Service and Sector Architectures That Support and Sustain ECEC Workforce Quality

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "Early Childhood Education".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2024) | Viewed by 1236

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Sydney School of Education and Social Work, Sydney, Australia
Interests: early childhood policy and governance; early childhood quality and access; early childhood workforce; early childhood leadership and management

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Guest Editor
School of Education, Faculty of Arts and Education, Charles Sturt University, Melbourne, Australia
Interests: ECE leadership; ECE governance; advocacy workforce; student retention

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Governments and providers of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services around the globe are facing a workforce crisis. There is an undersupply of early childhood teachers and educators, and attrition rates post COVID remain high. Policy levers at both sector and service levels are seeking to increase the workforce pipeline, but what initiatives are being put into place to ensure workforce quality?

This Special Issue invites contributions that address policy and leadership approaches intended to support ECEC workforce quality and sustainability. Rather than a focus on specific ECT and educator practices, we are interested in the architectures—sector and service—that support high-quality ECEC. At the sector level, what policy and regulatory approaches are supporting the preparation, development and retention of quality early childhood teachers and vocationally qualified educators? At the service level, how are governance and leadership supporting workforce capability in ways that contribute to service quality and positively impacting children’s development and wellbeing? These issues are timely as we emerge from the COVID pandemic and face increasing neoliberal and marketised approaches to ECEC.

Original research articles and reviews could focus on questions such as:

  • How do early childhood initial teacher education programs attract and retain students while ensuring graduate quality?
  • How can the regulation of ECEC services assess and support quality in the context of a workforce crisis?
  • What ECEC policy and provider initiatives enable workforce supply and quality?
  • In the context of significant workforce challenges, who are the leaders of quality ECEC, and are new conceptualisations of leadership needed?
  • How do ECE settings, providers and governments enable and constrain leadership and a sustainable workforce?
  • What does advocacy leadership look like as the marketisation of ECEC increases? 

Dr. Marianne Fenech
Dr. Leanne Gibbs
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • early childhood workforce
  • early childhood education and care quality
  • early childhood policy
  • leadership
  • governance
  • marketisation
  • advocacy and activism

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 265 KiB  
Article
Promoting Teaching and Learning Through Research-Informed Professional Development: The Leadership for Learning Programme in Australia and China
by Iram Siraj and Runke Huang
Educ. Sci. 2024, 14(12), 1299; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14121299 - 27 Nov 2024
Viewed by 762
Abstract
The fragmented provision of training for early childhood educators has highlighted the imperative need for research-informed professional development (PD) programmes to enhance educator professionalism. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a research-informed in-service PD programme—“Leadership for Learning”—through cluster randomised controlled trials in Australia [...] Read more.
The fragmented provision of training for early childhood educators has highlighted the imperative need for research-informed professional development (PD) programmes to enhance educator professionalism. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a research-informed in-service PD programme—“Leadership for Learning”—through cluster randomised controlled trials in Australia and China. In Australia, the study involved 83 early-years services, and 1346 4–5-year-old children. In China, the study adapted the PD programme both educationally and culturally, involving 24 preschools, 95 classrooms, 202 educators, and 547 children aged 3–5 years. The comparative findings revealed that the PD programme significantly improved scores on the ECERS-E and SSTEW classroom quality rating scales in both Australia and China. Regarding children’s outcomes, the Australian PD programme significantly enhanced children’s numeracy development, social–emotional development, and expressive language, but not vocabulary, while the Chinese adaptation improved literacy development but not numeracy. This study has important implications for the implementation of PD programmes and cross-cultural educational research, highlighting the need for context-specific adaptations to maximise the effectiveness of PD interventions. Full article
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