Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemProblematising the present: the historical contribution of consultancy to early childhood education in Australia: 1960-1985( 2017)Consultative approaches in Victorian state funded kindergartens operate presently as the Preschool Field Officer (PSFO) program. Described as a service delivery model (DET, 2015a), the PSFO program is designed to ‘ensure that early childhood teachers and educators continually improve their capacity to provide young children who have additional needs with the experiences and opportunities that promote their learning and development, and enable then to participate meaningfully in the program’ (DET, 2015a, p. 8). Contemporary documents detailing the PSFO program have been recently revised within the context of shifts and reforms to early childhood education in Australia. The provision of early childhood education has arguably changed since the Council of Australian Governments (COAG, 2009) endorsed ‘Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia’ (EYLF), the first national framework in Australia. Providing guidance to all practitioners working in early childhood education, including PSFOs, principles, practices and outcomes are framed within a model of collaboration with children, families and educators. Significantly, the EYLF advocates for practitioners to view children as competent learners (DEEWR, 2009). Currently, Victorian early childhood programs operate under both the national EYLF and the Victorian Early Years Learning Development Framework (VEYLDF), the Victorian State Government document introduced in 2009. This document guides early childhood professionals to work with children from birth to eight years through a focus on outcomes, practice principles and transitions. Positioned within these curriculum documents, early childhood educators’ practices thread between early years’ programs and also the school-based Victorian Curriculum and transition to school frameworks. Underpinned by Foucault's genealogical approach (1977) and ethnography, this study critically examines written and visual documents, by examining and rendering visible complex processes and discursive shifts from the 1960 – 1985 timeframe. Texts selected for examination included contemporary and past Victorian State Government documents and visual images authorised by the National Union of Australian University Students (Roper, 1971). By interpreting the complex processes and changes over this timeframe, an opportunity presents to understand by attempting to make meaning of what might be now known about contemporary consultative services operating in Victorian kindergartens. The findings in this study indicate that in contemporary times discourses of governmentality dominate consultative practices, compelling PSFOs to enact ‘techniques and procedures for directing human behaviour’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 81), in a myriad of complex and contradictory manners. Juxtaposed with practices in the past, I argue that (inter)relating multiple discourses have historically dominated early childhood education. Discourses include: health with supervision, additional needs education with developmentalism, and community organisations with welfare and arguably remain deeply embedded in contemporary consultative practices, forming part of current governing agendas. What may be missing is that children and families are often swept up in the governmentality of consultancy, both historically and currently. Under the guise of collaborative partnerships and capacity building, where children and families are viewed as capable and listened to, it may be argued that consultative practices appear inclusive of the voice of children and families. However, while it appears that this is a shift away from a deficit-based approach, it emerged through the analysis of the data that a lack of transparency and authenticity pervades in these relations. In contemporary times the PSFO program as a consultative body, has come to be an authoritative entity in preschools. Revealing discourses is one means to problematise what may be (un)known about claims which prevail as truth and the authority accorded to circulating privileged agendas and productive moments, but also points to times which are rendered silent. Examining power-knowledge relations producing dominant discourses can rupture certain truth claims and open possibilities to reconstruct new ways to conceive consultative practices in kindergartens and also for a reconceptualisation of ‘understanding of how to do things differently’ (Ailwood, 2004, p. 30).
