- Hello everyone, my name is Catharine Hydon and it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you to this webinar series, Purpose and Professionalism: Supporting career longevity in Early Childhood Education and Care. This webinar is brought to you by the Department of Education and Training in collaboration with Early Childhood Australia. And it's fantastic to welcome you all online. I can see lots of you are introducing yourselves already, acknowledging the country that you're on. So keep doing that in the chat as we get started. Now before we get started, of course, as we gather together like this it's important that we take a moment from our busy lives to tune into country. So I particularly want us to acknowledge the traditional owners on whose country we are all collectively on, the lands of the Kulin nation, and pay our respects to first nations colleagues, brothers, and sisters, families and children that we work with, and particularly acknowledge the amazing work that our elders have done to support us to engage in Aboriginal ways of knowing and being, and to make sure that we incorporate that in all of the work that we do with children and their families. We of course acknowledged that this land always was and always will be Aboriginal land. And can I take a moment also to say a big shout out to all of you who are joining us today. What a year it's been. I'm not sure that we would have predicted some of the things that we've had to navigate in recent times, but can I say a big thank you to all of you who have made the time to join us here today, but also to acknowledge the work that you're doing in these really challenging times. We know that there are many obstacles that you've overcome and there's a few hurdles still to navigate as we progress through the rest of this year. But I want you to know that we all deeply appreciate the work that you're doing, and indeed opportunities like this are fantastic. We come together virtually not exactly as we perhaps would have planned it, but it's been a really fantastic way in order for us to keep connected and to build relationships and connections that hopefully will stretch out beyond these webinars. And I know this is the case for me, hanging out with you in these sorts of platforms does sustain me in the work that I do. And our heart today, whether you are at the beginning of your career, whether you are midway through your career, your thinking about your career, you're at the end of your career, this is an opportunity for you to reflect on what it means for you to engage in purpose and professionalism and how you understand supporting your career longevity in early childhood education and care. And you might want to take a few notes as we progress today so that you can share them with your colleagues. Of course, there'll be an opportunity for you to reengage with this webinar in the weeks to come. You'll be able to share that with your colleagues in the video that you can see. But hopefully there'll be little bits of information, and perhaps the whole webinar that you'd be able to share with others. This of course is the first webinar in a series of two webinars that'll explore research and practice, something that we're very committed to in this space. We're going to focus on supporting educators across the sector, and we're going to be drawing on a balance of research and practice experience to think about how we navigate these current times. And effective strategies that help us build the workforce and to help us to feel strong about our professional identity. So particularly we're going to think about what sustains long-term careers in early childhood education. What strategies we can use. We're going to try and be quite practical as well as theoretical. And we're also going to think about how we create a sense of purpose and professionalism and how we can sustain that engagement over long periods of time. And important to this conversation will be our capacity to draw on knowledge and experience of researchers and practitioners. So if you've got ideas that you would like to share with us in the chat, please do so. If you've got a practice story, something that particularly has worked for you, we'd love to hear about that. But likewise, if you get quite distracted by the chat, feel free to turn that off and just engage in the conversation that we're having today, and we will have at the next webinar. So it's going to be a conversation style. So you're welcome to feel like you're part of that conversation. Note down some things that you want to talk to others about. We're going to meander through a range of ideas. As I said, exploring research and practice. Think about big questions that we want to answer today and see how we might navigate that. So before I introduce our panelists, let me remind you of a couple of things in this space. As I've said, the chat is there ready to go. So if you'd love to engage in that, then please do so, share some stories, tell us some things about what you're experiencing, ask some big questions. We might not have time to engage with all of those questions, but we'd love to hear what questions you have. And also if you want to think about how you might take some of these ideas further into your conversations with colleagues. They'll also be as we go references to the Department of Education trainings resources and support, school readiness funding, workforce supports. So we'll pick up some of those and put them into the chat as we go, but feel free to go back into the Department of Education and Training's website, and see if we can navigate some of those spaces as well, because there's some really great resources there. So let me now introduce our panelists. We have two very eminent researchers in the Australian context joining us today, and they've done a lot of thinking about what it means to be a part of a profession, what it means to have a longevity in the profession. And they've got some really great things to share with us. So I'm just going to introduce them to you first. And then I'm going to ask each of them in turn to share some broad thinking around the subject matter that we're investigating today. So let me just introduce them to you. So firstly, I want to introduce Professor Sue Irvine, who's the Head of the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education at the Queensland University of Technology. Indeed some of you may know Sue, you might've met her in the study that you might've done. So her recent research focuses on the early childhood education and care workforce, effective leadership in long daycare and family daycare and quality improvement, particularly in long daycare. And she's also part of a team that also our second panelist of today, Fay Hadley, is part of who are progressing the update of the Australian learning frameworks. So you'll know the early years learning framework in my time, our place are currently being updated and both Fay and Sue a part of a consortium of researchers who are helping us navigate that space. So I'd also like to take a moment here to introduce Dr. Fay Hadley, hello Fay, who's the Director and Initial Teacher Education at the School of Education, Macquarie University. Long title there Fay, She is currently a co-chief investigator with tripartite partnership with QUT that I mentioned before with the Australian Learning Frameworks, navigating that space, which is fantastic. And her primary research examines leadership in early childhood education, including mentoring and professional learning and career pathways for early childhood teachers. So both of these amazing researchers are well-placed to commentate on what it means to have purpose and professionalism and to support career longevity in early childhood education. So as I said, I'd like to turn first to Sue and ask Sue to do some reflection with us about that idea of purpose and professionalism and supporting career longevity in early childhood education. So over to you Sue.
