Improving early childhood education outcomes is well and good.
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But Early Start academic director and Professor of Child Development, Marc de Rosnay, knows improvements aren’t sustainable or scaleable if they aren’t helping educators do their job well.
That’s why he was suitably impressed with the results of a University of Wollongong-led professional development program for early childhood educators.
The world-first trial markedly improved educators’ teaching methods, leading to measurable gains in literacy and numeracy, and a reduction in behavioural issues among the children in their care.
“Educators are the ones who spend the hours with the children everyday. They are the ones whose accrued interactions every day are going to make a difference over time,” Prof de Rosnay said.
“All the research tells us if you can’t change the behaviours and the enthusiasm and the knowledge of the educators, then you are not going to confer those benefits to children.
“So being able to show so comprehensively that educators are changing their behaviour and that they embrace their professional development and that they felt validated by it ...that for us was a real victory.”
The Early Start Research at the UOW conducted the Fostering Effective Early Learning (FEEL) study in partnership with the NSW Department of Education to establish the most effective ways to lift the quality of early childhood education and care.
Early Start designed and trialled an evidence-based, in-service professional development program, Leadership for Learning, for preschool and day care centre staff.
It was the first large-scale randomised controlled trial in the world to examine the impact of a professional learning program on early educators’ practice and child outcomes, and the results were dramatic.
Dr Cathrine Neilsen-Hewett, academic director of the Early Years at UOW, said the findings showed that “effective professional development for early childhood educators has tremendous potential to lift outcomes for children in a short time frame”.
“We saw really pronounced changes in practice by the educators and that corresponded to positive growth in those key learning areas for children,” Dr Neilsen-Hewett said.
More than 1300 children and 90 educators from 83 early childhood education and care centres took part in the trial, conducted over seven months.
“One of the significant outcomes for educators was an increased sense of worth,” Dr Neilsen-Hewett said.
“They felt valued, had a renewed sense of purpose and felt the importance of their work had been validated. This is critical as staff turnover and staff instability can really undermine the effectiveness of early childhood education.”
After the study one of the educators commented that the “FEEL PD gave me confidence in what I do. That would be the biggest thing. To be treated like a professional again was very empowering.”
Read more: Early Start marks three year anniversary
Prof de Mornay added this was a very important study that will have impact beyond Australia.
“In-service professional development can make a profound difference to staff and children – and to families – so we need to think about how that quality becomes the norm,” he said.
“I'd like to see this training made available across NSW and across the whole of Australia. If parents knew about the impact, they'd want their centres to be doing it.”