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ItemFrom developing child to competent learner: a genealogical study of the kindergarten child and progressive reform in Aotearoa New Zealand( 2017)Historically through to the present day, early childhood education has been the focus of myriad and potent investments; a persistent, if variously inflected, feature is its reforming and progressive impulse. This thesis offers a history of the kindergarten child in Aotearoa New Zealand in which themes of subjectivity, knowledge, temporality, truth, and freedom are central. The history, a form of genealogy (Foucault 1984), examines two moments of significant early education reform in New Zealand. Analysis of these reforms is anchored by, and extends from, the landmark policy statements of Pre-School Education: Report of the Consultative Committee on Pre-School Educational Services (DOE 1947) and Education to be More: Report of the Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group (DOE 1988). Working with diverse historical sources – textual, visual, socio-spatial, expert, professional, and practice oriented – the thesis develops a historical account of these reforms and their respective elaboration as self-consciously new and leading-edge practices. It explores the kindergarten child as the subject of changing progressive discourses through analysis of epistemological and affective investments and close examination of practices within what I conceptualize as free-play, developmental pedagogies of freedom (late 1940s and 1950s), and sociocultural learning pedagogies of empowerment (late 1990s and 2000s). The identified pedagogies and their respective conditions of reform are situated in juxtaposed rather than linear temporal relations. That is, I conceptualize them as two differently liberating “timespaces” (Baker 2001, 24), each animated by fervently held understandings of the nature of young children, and what their good education should entail. Engaging a non-binary and practical understanding of processes of subject formation, I understand the pedagogies, spaces, concepts, materials, and practices under examination as technologies of government and subjectivity, and the forms of natural – free or empowered – conduct that they presumed and promoted are analysed. Motivated by critical genealogical aims, the thesis seeks to unsettle current certainties and commitments to the truth of the child in early education, a subject who is commonly understood and called forth as a competent, social and culturally diverse learner. Overall, the thesis argues that these reforms and their respective pedagogies have a “double gesture” (Popkewitz 2009, 397), entailing a valorization and promotion of particular forms of liberated conduct and work-upon the self, whilst simultaneously foreclosing alternative possibilities. Developing a somewhat anti-progressivist account, the history illuminates the surprising – and often neglected in present-day critique – forms of caring attention towards children as embodied, affective subjects within mid-century developmental pedagogies. It surfaces, too, the often overlooked essentializing effects of discourses of empowerment, diversity, and competence within recently ascendant learning-framed pedagogies. While illuminating the affordances of discourses of growth, along with the normative foundationalism of learning discourses, the thesis does not simply call for a restoration of developmental pedagogies or for the wholesale repudiation of empowerment and learning. Rather, this historical study seeks to produce an opening in which present-day investments, including those formulated as counter-discourses, may be appraised with an alertness to their subject-forming effects as well as the blindspots and ambivalence of progressive discourses. Further, while grounded in the cultural politics of Aotearoa New Zealand, the issues raised and arguments developed have relevance to wider shifts and flows in critique, policy, and practice in early education during the twentieth century through to the present day. Grappling with themes of knowledge, subjectivity and temporality, the thesis aims to contribute new and contextually rich insights into the history of the child in and through early education. In doing so, it seeks to reframe that history and open up fresh ways of rethinking the effects of progressive ideas in early education. Finally, this thesis attempts to contribute conceptually and methodologically to approaches for the exploration of educated subjectivities in the past. It does so through a reflexive engagement with Foucauldian concepts of government and ethics in critical interaction with space, materiality and the visual in the history of education.
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ItemMy Italian kindergarten: an investigation of preschool language teaching( 2016)While early natural second language acquisition often produces high levels of bilingual competence, second language learning in institutional settings is far less successful. One response has been to lower the starting age for second language instruction to preschool, but there has been limited research to date into pedagogy for language teaching tailored to early childhood education settings. This study takes an analytic autoethnographic approach to investigating teaching in a play-based bilingual program. Situated in an Italian-English kindergarten program in Melbourne, the study is an inquiry into microprocesses of second language teaching. The Bilingual Turn in education and second language research seeks to acknowledge multilingual realities, suggesting reconsideration of assumptions about language separation in education, recommending bilingual practices such as translanguaging and responsible code-switching, and proposing the adoption of Usage-Based Linguistics as a theory of second language development. This study examines records of enacted bilingual teaching using practitioner reflection, and theoretical resources drawn from the perspective of the Bilingual Turn. The project takes up two related facets of teacher language use, with one focus on English use and issues of language separation and alternation, and the other focus on Italian use and formulaic language in routines. The study finds teaching practices that maximise target language exposure may be a higher priority than language separation. On the other hand, while it may be valid to adopt intentionally bilingual teaching strategies in some settings, the learning context must be considered. Analysis of formulaic language use in routines identifies ‘scripted’ routines as a pedagogical strategy used to add frequency to opportunities for Italian language interaction in a manner compatible with a Usage-Based Linguistics approach to piecemeal repertoire building.