- Thank you, thank you very much, Catharine, can I also just acknowledge that I am not in Victoria at the moment I'm up in Queensland, and I'm sitting on Turrbal and Yuggera land. So I want to acknowledge that and pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging. This is a great topic, isn't it? Purpose and professionalism and for obvious reasons I've been chose, and then I guess in terms of my initial reflection, I would say that they're inextricably aligned and related. A sense of purpose, a strong sense of purpose is critical for any professional. It's actually a whole mark of being a professional. I think when we're looking at purpose, that sense of purpose, we also need to acknowledge that it's a bit multi-dimensional that when we think about purpose, we have collective or shared purpose and we also have individual purpose. And I think we need to be unpacking the relationship between the collective or shared purpose, which we sometimes with damn would see expressed in policy, the national quality framework, the early years learning framework, the visions that we have in terms of our profession. But then we also need to acknowledge that purpose is very much contextually and temporarily contextualized, and is relevant to our place, and to where we are in our careers, and where we're working in terms of our early childhood service. So thinking about the multi dimensions of purpose. And I think too, that the other thing that I'm just going to put on the table, which I think we will definitely be talking about today is the fact that when we talk about purpose, particularly in our profession, we often have a very altruistic focus, and that's appropriate, that's what professions do, we want to make a positive difference, we want to have positive outcomes for all children. But I think in the context of our work, we also need to be thinking about what's our purpose within our own careers and what do we aspire to? What are our career goals and what do we need to get out of our career, personally and professionally to be able to have that longevity. The other thing that I wanted to think about is the other term professionalism. And that's something that I've been thinking about a lot over recent times in my research. And I think to do that, I want to draw attention to the fact that there are two terms that are closely used together, but they mean quite different things, at least in my mind. We hear a lot about professionalization in early childhood education and care, and that's been very much a part of the international policy context for the last 10 or 15 years. And that's at play at the moment here in Australia. But then we actually have the term professionalism. And I want to just share my thoughts in terms of the difference and the relationship between those two terms. So I think starting with professionalization, professionalization is about giving professional status to a particular sector or a particular profession. And it really places emphasis on external agents doing something to the profession. When we think about professionalization in a policy context, it's often about increasing qualification requirements and introducing professional standards. And again, the emphasis is often on an external agent actually instigating that. Whereas if we think about professionalism, professionalism is much more of a ground up perspective. And in my mind, when we talk about professionalism in early childhood education and care, we're actually acknowledging the professionalism and the professional practice that exists here and now. And what we're doing is thinking about that and thinking about how we can make that feasible, and how we can continue to strengthen it. So I think those two terms are related, and I also believe that informed policy and professionalization strategies have an important role to play in our profession, but it's imbalanced and we mustn't lose sight of the importance about ground up perspectives on what it means to be a professional in our space.
- Well, it's plenty there that we can investigate. Lots of people I'm sure are nodding like I'm doing and really identifying with those different ways of describing. And I think this is really helpful to help define what we mean. So Fay, can you take us into a space of your reflections about this broad title? What does purpose and professionalism and supporting career longevity mean to you?
