EE1290 Positive Behaviour Guidance This course provides a foundation for understanding and guiding children's behaviour. Students will learn the principles of guidance and strategies needed to guide behaviour in positive ways. The focus will be on understanding behaviour and implementing techniques that foster positive relationships and self-esteem, and create opportunities for learning. Major Topics: Introduction to child guidance Influence of adult variables Developmentally appropriate practice for guidance Characteristics of children Self-development Communication as the basis for positive guidance Observation Indirect guidance of behaviour Direct guidance of behaviour

幼兒教育（Early Childhood Education）

Market theory positions the consumer as a rational choice actor, making informed schooling choices on the basis of ‘hard’ evidence of relative school effectiveness. Yet there are concerns that parents simply choose schools based on socio-demographic characteristics, thus leading to greater social segregation and undercutting the potential of choice to drive quality improvements. In this paper, we explore segregation by examining catchment areas for a range of public high schools in a specific middle-class urban area. We focus on socio-demographic characteristics, including levels of income, country of birth and religion affiliation, in order to explore residential segregation according to public high school catchment areas. Our data suggest distinct residential segregation between catchment areas for each public school within our data-set, particularly for the schools deemed to be popular and rejected, that may pose risks for broader equity concerns. We argue that, in contrast to market theory, ev...

Shopping for schools or shopping for peers: public schools and catchment area segregation

Narratives from the nursery: negotiating professional identities in early childhood

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Independent review into regional, rural and remote education: final report

Learning gaps between Australian students of different backgrounds are alarmingly wide and grow wider as students move through school. Summary The gap between students whose parents have low education and those with highly educated parents grows from 10 months in Year 3 to around two-and-a-half years by Year 9. Even if they were doing as well in Year 3, disadvantaged students make one to two years less progress by Year 9 than students whose parents have more education. Importantly, the learning gaps grow much larger after Year 3. Disadvantaged students are falling further behind each year they are at school. Bright kids in disadvantaged schools show the biggest losses, making two-and-a-half years less progress than students with similar capabilities in more advantaged schools. This report introduces a time-based measure, ‘years of progress’, which makes it easier to compare groups of students. Rather than saying that a group of Year 5 students scored 540 in NAPLAN, we can say they achieved two years ahead of their peers. The new measure captures in plain language the rates at which students are progressing at different stages of their learning. The way we measure learning is vitally important. Without meaningful comparisons, we can’t see how far behind some students really are. In a typical Year 9 class, the top students can be more than seven years ahead of the bottom students, but NAPLAN’s minimum standards are set way too low to identify the stragglers. A Year 9 student meets the minimum standard even if they are reading below the level of a typical Year 5 student. Policymakers need to do three things: put learning gaps at the heart of school policy; give schools better support to target teaching at each child’s needs; and work harder to improve the progress of disadvantaged students so that every child in every Australian school can achieve their potential.

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Widening gaps: what NAPLAN tells us about student progress