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ItemBeing, becoming and potential: thinking coexistence and coproduction in early childhood education( 2016)This thesis explores how disparate ideas of being, becoming and agency can be reframed to decolonise early childhood education and care contexts. It asks questions of multiple childhood perspectives to denaturalise accepted and dominating early childhood discourses. It does so by pursuing a variegated understanding nested within three questions. First, what ideas of childhood and development compel and inspire the framing of educational objectives in current policy contexts of Australian early childhood reform? Second, what can contemporary challenges to the nature of subjectivity offer for rethinking assumptions of being, agency and development in early childhood? The third asks, what non-dominating perspectives reframe ideas of becoming and potential within the context of early childhood education and care? In addressing these questions, the thesis draws on humanist, post-humanist and postcolonial theory, Indigenous and early childhood policy to examine intersections of childhood and being as colonised subject. Theoretically this thesis grounds itself in critical ontology, emerging through a range of theories on concepts of governmentality, power relations, self and subjectivity. Foundations of critical ontology are challenged by ideas of colonised-coloniser relationships, processes of subjectification and their relationship to the child. This positions the study's contribution to emerging postcolonial reframing of early childhood education. Methodologically, the thesis utilises an approach drawing from interpretive, deconstructive and critical methodologies of education. It draws on critical discourse analysis of philosophy, reform policy, and narratives of experience, overarched by a relatedness ethic, in which a space is held open to contradictions and disparity in theory and thinkers. The study comprises five streams of knowledge about the child. The first explores the idea of childhood as a European foundation of early education discourse. The second explores contemporary critical challenges to the nature of being and the subject. The third stream explores the shaping of docile bodies as refracted through Australian early childhood policy frameworks, and the fourth takes this further to present a genealogy of discourses intersecting child, potential, and education. The fifth stream explores Indigenous Australian perspectives and postcolonial challenges that highlight the ongoing processes constructing the colonial subject. The thesis contributes to understanding how early childhood education might enable difference as multiple manifestations of being. It suggests the ongoing colonial processes of control over childhood calls for the paradigm shift needed. It produces three main theoretical contributions. First, it produces a conceptual possibility of early education and care as a platform for coexistence. Second, it offers concrete and symbolic beginnings for decolonial coproduction. Third, in order to break with childhood as colonised subject, and children as deficit beings, the thesis develops an understanding of emergent being-becomings and becoming-relations, highlighting potentiality as existing in confluence with being. Overall, these can offer directions for unearthing colonial foundations of childhood in reviewing policy and rethinking directions for early childhood education and care.
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ItemAn investigation on the effects of music training on executive functions of preschool children in China( 2015)Numerous studies in the areas of neuroscience and music have reported effects of music instruction on the brain, such as increasing the size of the cerebellum, neural plasticity and structural change. More specifically, it has been suggested that music instruction may improve children’s executive functions, the collection of processes that are responsible for guiding, directing and managing cognitive, emotional and behavioural functions to solve problems, especially novel problems. There has been, however, very limited research on the relationship between executive function development and music. Previous studies have mainly focused on the relationship between music lessons and human memory, including working memory in adults, verbal memory and visual memory. This study used a mixed methods approach including pre- and post-tests of BRIEF-P (preschool version), classroom observations, and interviews to gather data. It was conducted in Beijing, China with two groups of preschool children who both had received no piano instruction initially. 112 three year old preschool children in total participated in this study. 56 in the treatment group were exposed to daily piano instruction for 40 weeks in a one year time frame, while the other half assigned into the control group did not received any piano instruction. Their executive functions were measured before and after the treatment by following the psychological test-BRIEF. The pre- and post-tests consisted of rating forms with 63 items in five non-overlapping scales that measured various aspects of executive functions including: Inhibit, Shift, Emotional Control, Working Memory and Plan/Organise. T-test analyses were then used within and between groups to find out whether piano instruction can make a significant improvement to the executive functions of preschool children. It was found that while the executive functions of both groups improved significantly in every aspect, the group receiving piano lessons outperformed the control group in terms of Shift, Emotional Control, Plan/Organise, Inhibitory Self-Control Index (ISCI), Flexibility Index (FI), and Global Executive Composite (GEC), the summary score of all clinical scales of the BRIEF-P test. The empirical findings showed that piano instruction is positively associated with executive function development and supported the hypothesis that piano instruction can help in executive function development of preschool children in China. Further empirical analyses showed that, except for Plan/Organise, all the scales and indexes of executive functions showed a greater improvement for the children with teachers who were more effective in piano instruction. The results support the importance of effective teachers in piano instruction. The moderating effects of teaching effectiveness on the relationship between piano instruction and executive function improvement in preschool children can be classified into four categories: (1) Inhibit, Working Memory and EMI – piano instruction alone cannot improve, but more effective teachers can enhance the impact of piano instruction and make the improvement significant, while less effective teachers cannot; (2) Shift, ISCI and GEC – piano instruction can improve marginally, and high teaching effectiveness level can further enhance the effect of piano instruction, while low teaching effectiveness level can reduce the effect and make the improvement insignificant; (3) Emotional Control and FI – piano instruction can improve marginally, and high teaching effectiveness level can further enhance the effect of piano instruction, while low teaching effectiveness level will reduce the effect, but the improvement remains significant; and (4) Plan/Organise – piano instruction can improve marginally, but teaching effectiveness cannot alter the effect of piano instruction.