- Hello Catharine, and I'm glad that Sue did all of the policy stuff, 'cause I've got a few more, I want to focus a bit on the personal, so it's actually, and we didn't practice this before, so that's. But I also would like to acknowledge before I speak. I'm in Sydney in New South Wales, kind of out of lockdown, semi out of lockdown. Which is exciting and I know you Victorians are very close to it sorry and you're hurting much more than we are. But so I have a little bit of a sense of what you've been going through since the last four months here in Sydney. But I would really like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am on today. So I'm on Gayamaygal and Garigal people of the Guringai nation, lots of GS there. These cultures and customs have nurtured this beautiful part of the northern beaches in Sydney. It is a contested space and the lands have never been seated. And I also want to recognise that and Guringai nation is probably a made up word in this part of Sydney because unfortunately the colonization, the Aboriginal people of this area were pushed out of the space very quickly and they do believe there was another clan as well, but we've lost that history. And I just wanted to pay my respects and acknowledge the elders of the Guringai present, past and an emerging any indigenous people listening today. So I was reflecting from kind of a personal journey. So I added it up and I've been working with childhood for 33 years. So I think, I probably can say that I have some longevity. But it's certainly a path that has been woven in different ways. And I think that's something that's really important when we're thinking about our longevity and profession, and what makes us stay is that it will look different for different people and we all take different journeys. But the thing that I love about early childhood is that it gives you so many different ways and opportunities. So reflecting back on my career of 33 years, so I've been in the sector since I was 20. So you can add that up, not quite 20 plus 33, but I'm just about there. So you can work out how old I am. I think what I realised very early on in my career, even when I was 20 and finishing my fourth year of my degree, of my undergraduate degree, and teaching three days a week in an incredible long daycare centre, that was a melting pot of ECT at that time, it was the diversity of experiences that I was able to embrace and to find places. And as my career has progressed is to find those places where you feel like you fit, that you have those organizations or centres that get you, that you get them, that you have the same purpose. So it's not only an individual purpose, but it's the purpose that is a mutual collective purpose that you have. So that vision, all the philosophy that you have. And that you need to be in places that sync with your philosophy or your vision, because otherwise your purpose is mismatched. And then I think that's when you do have issues with burnout and people leaving the sector. So I think it's really important that, and it's about looking out for those opportunities. It's also looking out for those opportunities for purpose in terms of what you're going to learn. So pushing yourself beyond that comfort zone, embracing those challenges that come along, recognising that hard conversation that you had with that family, and how that has changed the way you may think about working with families in the future. So not shying away from when you may not have got it as well as you thought and be disappointed with you. And you're sitting at home and reflecting and thinking, I didn't get that quite right. They're all moments for me, I believe in terms of helping us to learn and develop our purpose and refine our purpose, and recognise that we're human beings, and that we don't always get things right in terms of what we do every day. Just like in any profession you ask a doctor, you ask a lawyer, you ask the pilot flying the plane, they will tell you that there's times in their profession, that they felt a little bit out of control or that they didn't get it right. So I think recognising that you aren't perfect as well is a really important part of recognising your purpose and professionalism. I also, for example, in that kind of comfort zone very early on in my career was a director of a brand new centre, moved to Sydney, New south Wales. I knew nobody I'd done my degree in ECT. That's where my career had started. And again, it was about, okay, what do I do in this new space, different regulations, different requirements, different ways of doing things. So very quickly worked out who I could call on in that early childhood space where I was living to make sure that I could learn from them and pick their brains and recognise, and put my hand up and say, hey, I'm new in this space, you know what, I'm just looking for some guidance and some support and some thinking, and can I bounce these ideas off on you? So I think as a part of being a professional, it's our job to go and find those connections and to seek out those people that are going to help us do our job well. And that was certainly something that I was really fortunate to find a strong network in the eastern suburbs of Sydney at that time. And really start to think through what this brand new seemed to look like. I also think we need to think about language, and this is probably one of my pet hates is some of the language that we use and it's not professional. And it doesn't deem us to be a profession in the wider community. So for example, I hate the word and I'm going to just say, I hate the word industry. It makes me so angry when I hear that word. It makes me upset when I read it, you know, in the blogs and the social media posts. And so I would encourage you all to think about the language that you use in every day, in terms of the way you're interacting with the children, the families and your colleagues, and thinking about language and language does matter. So I really liked the ECA post that was just put out just recently on the spoke that talked about language and started to say, let's get a collective language together. So I encourage you to look at those kinds of posts and rethink language. There's lots of other words that I don't like, and we don't have time to talk about them today, but floater is one I don't like, like, where are you floating to. We use release for face-to-face teaching in the school sector, but we don't use that word in the early childhood education in care. Why, it's exactly the same thing, we're being released from our teaching so that we can plan for those children in our room. So some of that language, I would just encourage you, I'm not encouraging you to adopt the school language just because it's language, but to think about language that defines us as a profession, as a part of that education spectrum. I also think that we need to find what our purpose as Sue was saying, in terms of that critical role we play in helping children grow and thrive and become ready for their next journey, and whether that's entering the formal schooling system. But Sue is exactly right, it's not just about the altruistic good. We can't just be in it because we like children. We have to be in it because we're committed to the broader profession, the broader collective. So those sorts of things, I think are key. And leadership is key in all of that. So when you are working alongside strong people in your organization and they are leading the way, and they are providing those opportunities for you to be a professional, then that allows you also to be able to do your job and to find your purpose. So there's lots of very complex interplay in terms of, I mean, what is the purpose, what is a profession and how do we support our sector working in that space.
- Well, both of you have opened up a lot of space there for us to investigate. So I've got a couple of key questions, but I just want to clarify a couple of things maybe, and you can both respond to each other as well. I note that how you're trying to define the word professionalism. And I love the different, Sue between professionalization and professionalism. And because we've got a whole bunch of people here online today who are educated, who are thinking about themselves, that distinction is a really interesting, and with us spending some time on, I think. But I might want to ask both of you this, we've been through some really interesting times in the last couple of years, do you feel like our professional, the way we would define professionalism is going to shift, are we going to have different definitions emerging, or are we going to go back to some of the fundamentals that I've always described us? Or is it a bit of a combination of both? Maybe you can start with that, Sue, how do you define professionalism in these crazy times?