Executive summary An enduring view of Australia is of a fair and egalitarian place in which opportunities exist for all to get ahead and succeed in building secure futures. Education is viewed as one of the main vehicles through which this happens. But to what extent is this true of modern Australia? To what extent are the benefits of success available to all? Educational opportunity in Australia 2015: Who succeeds and who misses out is one of the most comprehensive data studies undertaken into Australia’s education and training system. Prepared by the Centre for International Research on Education Systems (CIRES) for the Mitchell Institute, this study draws together information on the opportunities being provided to young Australians as they negotiate the various stages of education and training and attempt to establish themselves in the workforce during their transition to adulthood. The findings are presented as an index of educational opportunity which measures how many students are on track and missing out at important developmental milestones, as well as who catches up and slips behind.   Four milestones are used, constructed as an index of opportunity. For the early years the milestone is the proportion of children who are developmentally ready at the point of entry to school, as measured across five domains: physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, and communication skills. For the middle years it is the proportion of Year 7 students who meet or exceed international proficiency standards in academic skills. For the senior school years it is the proportion of young people who have completed school and attained a Year 12 certificate or equivalent. For early adulthood it is the percentage of 24-year-olds who are fully engaged in education, training or work. At each milestone most young people are succeeding but some are missing out – insufficiently prepared to take on the challenges of the following stages of their lives. For those missing out at any one milestone, some make up ground and move back on track, while others succeeding at some points fall behind at others, for various reasons. The results show the proportions succeeding and missing out at each stage (our best estimates, based on available data). They show about six in 10 or more of all children starting school get through early and middle childhood with the kinds of academic and social skills needed for later success. The same proportions complete school and are fully engaged in education or work by their mid-20s. For this large group of young Australians, school works well and they succeed across all stages. They make the most of the opportunities our education and training system provides. Some children begin school not developmentally ready and remain behind across all stages. Our estimate is that this affects up to 10 per cent of the population. Between entry to school and Year 7 one in 10 remain behind. Roughly this number are behind at the beginning of secondary school and do not complete Year 12 or equivalent, and the same proportion remains marginalised at age 24, not able to secure full-time work or be in study or training. This proportion misses out across all stages and is not gaining the preparation needed to take up later opportunities in life. Helping young people who are falling behind to catch up and take advantage of opportunities over later stages is no easy task, because they are disproportionately likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds. Success at each stage varies by indigenous status, language background, region and gender, and markedly by the socio-economic status (SES) of students. But what we learn from the patterns is that young people who are missing out can recover and gain ground. Being behind at any point need not be a life sentence, even for the disadvantaged, though even here the chances of recovery and of gaining ground are still in favour of students from more advantaged backgrounds. The most advantaged learners are not only less likely to fall below expected standards in the first place but more likely to catch up again if they do. Learning about what predicts success and failure requires information about experiences during each of the main stages of education and training. To do this, we use a number of indicators that reflect the experiences of young Australians leading up to each milestone. They include information on student engagement, academic achievement, attendance, participation, and progress. This important information on the quality of educational experiences helps build an understanding of the factors associated with success and failure.

Educational opportunity in Australia 2015: Who succeeds and who misses out

The National Quality Standard (NQS) Assessment and Rating Instrument is an important tool for supporting reliability and validity in the assessment and rating process for Australian early childhood education and care services. The Instrument provides a guide for authorised officers and practitioners, by describing each element of the NQS at each of the three most frequently applied quality levels: Working Towards NQS, Meeting NQS and Exceeding NQS. This minor research project involved detailed content analysis of the Instrument, to identify the constructs used to differentiate between the three quality levels and the frequency with which each construct occurred. The analysis found that intentionality, frequency, extent and inclusivity are the four constructs most commonly used for differentiating between NQS quality levels.

Constructs of quality in early childhood education and care : A close examination of the NQS assessment and rating instrument

In 2012, a new assessment and rating process for Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) services was introduced, using a new National Quality Standard (NQS). The NQS assessment and rating process has similarities to observational assessment systems used in educational research, and involves similar strategies for upholding “rigour”, as defined by a positivist research paradigm. Drawing on the author’s own experience supporting authorised officers to conduct NQS assessments, the paper argues that the NQS assessment and rating process also contains certain similarities to educational research conducted using a constructivist paradigm. Understandings of rigour from constructivist research—including rapport with participants, reflective practice and comfort with ambiguity—can therefore offer valuable insights into how NQS assessments can best be implemented. Although government actors maintain a preference for positivist paradigms, greater attention to constructivist paradigms may help to align the NQS assessment process with the ways of knowing valued in contemporary ECEC practice, and improve its ability to accommodate the complexity and diversity of ECEC quality.

Embracing multiple ways of knowing in regulatory assessments of quality in Australian early childhood education and care

This paper presents a theoretical discussion of recent policy efforts to raise the qualification levels of the Australian early childhood workforce. Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical tools enable the e...

Jennifer Jackson

Papers

Educational opportunity in Australia 2015: Who succeeds and who misses out

Constructs of quality in early childhood education and care : A close examination of the NQS assessment and rating instrument

Embracing multiple ways of knowing in regulatory assessments of quality in Australian early childhood education and care

Beyond the piece of paper: a Bourdieuian perspective on raising qualifications in the Australian early childhood workforce*

Educational opportunity in Australia 2020: Who succeeds and who misses out