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ItemChildren's participation in theory and practice: (re)theorising the everyday enactment of children's participatory rights with early childhood educators( 2014)This participatory action research project sought to engage early childhood educators in the generation and promotion of critical and ethical early childhood theories and practices that support the enactment of children’s participation rights in the everyday in early childhood settings. Children’s participation is increasingly promoted in early childhood curriculum framework documents in Australia, and is subsequently tied to regulatory requirements and understandings of best practice. However, there are limited resources to support the enactment of young children’s participation in everyday early childhood practice. The basis of this study was to support educators on the ground to explore and generate ethical participatory practices for daily use in the classroom. In doing so, it recognised the need to address the divide between theory and practice that is perceived and experienced by early childhood educators, to account for existing critiques of participation rights, and to resist the maintenance of limiting neoliberal ideals. The methodology employed in this study was poststructural participatory action research. Participants were eight early childhood educators working with 3-5 year old children in different settings across metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Data was generated by various means over the course of a year including semi-structured interviews, transcriptions from action research meetings, participant journals, artefacts, email correspondence, joint writing for conference presentations and shared analysis processes. This project was designed and undertaken using a poststructural conceptual framework. Two stages of analysis were undertaken the first with an emphasis on Derridean deconstruction and the second through the lens of Derrida’s ethic of hospitality. Findings from the deconstructive analysis demonstrated that children’s participation in early childhood is able to support established best practice, support the reconceptualisation of practice, and support resistance to structural and regulatory barriers. These were positive outcomes that support the sustainable practice of children’s rights in early childhood. However, the deconstructive analysis revealed that participatory practices in early childhood also enable maintenance of discourses, binaries and subject positions that limit the ethical possibilities of children’s participation and affect the wellbeing of children and educators. In response to these findings a concept was sought through which to (re)theorise participation for use in early childhood settings. Applying an ethic of hospitality (Derrida, 2000) as a framework demonstrated how educators can create opportunities to welcome and affirm children’s participation more ethically by cultivating passivity, providing provocation, responsiveness, and being open to surprise. This research concludes by exploring possibilities for an hospitality-informed ethics through which educators may encounter and interact with each child as other rather than normalising children and their participation, thus promoting critical and ethical participatory practices.
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ItemThinking, feeling and relating: young children learning through dance( 2014)Dance is considered to be central to the development of the young child (Sansom, 2011; Wright, 2003; Schiller & Meiners, 2003; Stinson, 1988), yet playful body-based learning, is often avoided as a learning area by early childhood educators. Framed within socio-constructivist and rights based theory this study investigated how dance enabled young children’s learning and the role of the teacher in enabling this learning. The research adopted a qualitative mixed methods case study methodology (Stake, 2005; Yin, 2003). The participants were twenty, four and five-year old children and their teacher, who was also the researcher. Data was collected over twenty-six weeks and was generated from video recordings, photographs, children’s drawing-tellings (Wright, 2003a, 2003b) and teacher program plans and journal notes. Video recordings and photographic images were transcribed using a number of original analytical tools that supported a systematic and in-depth investigation of young children’s responses to learning through dance and the role of the teacher in enabling this learning. The findings revealed that young children engaged in embodied thinking, playful imaginative problem-solving and aesthetic decision making, whilst developing, through multi-modal semiotic meaning making, a strong sense of self and collective agency. The findings also highlighted a particular pedagogical platform and a range of teaching strategies that supported the establishment of an interest-based socio-constructivist dance curriculum where the voices of children were given an opportunity to be expressed in multiple ways. The results of this study indicate that learning through dance provides young children with an authentic and unique learning modality that supports sophisticated levels of thinking, feeling and relating. This position infers that dance should be recognized for its potential to excite young children’s creative and artistic thinking and their social development, and as such, be represented more broadly in mainstream curriculum. In addition, this thesis recommends a teaching and learning model that recognizes the rights of children to have the opportunity to express their voices through artistic and creative endeavours, of which dance is considered paramount.