- Interesting Catharine, and I'm thinking it did all of the above in terms, are we looking at some changes, are we looking at some returns and rethinking things? I mean, as I said, we work in a dynamic profession and to be relevant, we actually have to be cognizant of changes in society and that the children and family that we're working with. So I think that we have to be really open to those sorts of changes. I mean, I think that there are watershed moments in terms of shifts in how we see our purpose. And I'm just going to reflect for a moment, and you'll forgive me if I indulge myself in Fay, but the birth of the early years learning framework that the launch of that in Australia was definitely one of those watershed moments where we saw a shift in language, we saw a shift in the way that our profession was portrayed. And this was part of professionalization. Although I will also note that it was informed by a consortium of early childhood professionals, practitioners, and researchers. So there was a really nice connection between professionalism informing the policy and the curriculum that was at play there. And I think, we saw some really significant changes in terms of our sense of ourselves and our professional identity at that point in time, the introduction of the word educator, which some people love, most people love, but some people did not. We had some fabulous research that was undertaken by some Australian colleagues. I'm thinking about I'm Michelle Otlet and Leone Arthur, and Christine Woodrow who looked really closely at the discourse of the new curriculum framework and pointed out that there was a real privileging of teaching and education in that, which again, you can see in subsequent studies, but now more and more, we're talking about our professional work as being, teaching and educating and working with curriculum. So I think that you can see here at play the link between policy and curriculum and our own sense of who we are as professionals and professional practice. So I think that's really what we're looking at. And we're looking at learning from our current COVID context, the good and the not so good to think about where we head to next. And that will look different for all of us in terms of the communities and the children and families that we're working with.
- I love how you've reminded us about some of those watershed moments, because there's big watershed moments, and then there might be little micro watershed moments in your own individual service. I can certainly recall times when there were significant changes that happened in the life of the services that I worked in that shaped who we were into the future, a child who's successful participation in a service changes everything. I'm sure there are a lot of people online going, yep, that was an important moment. And maybe those contribute to the way you see your professional identity and the way we understand our purpose. Fay do you want to respond to that in terms of sort of COVID and the changing nature of professionalism.
- So I think when COVID hit last year, I was probably more confident that it was that the community understood the importance of early childhood. And there was lots of conversations from families, and the community talking about the importance of early childhood educators and their role. I probably am a little bit jaded this year. I probably feel like we've probably lost a little bit of that original kind of rules. But I still think it's there. And I still think it's a really important moment for us to then be doing what we do as professionals to advocate for the importance of early childhood, the importance of supporting children and families, and that it is more than a workforce space, that it is a place of learning and of education and care, and the importance of, we'll see, for example today, kindies and new ones here in New South Wales and year 12 went back to school. And we'll see what it looks like next week when the rest of them go back to school, and when in Victoria. But we'll know very quickly that those children will be going home and telling their families about what they like about being back with their peers. And it'll be about friendships, we know it will be, that's something that they've really been missing, but it's more than that. They've been missing those engagements and interactions with their teachers and their educators, and being challenged, and being able to play in a much more uninterrupted way than when they have been at home being, families are trying to do all of those other things as well as raise their very young children. So I think we've got an opportunity now that, in two of the states that the children are about to go back into those into early childhood and into schools. So I think this is a position that we should be leveraging and reminding in those moments, in those conversations that we have with families, in those conversations we have in the backyard at the barbecue, when we can do that again. These come up and I think that's a really important part of professionalism is jumping on those moments and being able to articulate what that then means for us as a profession, and having always talk about having it's a bit like in the elevator pitch, and if you you're stuck in an elevator for three minutes, what would you say? And so really thinking through what your mantra is or what your slogan is and practicing it, and then using it in those moments. And if we do that, then I think we have the opportunity to continue to really push the agenda of early childhood in terms of that. And Sue's got a hand up.
- Yes, she has, I saw that. Off you go, Sue.
- I just wanted to pick up because I just thought too that I wanted to make the point, 'cause you said you asked the question about whether or not it was about your new things or whether it was revisiting particular things. And I just was thinking about reflecting what Fay said, and also thinking about that shift with the earlier learning framework, which we are intimately encompassed by the moment. And I think one of the things that's really interesting, and that came out in a study that we undertook a few years ago, so pre COVID, but still very recent. And we were talking with educators and asking them, we we're wanting a ground up perspective on what educated in long daycare saw as their professional practice. How did they define professional practice? And what they began with with things like curriculum and teaching. But then they went on to things like professional qualities and dispositions, and that was all around honesty and integrity and respect and those fine qualities that professionals have. They then talked about the relational context of their work. And that was relational context in terms of working with colleagues and also working in genuine partnership with families. And then they talked about the absolute critical role that they played in caring for children. And I think over the years, over recent years, in particular, there's been concerned about the silencing of some of those other components of professionalism, the collegial relations, the relationships that we have with colleagues and with family, and the aspect of peer, which there was a bit of a shift away from that because we didn't seem to be getting much traction in terms of our professional identity and recognition of the professional work when women talked about care. And I think that there's the reclaiming of that. And I think that that's really important that that is part of our professional practice. And I think that we need to loudly reclaim that.
