Linking pre-service teachers with national data and local sites - a partnership approach

The early childhood teaching team at Flinders has continued to strive to connect teacher education meaningfully to early childhood contexts and educational theory and knowledge. We were recently recognised for this work through a Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching from our Flinders University.

In order to do this work, we have re-conceptualised workplace experience in our courses and our work with very diverse early childhood sites drawing from Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (1999) metaphor of ‘inquiry-as-a-stance’ for re-thinking the relationship between pre-service teachers, teacher educators, practicing early childhood teachers and educational knowledge (p.288). To this end, individual units/courses of study have sought partnerships with a variety of sites to create innovative partnerships that support both the pre-service teacher's learning, but also the site and their work with children.

This year, two Flinders' early childhood units/topics, Early Childhood Health and Physical Education and Literacy and Numeracy Birth-to-Four wanted to expand on this approach by working with sites in exploration of the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) data and how this information can inform our work with children and the community. The AEDC is a national data set that reports on areas of vulnerability and strength in early childhood at a community level in five areas:

• Physical health and wellbeing
• Social competence
• Emotional maturity
• Language and cognitive skills
• Communication skills and general knowledge

Further information about the AEDC, and to access community level data in Australia see this link.

We approached early learning sites whose local community had taken part in the ADEC pilot project in 2009 in an effort to find sites interested in working with our pre-service teachers to support learning and development in  areas of  vulnerability as identified by the AEDC. A local kindergarten, Mitchell Park, expressed an interest in participating and a partnership was created.

Our units/topics were developed to meaningfully weave this partnership into the units/topics assessment. In doing so, pre-service teachers are required to understand and interpret local data sets, and plan to support the site's needs through an inquiry focus, chosen by the site, that links to the the units/topics content areas. For further information about the partnership and the work being completed by the pre-service teachers, please see link.

Now in week 4 of the semester, the partnership is underway and the value of this approach is becoming clear for both the site and the pre-service teachers. Connecting pre-service teachers, early learning sites, and local community to recent and localised data is important and valuable for all involved, and valuing this approach in our work in teacher education continues to be a sometimes challenging, but worthwhile approach.