The Victorian Government is undertaking an exciting decade of development for its early childhood education and care sector with the continued implementation of the Best Start, Best Life reforms. This will create a system for children in Victoria to experience high-quality early childhood education for two years before they begin school. This change in policy and practice will have wide-ranging benefits for children and their families.
The work of leaders is critical to successful implementation of these reforms. There is considerable work ahead for you in supporting the development of practices that will be necessary for the roll-out of Pre-Prep, while at the same time maintaining the gains already achieved through the implementation of Three-Year-Old Kindergarten.
Today, I will share with you three key principles for designing and sustaining change in the way early childhood services are organised. The aim is to ensure you are better equipped to foster and support the development of service delivery.
If you keep these change principles in mind, they can guide and support you in your work as leaders to sustain your teams throughout the change process.
The first principle is to have an outcomes focus. Change processes are often tripped up by a focus on inputs. Instead, successful change processes focus on the outcomes motivating the change and the tasks that will be required to achieve these outcomes. So, rather than asking “How will we do this?”, which is an input question, try asking “What do we want to achieve?”, and let ideas for implementation be guided by your answer.
Over decades of research with early childhood professionals, I’ve never experienced any lack of clarity about what colleagues in the field want to achieve: they are consistently focused on enriching the lives of children and families through education and care. So, as suggestions arise about how to implement change in services, rather than asking “Will this work?”, I suggest asking questions such as, “If we do this, will it enhance children’s learning and development?” or “If we make this change, will it increase children’s access to our programs?”.
To help you answer these questions, consider the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework. The five Learning and Development Outcomes contained within the Framework state that all children will have a strong sense of identity, be connected with and contribute to their world, have a strong sense of wellbeing, be confident and involved learners, and be effective communicators.
The second principle I want to share with you is that of collective creativity. By this I mean that many of the answers to questions about how to make a particular change will already be available amongst colleagues who know their local services and community best. They will have ideas about what will work, options about ways to plan, and expertise for engaging with children and their families. They might not be aware that they hold these answers and may turn to you for solutions. But your job as leaders isn’t to provide ready-made answers to questions that arise. Instead, your aim should be to unlock the knowledge and creativity your colleagues already hold about what will work for their centre and community.
The third change principle is the importance of maintaining a narrative of change.
To make sense of our lives, humans tell stories about the past and the present and project these stories into the future. In workplaces, these stories include shared narratives of change. A narrative of change helps everyone remember where they started, reflect on how far they’ve already come, be clear about what the next step in the change process will involve, retain a sense of control over the speed and direction of change, and maintain a sense of the ultimate destination for the change process.
Change can feel overwhelming at times, and there’s always a risk of losing sight of how much progress has already been made. There’s also the risk of losing sight of the vision for children and families that motivated the change in the first place. So, leaders have a special responsibility to keep alive narratives that help everyone make sense of change.
In the workshop that follows this video, you will have an opportunity to explore this way of thinking about change. Please don’t use it as a rigid recipe for designing practice changes, but as a tool for exploring what might be possible in specific centre and community contexts. Tracking your narrative of change can also help you document your past and present decisions, and how these decisions were made. Doing this will help your change process to be consistent with the eight interrelated Practice Principles of the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework. Some of the Practice Principles to consider include reflective practice, partnerships with families, respectful relationships, and partnerships with professionals.
Before you move into the workshop time, I want to conclude by saying a few words about resistance to change. Resistance is a natural feature of change processes, so don’t be concerned when it arises. Resistance points to the need to regularly pause and reflect, revisit the desired outcomes of the change process, and maintain the narrative of change that helps everyone make sense of new ways of working.
Resistance can also arise because some aspects of a change in centre practice haven’t been fully thought through. In this case, revisiting the principles can help you identify where more work is needed to clarify the outcomes guiding your work, revisit how you need to organise yourselves differently, or explore whether you have the right materials and resources to support the change. Whatever the reason for the resistance, remember to always keep your focus on the outcomes you desire, not on the person providing the resistance.
As you move into the workshop, start to think about previous examples of successful change that you have experienced. How did the change process reflect the three principles I’ve suggested. First, were you able to keep everyone focused on outcomes rather than inputs? Second, how did you tap into the collective creativity of everyone involved? And third, were you able to maintain a narrative of change to help everyone understand the process?
I hope the workshop activity will allow you to see how you can put these principles into action as you lead the Best Start, Best Life reforms in your centre or service.
I hope you enjoy your workshop.
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