Many Bedrock readers may already be familiar with the Exemplary Early Childhood Educators at Work Study and its aim to help us understand the nature and complexity of the work of highly skilled and knowledgeable early childhood educators, researchers Frances Press, Linda Harrison, Sandie Wong, Megan Gibson and Sharon Ryan write.
The study focuses on the nature of educators’ work and the context within which they work. It looks at what educators actually do day to day, their capacity to problem solve and make decisions, and how their organisations and professional networks support great work.
Because the researchers are keen to know what highly skilled and knowledgeable educators do, the study is based in early childhood education (ECE) services that are rated as Exceeding National Standard in every quality area through the Australian National Quality Standard assessment and rating process.
The first phase of the study has commenced and uses a random time sampling, time-use smartphone app to gather information on educators’ typical work day. The RTS Time Use Diary (TUD) app, especially designed for this study, electronically prompts educators to recall their activities for the previous hour, selecting from a set of 10 pre-coded categories (eg intentional teaching, routine care/transition, emotional support).
Each category is defined by specific activities. The app enables educators to record a sequence of activities, and multiple activities completed during the same time period. It also gathers ratings of work demands and work satisfaction for each reported hour. We are wanting educators to record their work activities twice a day over 10 working days to generate over 10 000 randomly collected work hours. In this way we are hoping to gather the largest evidence based corpus of educators’ work to date.
The second phase involves focus groups of educators organised according to their level of qualification. We want to talk with educators about the various roles they undertake and the resources (including understandings) they draw upon in the course of their work. Recruitment for focus groups will commence shortly.
The final phase of the study will involve case studies of exemplary educators’ work. Case studies will reveal who educators have professional contact with, what educators do, how they undertake what they do, and why. All staff working in the case study centres will be asked to complete the Supportive Environment Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) tool (Centre for the Study of Child Care Employment 2014).
We know that the way organisations operate has an impact on the work educators can do. This will be the first time that the SEQUAL tool is used in Australia, and will be key to gathering educators’ ratings of their work environment.
What have we found out so far?
We currently have time use diary data on over 1200 hours of work time (but we’d love to have more!). We have yet to analyse the data, however our initial observations tell us that:
• almost two-thirds of an early childhood educator’s working day is spent in direct engagement with children. The rest of the day is typically used for planning, organising the play environment, doing professional development or administration, communicating through emails/newsletters with families, and taking breaks for lunch etc
• the number of primary activities educators have entered ranges from one activity for the whole hour to the maximum of 10 different activities. On average, educators are completing three different activities during a typical hour, and
• a large proportion of educators are multitasking.
We are really keen to hear from more educators! If you work in an early childhood centre that is rated exceeding in every quality area and standard and you would like to join our study please contact Fran Press at fpress@csu.edu.au
The research is made possible through the Australian Research Council (LP160100532) and our partner organisations: Community Early Learning Australia; Child Australia; Crèche and Kindergarten Association (QLD); Independent Education Union (NSW and QLD, ACT & NT branches); KU Children’s Services; Inner West Council, Sydney; and United Voice.