- And I guess this is one of the reasons we have webinars like this is to alert our community of practice, our educator colleagues, to some of this dynamic research that is taking place that is reclaiming some of that. So those watershed moments, those very important parts of our professional identity, those things that have occurred, and indeed to pick up your point, Fay the language we use. And, here in Victoria, we have the Victorian early use learning and development framework, a document that we can readily access, just like the national documents, so that they inform us and they give us the words we can use to confidently describe what we do. But it's great to hear, Sue how much care is coming back to a professional discourse, a professional dialogue, because I'm sure that there are many people online here who closely associate their work every day with the care of young children. And it becomes some of that purposeful sort of articulation of why they here. So I do want to go into this sort of purpose conversation and on one part, it seems to me incredibly obvious, I mean, of course way here for children. Isn't that obvious that, is purpose just really easy to find, or is there more to it? And then I want to take us into who's responsible for it. So maybe in the first instance, is purpose just a simple thing? Maybe Fay you can take us into that space.
- It is and it isn't.
- That's a good academic gestalt.
- I want to pick up on that care aspect too, in times of the purpose, because one of the things I think we forget, which is the care of our colleagues and the care of each other. So we're not only caring for children and families, we're actually, we're a collective. So when we work closely with each other in an early childhood setting, we know everything about those staff, the educators, we know when they're having a bad time or they're losing a parent or, we know all of those intimate details. And I think sometimes we forget that part of the purpose, Catharine Jones, who's one of my amazing PhD students who will be called Dr. Jones very soon in the new year. She has just admitted her PhD thesis, and she's looked at what it takes for educators to thrive in the workplace. So she's applied an educator well-being focused, but she's looked at the psychological aspects as well as the human aspects. And that's something that came through really strongly in her PhD is the relational aspects between the educators. And then on top of that is when the leadership team recognises that relational aspect and supports those educators. So for example, allows them to be able to go and attend their child's assembly, find some way of making the roster work so that they can share those moments with their own children if they've got children. Because what we do know is often educators say, well, I'm focusing on the children in my setting, and I don't get to actually focus on, if I've got children, myself, and I know not everybody does, but if I do, I don't get to actually make sure that I get to enjoy their moments and their special events. So I think the relational aspect is really key. Or if I know they're having a really bad day because something awful has happened that I don't make them just put on the big happy face and get out because we know that's not good for our overall wellbeing. So I do think that that's a part of the purpose is the colleagues we work with because it is such a relational profession.
- And also being proud of that two phase. Say that thing that sometimes we've thought, oh, maybe that's not as flash, not as great, not as sort of academic, not as important, that thing called care, that we apply in an educative way to children and the people we work with. And indeed sometimes in our whole community, some of you are located in places where the work in your service extends into whole communities. We sort of want to be proud of that and sort of state it from the rooms really to make sure everybody knows about it, because that excites me, that's an interesting thing, and it makes me want to know more. Sue, do you want to sort of elaborate on that, this care thing, do we claim it as something that's just belongs to us really proudly?
- Well, I think we need to define it according to laws. And I think that, again, this is going to, there'll be a shade understanding, but then there will be, quite contextualized local understandings and ways of caring and enacting care. I think we need to reflect on what we mean by care. We don't want to make this simple. What we do is not the same as the care that a parent provides with their child at home. And that's been the misunderstanding, or the idea that, the notion of caring is something that you don't need to be qualified for. And that women in particular, do this all of the time, and don't need to be yeah, sort of recognised or rewarded significantly for it. So I think what we need to do, is firstly argue against that. But from our professional perspective, we need to start to think about what we mean by care, and thinking about it from a holistic and integrated approach, and thinking about the relationship between the relationships that we set up with children and families, the care that we provide and children's health development and learning. So it's that complexity that we're navigating. And we know that our education and training, our work with colleagues, our ongoing learning and development, they're all critical to us doing that well. And doing that well means positive outcomes for children and families, but also for the nation.
- And Sue can I just keep you there for a second. So are you suggesting to us that some of the research and the practice evidence that's emerging says it's not just a individual pursuit, there are many other people who have a finger in this pies? Can you elaborate on that for a bit.
- In the caring pie or the perfect pie.
- I guess the professionalism pie, is it just an individual person's task or is there other players?
- No, no, I'm going to probably go towards my idol Urie Bronfenbrenner, and say that we're actually talking about our complete ecosystem to coin current policy dialogue, it's a shared responsibility, we all have a stake in this. Now that means individuals do too. Sometimes I think when we talk about shared responsibility, we're very quick to say, well, they should be doing this and government should be doing that, and training institutions should be doing this. But I think, yeah, we need to think of, starting with ourselves, what is it that we can be proactive and do? We have agency, we want to exercise that agency. So what are the things that we can do to enable our professionalism? I think it's also good for us to be clear about what we need from our employers and our colleague, in our services to enable us to enact professionalism. And of course, that radiates out because we want, things from our larger early childhood organizations, from our advocacy organizations and peaks right through to how we want to inform policy from the ground up to make sure that we have got the support that we need to enact professionalism. So it's very much of a product of a whole lot of influences starting with ourselves.
