Understanding how teachers come to know and make sense of teaching is a challenging endeavor. Uncovering elusive strands of thinking through arts-informed approaches has the potential to transform personal understandings of teacher selves and professional practice across diverse early childhood contexts (Clandinin, Downey, & Huber, 2009).…

Little information is available about the employment trajectories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples pursuing university professional qualifications. This article describes a context in which cultural space, issues of identity, pragmatics of employment, family and community and a bureaucratic regulatory environment intersect to…

This paper reports on the first phase of a case study that investigated how early childhood teachers experience organisational change. As one of three levels of quality improvement, State government-funded curriculum initiatives were developed with an aim to promote change. Three curriculum documents, one each focusing on literacy, pedagogy and…

This paper challenges traditional perspectives of professional development through a reconceptualization of early childhood professional growth. A review of the early childhood professional development literature reveals the problematic nature of the linear perspectives and deficit models of staff development prevalent in the early childhood…

The "Research in Practice Series" is published four times each year by Early Childhood Australia. The series aims to provide practical, easy to read, up-to-date information and support to a growing national readership of early childhood workers. The books bring together the best information available on wide-ranging topics and are an…