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ItemInvestigating the implementation of drama in a Taiwanese preschool( 2014)This thesis is an investigation of processes and possibilities for using drama as a medium for integrated thematic learning. It reports on a qualitative case study incorporating aspects of action research, focusing on developing and adapting a drama-based learning approach in a particular preschool setting in Taiwan. The study explored the growth in understanding and acceptance for teachers and their students of the approach to learning through drama. Two preschool teachers and their twenty-six students in Chiayi City, Taiwan, are involved in this thesis. In the study the researcher was a reflective practitioner, taking on the multiple roles of teacher, co-researcher and participant. Over twelve weeks, the researcher collected data through observation of drama sessions in a preschool classroom, interviews with the classroom teachers, students, parents and school director, and collection of journals, documents, photos and students’ work. This thesis illustrates details of the nature of implementing a new educational drama approach and the importance of discussion in drama activities. Several techniques and the teachers’ involvement in the drama sessions were categorised and considered as key factors which had effects on drama practice in the classroom. The study found that a drama-based learning approach was applicable in a Taiwanese preschool classroom. This approach was successfully applied once participants found their confidence with the newly introduced drama activities. The teachers and students used their prior drama experience to adopt a new approach and develop an individual drama-based learning style within the thematic curriculum. Based on this study, a new drama-based learning approach was formed and four-phase drama implementation practice was identified to describe the process of a fully developed educational drama approach in a Taiwanese pre-school. Several challenges that arose from the drama implementation and the factors that might influence or cause these challenges are revealed in this thesis. The local context was found to be an important consideration for teachers when implementing drama in their curriculum. The culture, education system and policy of the Taiwanese society influenced schools and drama practitioners. A key finding is that balancing traditional, social and educational values and Western drama education theories is important for the development of drama pedagogy in early childhood education in Taiwan.
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ItemThe Transition Learning and Development Statement: multiple readings and kaleidoscopic possibilities( 2014)In Australia in 2009, the early childhood profession witnessed the debut of “Belonging, being and becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia” (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, (DEEWR), 2009). For early childhood educators in Victoria, this was followed by the concurrent introduction of the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, (DEECD), 2009a) and the Transition Learning and Development Statement (TLDS). The introduction of the TLDS was informed by international literature that recognises the significance of transition for children, families and educators (Dockett & Perry, 1999; Early, Pianta & Cox, 1999; Margetts, 2002; Dunlop & Fabian, 2007 & Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years (PACEY), 2013). This signalled a renewed emphasis on transition within a Victorian context. The purpose of this research was to explore how the TLDS has been used to fulfil the intended dual purpose of making transition to primary school smoother for children and creating a shared professional language and relationship between early childhood and primary school educators. Accordingly, this thesis draws on in-depth interviews with early childhood and primary school educators to explore how they understand and engage with the TLDS. The subsequent data analysis revealed that early childhood and primary school educators operated within shared dominant discourses and that this promoted the building of mutual professional relationships. Post-structural understandings of knowledge, truth and power were drawn on to elucidate this data in two ways. Firstly, through the positioning of the TLDS as a mechanism of power, the dominant discourses of children, families and educators that circulate throughout the TLDS were investigated. Secondly, the privileging of the TLDS as the single, mandated transition practice within the state of Victoria, Australia was also interrogated. Lastly, Foucauldian concepts were drawn upon to illuminate that power is ever shifting and can elicit multiple readings and a kaleidoscope of possibilities for how transition to school can be understood and enacted.