- And Fay, do you want to add to that?
- I think it terms of the purpose and how to stay engaged and sustained and feel like you're thriving. It's also about picking the places that you do want to go to, and picking the places that are not helping you. So, for example, some social media sites are not very helpful, okay. They're very negative. I read a post just recently and it was so disrespectful of families. It wasn't even an Australian article. It was a US article. And we know that the US system is very different to the Australian system. But it was posted by an educator. And then everybody started to comment about how horrible parents are, and yes, totally agree with number one and number five and number 10. And I was just like, this is not the dialogue that we should be having, and it's not helpful because it doesn't actually endear us to be a profession. And I'm sure what we don't realise is that on social media sites, that there will be parents reading our posts, parents who are also educators reading these posts. So I think you've got to think about where are you going to thrive and be sustained? And what's going to help you fill up your cup? 'Cause we all get empty, like that's just a part of life. And especially during COVID, we really probably are very quite empty. It's where do I go that's going to help me fill that cup and get that sense of purpose and sense of direction, and what's not helpful. And okay, they're not helpful places or those colleagues or those people aren't really engaging in the professional language the way that I would like, if they work in your setting, I think it should be called out. I think more behavior should be called out, any kind of bullying or all of those sorts of things, they need to be called out. And it's certainly something that I've done all the way through my career. If I feel like when I'm working with people and I don't think they're being professional, I don't do it in a way that embarrasses them in front of people. But it certainly would make sure that I made it known. Just like in an antivirus or even fall out biases with young children.
- Yeah, and of course Fay it's an expectation of the national quality standard. It's an expectation of the early childhood Australia code of ethics. It's something that many people who will be joining us online are familiar with 'cause it's their places, make them feel very purposeful, they add that, but I'm sure lots of us have had some of those experiences. But it goes back to Sue's point about being agentic in that and feeling like you can actually make some decisions in order to sustain yourself into the future. I'm conscious of time. And can I encourage everybody online, if you want to post a question, we've got people there who are sharing thoughts and putting in resources, et cetera. So let us know if there's any particular questions that you have coming through on the chat. But Fay can you take us to some of the work that I know you've been doing, some research work you've been doing around the role of mentors? You talk about the right people, actually leaning on your people. And would it be true to say that early childhood education and care has got a stronger sense of the relationship between more experienced educators and maybe beginning educators and how we use that mentoring coaching type of space to support our longevity?
- Yeah, I think we have to remember that mentoring and coaching are two different things. So coaching is about when I'm not sure about a skill and I need some direct instruction, and they give me that instruction, and I try it out and I get feedback. So that's a very different thing to mentoring. Whereas mentoring is a relationship where both the mentor and the mentee should be gaining from that relationship in that, 'cause if I'm the mentor, I should be learning from the mentee and vice versa. A mentor shouldn't be trying to create a mini me. That's not a real relationship. It's not one based on trust and reciprocity. And a mentor shouldn't be giving you all the answers. So if you're going to go, okay, this is my problem, give me the answer. That's not an appropriate, well, that's not an effective way of connecting with mentors. But the research is really clear on this, especially for new people in the sector, that mentoring makes a difference. So we've got some strong literature and research in the school sector. So Rosie Laporte, she's been doing that for quite a long time now in the education school sector about the importance of induction for new teachers. And in the early childhood sector, it's a bubbling away, it's a fairly new research space, but people in Finland are researching in that, and some of us in Australia have been working in that. So, but it is about finding different mentors. So they don't always have to be an early childhood teacher either. So yes, a mentor and experienced ECT would be a great person or experienced educator, that's worked, you know, a director that's worked in the service centres or in 2030 years, that would be an excellent mentor. But you can have mentors outside of the early childhood profession. They can also help you with your longevity and your career decisions and you're thinking through. But what a good mentor does is help you think about your goals, helps you think about
- Your purpose.
- the short-term goals, my purpose, what are my midterm goals? And what's more my long-term, where do I see myself in five years, 10 years. And that's what a really strong mentor helps you. And that's why it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody that works in the sector in terms of that role of your longevity of your career.
- And I think, again, reminding us that we can look broadly gives us opportunities to be purposeful in our space with people who are maybe work in a similar space. Look at all of our colleagues who work in maternal and child health, our colleagues who work in community development, in a family support, et cetera. There's lots of connections there. Fay in your research and what you understand about the mentoring space. If you're online now and you're thinking, oh I'm feeling a little bit like I'm a bit jaded and not sure, and I've been working for 25 years, can I still benefit from mentoring?
- Absolutely, I have mentors.
- Okay.
