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Socio-dramatic play is an everyday occurrence in early childhood education as children create narratives together in shared imagined worlds. The teacher's role in this type of play is less clear and this paper draws on a study using Lindqvist's "playworlds" approach to gain insight into how teachers participate in children's play. In applying Kravtsov and Kravtsova's concept of children's "double subjectivity" in dramatic play, the paper argues that teachers can also maintain dual affect roles—those of teacher outside the play, and co-player within the play—to co-create with children in their dramatic play narratives. In this study, four teachers in Melbourne, Australia participated in weekly playworlds with the researcher in their kindergarten rooms, resulting in identification of a third affect role for teachers—that of "public performer." This third affect was found to hinder teachers' capacity to maintain simultaneous subject positions of themselves as teacher and a co-player, thereby minimizing the improvised narrative trajectory and potential of the dramatic play. We argue this third affect should be acknowledged to support teacher participation in children's play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable literature describing the use of Change Laboratory as a simultaneous research and intervention methodology in workplace settings. However, there is limited literature describing Change Laboratory from the researcher-facilitator perspective. This paper examines the ethical dimensions of Change Laboratory from this perspective and specifically how a 'rule of care' became a conscious rule. The context is a series of Change Laboratories implemented with Centre Directors and Educational Leaders from early childhood education and care centres in Darwin and Melbourne, Australia. Based on our analysis we attribute the emergence of this rule to a particular vulnerability of the participants: that they were all recruited from centres that had been publicly designated as Working Towards National Quality Standard requirements for quality early childhood education and care practices. We present evidence of this 'rule of care' in our work as researcher-facilitators from our data. We conclude that attention to a 'rule of care' is necessary to support transformation, particularly for vulnerable participants such as Educational Leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques the usefulness of double stimulation, a key concept in Vygotskian analyses of human development, with leaders in early childhood services in Australia. A series of formative interventions was conducted to identify and address systemic tensions that were confounding leaders’ attempts to realise a central object of activity in their work: the development of their staff in order to enhance children’s learning. An example of double stimulation is drawn from workshop comments and interviews with one of the participating leaders. The article elaborates on a tension identified between explicit cultural expectations of professionalism and an implicit division of labour that position leaders as having the primary responsibility for solving problems of practice. The article concludes by reflecting on the usefulness of double stimulation in fostering sustainable leadership practices in early childhood education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early childhood assessment in Australia is guided by Australia's Early Years Learning Framework and a ‘storied’ approach. This article argues that Australia's policy and practice discourses of assessment in early childhood education lack clarity. The article situates early childhood assessment practice within Australia's curriculum, policy and regulatory context. Literature regarding Learning Stories assessment as a dominant discourse is presented to illustrate the ‘borrowed’ and underdeveloped nature of Australia's storied approach. Data is drawn on to provide insight into two educators’ assessment practices. The analysis suggests that storied assessment is being conflated with the Learning Stories approach within a wider practice of assessment eclecticism, whereby educators are taking a ‘grass-roots’ approach to assessment and doing ‘what works’. The article argues for urgent attention to concepts of assessment in the scheduled update of the Early Years Learning Framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental Work Research (DWR) is a methodology for simultaneous research and innovation in workplace settings, developed by Finnish researcher Yryö Engeström. This interventionist approach builds on the principles of cultural-historical activity theory, articulated by developmental psychologists L.S. Vygotsky and A.N. Le'ontev. The article describes the use of DWR with the staff of one Melbourne early childhood centre to argue for the potential of DWR as a professional development methodology. A specific example is provided to show how a group of educators resolved a contradiction within their collective system of activity, related to implicit cultural rules about communication with parents. The article concludes by arguing that DWR has considerable potential for reconceptualising practice in early childhood settings, whilst cautioning that some practices are easier to reconceptualise than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Findings are reported from the third phase of a small exploratory study that aimed to understand how pre-service teachers from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, and those who supervise them in early childhood settings, experience practicum assessment, and the extent to which practicum assessment takes into account pre-service teacher diversity. Discourse analysis (Foucault, 1972), applied to interviews with pre-service teachers and supervising teachers, revealed a persistent 'discourse of denial' of cultural difference on the part of supervising teachers, who nevertheless genuinely attempted to negotiate the inevitable challenges posed by the supervision of CALD pre-service teachers. The paper concludes that supervising teachers were at pains to produce and perpetuate a liberal humanist discourse within which all human beings are 'the same' or should be equal, even as they attempted to recognise CALD pre-service teachers' learning styles and needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports from a pilot study investigating the ways digital documentation platforms are changing educators' work in early childhood education. Digital documentation platforms are secure websites or application software, enabled by computer, smartphone, or tablet technologies, allowing educators to record observations of children's learning as text or in visual forms, to which interpretations or commentary from educators, family members, and children are added. This paper examines how these platforms orient the ways educators see and articulate young children's learning. Video stimulated recall interviews with educators (six in total) at four ECE sites across Australia and New Zealand were analysed. Key concepts are offered in relation to how digital platforms shape the learning that is seen by early childhood educators: tag-ability, trackability, completeness, and co-constitution. Each of these concepts is problematised in relation to contemporary ECE practices and the persuasiveness and ubiquity of the visual in discourses of documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]