This national study explored the role of digital technologies in early childhood education and care settings and whether they could contribute to quality improvement as reported by educators and assessors of quality in Australia. In this paper, data from Stage 2 of the Quality Improvement Research Project were used, which comprised 60 Quality Improvement Plans from educators linked with 60 Assessment and Rating reports from the assessors who visited early childhood centres as part of the administration of the National Quality Standards by each of Australia’s State and Territory jurisdictions. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ( Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Developmental ecology through space and time: A future perspective. In P. Moen, G. H. Elder, Jr., & K. Lüscher (Eds.), Examining lives in context: Perspectives on the ecology of human development (pp. 619–647). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10176-018; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, Psychological Review 101:568–586, 1994) was adopted to facilitate a systemic and dynamic view on the use of digital technologies in these 60 ECEC settings. References (e.g. comments/ suggestions/ examples) made by the educators about the implementation of digital technologies were counted and thematically analysed. Results revealed the strong role new technologies (e.g. documentation and management platforms, tablets, apps, etc.) play in the majority of ECEC settings and especially in relation to three of the seven Quality Areas: Educational programme and practice (Quality Area 1); Collaborative partnerships with families and communities (Quality Area 6) and Governance and leadership (Quality Area 7). Future directions for research are suggested and implications for embracing a more holistic, integrated and broad view on the use of digital technologies are discussed.

Internationally, professionalization has become a key policy strategy targeting quality improvement in early childhood education and care (ECEC), utilizing top-down managerial strategies including implementation of quality standards and increased workforce qualifications. Set against this backdrop, this study explored educators’ accounts of their professional status and professionalism in their work. Data were collected from a representative sample of Australian educators (n = 98) participating in a national ECEC workforce study. Educator accounts were inductively and deductively coded, while statistical analysis examined association of codes with educator personal and professional characteristics. Educators overwhelmingly named their work as a profession, with three categories of explanation: purpose (educating children), qualification, and public opinions. However, analysis of educator accounts of their work practices, drawing on Moss’s (2006) understandings of the ECEC workforce, found that less than half of the educators presented their roles as other than technical or nurturing/laboring. Degree qualified teachers were more likely than less qualified educators to define professionalization in terms of purpose and professionalism in terms of autonomous decisions based on expert knowledge. Policy or practice: The study provides grassroots perspectives on professionalization and professionalism in ECEC and draws attention to three areas of misalignment between current policy and educators’ views and practices that require attention.

IN 2012, AUSTRALIA INTRODUCED a new National Quality Framework (NQF), comprising enhanced quality expectations for early childhood education and care services, two national learning frameworks and a new assessment and rating system spanning childcare centres, kindergartens and preschools, family day care and outside school hours care. This is the linchpin in a series of education reforms designed to support increased access to higher quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and successful transition to school. As with any policy change, success in real terms relies upon building shared understanding and the capacity of educators to apply new knowledge and to support change and improved practice within their service. With this in mind, a collaborative research project investigated the efficacy of a new approach to professional learning in ECEC: the professional conversation. This paper reports on the trial and evaluation of a series of professional conversations to support implementation of one element of the NQF, the Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009), and their capacity to promote collaborative reflective practice, shared understanding, and improved practice in ECEC. Set against the backdrop of the NQF, this paper details the professional conversation approach, key challenges and critical success factors, and the learning outcomes for conversation participants. Findings support the efficacy of this approach to professional learning in ECEC, and its capacity to support policy reform and practice change in ECEC.

Sleep and rest provision in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is commonly enacted as a routine – a standard time-period during which children are required to lie down even if they do not sleep. Yet contemporary ECEC policies emphasise responsive pedagogical practice that includes children in decision-making and respects each child’s developmental and sociocultural context as appropriate pedagogical practice. To understand current practices, analyses of numeric data and textual accounts from a survey of Australian ECEC service providers, leaders and educators (N = 247) was undertaken. Two broad challenges to enabling responsive practice and inclusion of children in decision-making were identified: (1) Provisions – organisational interpretations of national policy and attendant resourcing set the structural parameters for achievement of responsive pedagogical practice. (2) Practices – individual and communal demands on educators and their professional philosophy set interactional parameters. Service leadership played a pivotal role in determining whether sleep–rest practices were Routine (84%) or Responsive (16%). Responsive leaders were characterised by strong professional advocacy for child rights and child-focused pedagogy. They instigated professional reflection and communication strategies within their service and removed expectation that educators could undertake alternative activity while providing for children’s sleep and rest.

Unprecedented policy attention to early childhood education internationally has highlighted the crucial need for a skilled early years workforce. Consequently, professional development of early years educators has become a global policy imperative. At the same time, many maintain that professional development research has reached an impasse. In this paper, we offer a new approach to addressing this impasse. In contrast to calls for a redesign of comparative studies of professional development programmes, or for the refinement of researcher-constructed professional development evaluation frameworks, we argue the need to cultivate what we refer to as an ‘evaluative stance’ amongst all involved in making decisions about professional development in the early years – from senior bureaucrats with responsibilities for funding professional development programmes to individual educators with choices about which professional development opportunities to take up. Drawing on three bodies of literature – evaluation capacity-building, personal epistemology and co-production – that, for the most part, have been overlooked with respect to early years professional learning, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to explain why cultivating an evaluative stance in professional development decision-making has rich possibilities for systemic, sustainable and transformative change in early years education.