- I still have mentors, yes. I think it's an absolutely critical part of the longevity of your career is that you are able to, when you get in those sticky moments, and even though you're very experienced, there's always sticky moments, there's always things that trouble us, and we're trying to work out how to make that work or how to do it better. That's your mentor that they help you really. And they're not going to help you give you the answer, but they're your sounding board, they listen to you and they might point you in a direction, oh you might want to read that, or look at that resource, or think about this. And they do, they help, they've certainly helped me over my career.
- And might be, Sue can you help us with something else that I wonder about, is the relationship between longevity and professionalism and learning. Like my self as a learner, do I need to think of myself as a learner in order to sort of boost my purpose? Is there a place for continued connection to learning, in whatever form it is in order to sustain my sense of purpose?
- Oh, I think that that's a an absolute must for any member of the workforce. In actual fact, in modern work context. But I think anyone who is part of the education profession, which we are, needs to be, a professed lifelong learner. You need to be open to that. And yeah, learning happens in lots of different ways. I'm not suggesting that there's only a route to further qualifications. We're thinking about learning in a very broad sense here. But I think that that's a critical part of this. And I think, when I'm reflecting on my career, that I'm, Fay talking that was about her longevity well certainly, I feel, I've had longevity. I was an early childhood teacher and I'm still consider myself to be an early childhood teacher. I have worked in a range of different education settings. And positive though, I can't say that my career was particularly planned, and some of it was actually responsive to the fact that for the first 15 years of my marriage, my husband was in the army. And so we just moved around willy-nilly, and I had to be very flexible and find new employment. So some of it was quite happenstance. But the one thing that really I think held me in good stead for that was that I am a lifelong learner and I did want to progress in my learning and my qualifications. And as I did that, as I undertook further study, or I engaged in particular professional development, I continued to open up new opportunities for myself. And certainly that provided me with opportunities that I might not have had if I hadn't continued that journey. So, yeah, I think that's very important.
- And I'd just like to personally remind everybody that there's so many opportunities out there for teaching in early childhood education, and work in early childhood education as educators in various settings. There may be country locations that you could learn so much about a particular community that perhaps you never haven't quite thought of. But we do know that there are multiple opportunities out there to go and work in early childhood education and care settings that are maybe off the beaten track. And that are really looking out for early childhood educators to be part of them. And it may just be the thing you need to reignite your purpose. And the suite, of different things that you've identified, I think really helpful here. I just want to quickly, and there's two things that I want to really focus on just before we finish. One is to say, if you lose your purpose and you're going through some tough times, is there some magical cure for that? Or do you have to just look through, look for a long-term outcome, have you got any sort of salient bots there for, if you feel like it gets a bit tough, and how do you find your purpose and your connection to your proficient again? Fay or Sue?
- I think I'm going to probably reiterate what Fay was suggesting before about finding your people. Sometimes it's good to find new your people as well, just to give you fresh perspectives. I think definitely, coming together and I know that's really hard at the moment, but let's all look forward to beyond COVID, and actually think about coming together, preferably together in a physical sense at conferences, being part of early childhood organizations, such as ECA, where you can actually feel a part of something greater than just yourself in your own context. And I think they're the sorts of things that energize me. And particularly when I can perhaps talk with people who come from a completely different background. So the more that I'm engaging now with people from different disciplines, but working in the early years, so engaging with people in health or in family support, child protection, just thinking about all of the synergies and how that can enrich my thinking. Not that I want to suddenly be doing what they're doing, or trying to suddenly become expert in that area, but just using their insights to help me rethink about my purpose and what I can achieve.
- Yeah and I'm sure there's lots of people online now who are going, yeah, that's why I hang out with the maternal and child health nurse, 'cause she just really energizes me. Oh, that's why that child protection worker and I get on really well, because we really feel like we're being purposeful in a particular community. Fay want about you, when people feel like the going gets a bit tough, what should they do?
- So again, it is find your tribe, and Catharine Jones, one of her articles, that's what's actually called finding your tribe. So definitely, and that doesn't mean you have to leave the workplace that you're at, but it's finding those people that help you do what you do. I also think it's really important that we recognise that that's just a normal part of being a professional. That we have ebb and flow that we sometimes we feel like we're absolutely smashing it through the park, other times you think, I don't know what I'm doing, everything I touch seems to just be falling apart. Or maybe there's three different things that have happened this week, and it just brought me down. So I think it's being really honest with ourselves and recognising that we're not perfect and that we're not always going to fill full cup, but it's just not the way humans work. So being kind to ourselves when that happens, and giving ourselves the opportunity to step back and reflect, be it that we need to take some holidays, and maybe we haven't had any leave for a while, and we're feeling a bit burnt out because we actually haven't filled our own cup, we've just been filling everybody else's cup. And it's that same analogy that we use with the planes. You don't put the oxygen mask on the child, you put the oxygen mask on yourself first, otherwise you can't help the child sitting next to you. It's the same thing. We need to make sure that we get the oxygen. So find your tribe, make sure you have those regular holidays breaks, hobbies that help you think outside of work, 'cause we just cannot be early childhood teachers, 24/7. We need to have those down times, reconnect with our family. And as Sue said, connect with people that you are not sure about things. Like for me, you know, 10, 15 years ago, if you talked to me about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective and acknowledgement to country and understanding reconciliation, I had no knowledge. But I recognised that I had no knowledge and I then went out and sought people and tried to learn more and to think about what is it that I can do that helps feel reconciliation in this country. So I think recognising when you don't know something and go and find some people that are going to help you learn or grow in that space as well.
