learn how they might balance the time allocated to the role with their three days per week teaching responsibilities, and how to select and prioritise the tasks associated with the role. The director suggested looking at the organisational tasks in the Resource to determine which tasks to prioritise and how much time to assign to each one.
The educational leader subsequently decided to spend more time in the beginning on researching and planning and then gradually take on the other tasks, including observing, collaborating, mentoring, and reporting. The educational leader was keen to avoid becoming the ‘pedagogical police’, a concept explored in the Resource, so wanted to take the time to become familiar with the role and establish clear intentions and aspirations.
As part of their planning process, the educational leader and director reviewed the existing role description to ensure it was consistent with the service’s vision and philosophy. They examined the anticipated outcomes of the role outlined in the Guide to the National Quality Framework (NQF) and reflected on the priorities and aspirations of the service team, children, and families.
To assist in this process, the educational leader spoke to all educators, individually, to better understand their expectations, aspirations and needs in developing and implementing educational programs for all children. Families were sent a brief online survey so that the educational leader could gauge their understanding of the educational leader role and to identify their children’s strengths, interests, ideas and curiosities, which could be used as a focus for further learning and development.
The educational leader and director ensured that the revised role description clearly defined when educators should go to the educational leader for support and when they should go to the director. This was outlined and discussed at a staff meeting and educators were given opportunities to ask further questions if they needed clarification.
Key aspects of the revised role description were shared with families via the service newsletter, to support their understanding of how the role assisted in designing and implementing educational programs to enhance all children’s learning, development and wellbeing. The educational leader also spent time in the service foyer at drop off and pick up times to have informal conversations with families about the role.
As an outcome of these conversations, the educational leader started including a regular article in the service newsletter on a range of topics relating to children’s learning, development and wellbeing. In the most recent edition, the educational leader wrote about the assessment and planning cycle, with a focus on what educators are thinking about at each stage of the cycle to design educational programs for children that reflect and support their strengths, knowledge, interests and ideas.
Feedback from educators suggested that having ongoing discussions with the whole team about the development and implementation of the educational program would be helpful. The director was supportive of this idea and its potential for building a culture of professional inquiry and ongoing cycle review and reflection. It was decided to schedule critical reflection practice meetings at different times to staff meetings, to keep discussions about operational matters separate. Time was allocated at the end of the reflective practice meetings to identify and document agreed actions using an action planning template, noting the educators assigned to specific tasks and the agreed timelines to complete them.
One of the early discussions centred around the distinct steps of the assessment and planning cycle, to support a shared understanding within the team and to ensure they could more confidently articulate the purpose of the ongoing cycle of planning, in documenting, responding to and supporting children’s learning. The team spent considerable time reflecting on and discussing how the approved learning framework guides their practice during each step of the cycle. It was noted that the information they collect on each child is analysed to assess how the child is progressing towards the learning outcomes, while the practice section of the framework guides their decision-making to support the child’s learning, development and wellbeing. The vision, principles, practice and learning outcomes are all considered during the reflection step of the cycle, to determine what they have learned about the child, what more can be planned for them, and whether anything needs to change or be improved in their pedagogical practice or the program overall.
Some educators expressed interest in considering more deeply whose perspectives are considered and whose are overlooked in the analysis of children’s learning, and what impact this has on the quality of their program planning and implementation. One educator was keen to further incorporate the perspectives of families and other professionals in their analysis of each child’s progress. Another educator reflected on an aspect of the service’s philosophy statement about children being co-creators in their learning and wondered how more opportunities could be created to reflect with children about their thinking and learning. Lively discussion took place about these aspects and there was general agreement that practice could be improved.
One agreed action following this meeting was for educators to share with children the information they had collected as part of their assessment and planning cycle to help assess their thinking and learning and inform ongoing planning. Within this approach, photos and videos of children engaged in play, stories educators had written, and transcripts of children’s conversations would be shared with children. Children would then be encouraged to share their views on what was happening, what they were doing or trying to figure out, and what they were learning. Conversations between children and educators were documented, to be shared at the next reflective practice meeting. Families were kept informed and had opportunities to offer their insights and perspectives via the service’s communication app and through informal conversations with educators.
Some educators reported finding this challenging, but also eye-opening and helpful, as it caused them to consider their assumptions about what was happening for children and what they were thinking or learning. One educator reported sharing images with a group of children who had successfully negotiated an obstacle course, which included some particularly challenging sections. The educator had assessed that the experience highlighted the children’s developing gross motor skills. When the children discussed the photographs, the educator was surprised to learn that one child reported being scared while climbing, but that they felt brave when they got to the top as they hadn’t been able to do it before. The educator then used these comments to begin a project about what it means to be brave, encouraging children to talk about other times when they have felt brave, and what has helped them to attempt things when they might not have been feeling brave. More recently, the service team has been using the reflective planning meetings to explore what the Exceeding themes look like, beginning with Standard 1.3 as this was a current area of interest. To guide these discussions, the educational leader used the reflective questions for Exceeding practice for this standard in the Guide to the NQF. They also looked at the case studies available on the ACECQA website to reflect on examples of high-quality practice while considering these questions and the indicators of Exceeding practice more broadly. These discussions helped the team better understand and articulate what high quality practice looks like, and the impact of ongoing and consistent high-quality practice on children’s learning, development and wellbeing.
The educational leader, with the support of the director, has continued to explore different ways to support all educators to reflect on their own pedagogy and practice. Feedback from educators has also been sought by the educational leader on how they can ensure the support they provide is relevant and meaningful. In one recent example, the educational leader collaborated with educators to develop a continuous improvement plan for their own rooms. This process involved identifying strengths and areas for improvement, which in turn were added into the service’s overall QIP. Feedback from children and families was also sought to ensure the plan reflected all voices and perspectives.
Following discussions and critical reflections over several staff meetings, the service team collectively decided that the educational leader would also participate in the performance planning and review process. The performance plan template and policy were adjusted to allow the educational leader to contribute to the performance planning and review of each educator as another means of supporting their professional growth, learning and development. The educational leader role description was updated to incorporate this change.
While the educational leader continues to grow in the role, and enjoy the opportunities and challenges it brings, the support of the director during their regular catch ups has continued to be appreciated. In one of their most recent catch ups, the educational leader discussed with the director how they might evaluate the impact of their leadership on the organisational culture and professional learning community created and sustained within the service. As a starting point, it was agreed they would raise this with other educational leaders in their local networking group to gain their ideas and perspectives and determine what ideas and possibilities might be relevant and appropriate for their service context.
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