- I think you're both reminding us of the generosity of the field as well. Our profession is incredibly generous. My experience over the many years has been, if you do reach out, many people do respond. So we know that people like yourselves, if there are people who are interested in some of your research, reaching out to some of the people who work in our sector and saying, I'm interested in pursuing that, I'm interested in knowing more. We actually are very generous. We do like to support each other in that way. So if you haven't quite done that yet, and you're thinking, should I reach out, now is the time to do it. It's a great way to re-energize yourself. And I love that idea too Fay of actually, just remembering that not every day is going to be a winner day. Some days you're going to feel like maybe that's not quite how I wanted that to happen, but if we are indeed learners, we can really maximize the opportunities that they create. Just before we go, one idea that you think is sort of really important tip from your perspective, you could reiterate what you've already said, if you like something that you think that's definitely what I would do. 'Cause I'm sure there's lots of people online who, either themselves feel at times, they're not quite hitting that sense of purpose, but also they might be working with others who they might want to share an idea with. So Sue a tip or an idea, a bit of advice for us to reiterate.
- Well, I think it's almost going to be a no brainer, so I apologize. But I get this, it's positive and supportive work cultures and environment that enable purpose. And if we don't enable purpose, the research is very clear people leave. So if we're actually looking at longevity in our profession, then we all have a stake in creating and maintaining positive work cultures and relationships. And I think that that's something for teams to come together on. Fay pointed out the absolute importance of leaders who are able to facilitate the thinking and the action around that. But it is a shared responsibility and leaders can't do this on their own. It's about the team working together, having opportunities to talk about what they need, and then all working together to enact that.
- Yes indeed, thanks very much for that. And Fay your point or your tip?
- Don't look for a quick fix. 'Cause I think this is important work and it requires us to really think deeply, and it hurts, you know, learning hurts. So when we're learning new things and we're outside of our comfort zone and it hurts our brains, it hurts who we are. So don't think that you're just going to get an easy fix by reading, listening to one blog or even just listening to this session. It's multiple things that help you find your purpose and think through the challenges that you are. And then I just remind everybody that what we do as a profession, it is about relationships. Everything that we do is about our relationships. So if you find it for example, tough to have those hard conversations or you shy away from that, then really rethink what can you do to help you develop those interpersonal relationships, and have the confidence to develop those conversations that are need to be based on trust and respect and really being thoughtful about the way that we communicate when things are not working as well as they could be. And just realizing that that also requires, as Sue said, organizational and resourcing support. Like it's not something that we can do by ourselves, but it's not that the leaders can do it either, that it is a collective and that we are a microcosm. Like in an early childhood setting, we are a little microcosm and it's messy and it's not neat and it doesn't work perfectly, and we need to recognise that, but also work with their colleagues and find their strengths. So focus on what their strengths are, what do they do well, what can I harness here? It's a bit like when we think about children, when we're working with children and we haven't quite worked for now, we think, well, what have I done, what am I not doing well here that I haven't worked this little being out. Well, I think it's the same in our relationships with our colleagues. It's like, okay, what can I do differently? How can I come into this relationship in a different way, and try something slightly different to see if I can re realign the way we work? 'Cause if you can't work well with your colleagues in your early childhood setting, it's very hard to maintain your purpose and maintain your longevity.
- Well, both of you have really shared some fantastic ideas with us today. And we really get a strong impression here from hearing from you that this is a subject meadow of our researchers in Australia and globally. And that fills me with hope because the more you think about these things and the more you share your findings and engage with the sector to understand what it means to be a contemporary professional, what it means to have longevity in our sector, the more we can collectively learn from that and implement those ideas as well as of course, share our ground up, Sue, that great phrase, our experience to inform some of the thinking that goes on. And it's great to hear that there are some terrific researchers sharing their very fresh PhDs with us. So there's lots of things on the horizon as well. I hope that for all of you, what today has been, is an opportunity for you to remind yourself about some of the things that work. It is also to add to your repertoire, what else can I do to support my own sense of purpose and professionalism, but also what can we do to engage a conversation more broadly with people that we work with directly, but also with the community of early childhood education and care. So lots of different opportunities there. When we come back on the 26th next week to continue our conversation, we will hear from two practitioners who will take us to a very practice oriented space, that gives us an insight into their own careers, their own longevity, their own insights into their own purpose. And again, we'd love to hear your thoughts and reflections about some of those ideas. Thank you very much, everybody for joining us today. And we look forward to seeing you next time.
Updated