Important Preface:

Before showing you how to link your observations to planned learning experiences in LIFT, we first need to explain how LIFT sorts and records learning experiences into 'cycles'. In LIFT, we use the term 'cycles' as the majority of teachers plan cyclically:  daily, weekly or monthly.   However,  it is important to note that we also understand that flexibility is paramount, therefore in LIFT you do not need to stick to any particular programming cycle and can vary the start and finish date of any 'cycle' to suit your individual teaching needs and curriculum. If you do not plan cyclically, it is probably more helpful for you to think of a cycle in LIFT as a grouping date against which you will record a number of experiences.  It is probably also helpful to note at this point that LIFT also allows further flexibility for you to only run certain experiences on certain days within a planning cycle.  These can be recorded against the day provided and/or in the instructions and notes of the experience. 

Too often teachers confuse the requirement of providing a 'responsive curriculum' with 'emergent on the day' planning.  There is nothing wrong with 'planning in the now' provided it is implemented well, however equally there is nothing wrong (or less responsive)  with planning follow up experiences next week or even next month.  We believe that teachers should focus more strongly on being timely.  That is,  teachers need to respond to children's learning cues/needs and follow them up in such a way that is: 

- still effective (the original objective is still valid and the follow up learning is still meaningful); and

- is practical and allows teachers sufficient time to plan and prepare resources and activities that support that learning.

More often that not a timely 'follow up' will be to 'follow up' the learning immediately or in the next program.  However, there are times when a timely response might be linking a current observation to a future cycle weeks if not months in advance.  Here are some great examples of reasons why a teacher may wish to program weeks or even months in advance:

- it's winter (football season) and a father tells you that his son loves watching the one day cricket matches with him.  A great immediate response to this might be to put cricket on the current program but what about linking this up to the cycle in summer that corresponds with the first one day cricket match.  How amazing would it be to prompt sharing of this activity at this time. 

- it's currently March and a child who recently immigrated from India has just joined your centre.  You discuss with the child's family cultural issues.  The child's mother tells you that the child loves to make friendship bracelets from the 'Friendship Festival' celebrated in India in August each year.  Yes you could put friendship bracelets on the next program but creating a whole follow up experience in August would also be very special to both the child and their family.  

While LIFT supports 'forward planning', there will be many times where you will observe and respond to children's learning with experiences on the spot.  In such circumstances you will be entering your planned experiences after you have already ran them.  While this always is challenging for teachers to keep their documentation as current as is practicable, this practice is not discouraged and we advise that teachers use complementary methods, such as brief hand written notes on their plans, to communicate modifications to their daily learning offerings.   Later you can use LIFT to describe in more detail reasons and reflections for changes and additions to your programs. 

LIFT allows educators to audit and review their work using a number of tools.  One tool is our observation auditing tool which counts the number of observations and how many were linked/followed up by a 'follow up' planned experience.  There are no hard and fast rules for how often this should be done, but as a general rule there should be evidence that it occurs regularly for all children.  An example of this might be to see at least half of the observations over the last 3 months have been followed up with planned experiences. 

Planning an experience following an observation

Step one: When entering your observation....

In the "Future Opportunities and Possibilities" make a quick note about an experience and if required and objective that you want to achieve.  Select the cycle you wish to follow up in.  You don't need to note this elsewhere to remind you to follow up this, these are automatically listed/ 'ready to use' when you open the cycle you have link to.

Sometimes we are prompted to provide a learning experience without individual learning objectives and hence in such circumstances a follow up to an individual observation is probably not required.  In this way, our general reflections provide sufficient opportunity to reflect on how an experience went.

Extending a program or creating a follow up experience from a previous learning experience

LIFT Quality portal helps early childhood services easily manage communication, collaboration and linking to the EYLF.  Users can upload their policies, procedures, completed forms etc. and share them with other educators at their service and with families. 

Simply upload your document, categorise it against the NQS. 

LIFT also allows you to upload electronic web links to online document management services like Dropbox and Google Drive. The advantage of using these services is that they give users the additional flexibility to control sharing and editing of the documents.  For example, you can give permission to anyone to download and view a document as well as given certain persons additional privileges to edit a document. 

Here's an example of how you can use Google Documents to manage sharing of a Policy in LIFT. 

If you don't already have one, you'll need to create a google account.  Click here to learn more. 

Once you have set up your account, open google drive and upload a document.  Select the arrow to upload an existing document or create to make a new one from scratch!

Once you have uploaded the document, you can edit the sharing restrictions you have on your document by clicking the share button on the top right hand side of your screen. 

You can then allow the document to anyone who can access the link (it will not be published in any shared forums).

Once you have done this, then all you need to do is add other persons you wish to have editing rights to your document. 

When you are done, copy your link into LIFT by pasting into the weblink box instead of uploading a document.

Being an educational leader in an early childhood service is a hugely challenging role, particularly in light of changes to curriculum that have occurred over the last two years with implementation of the new National Quality Standard and the Early Years Learning Framework. 

National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program describes the educational leader as someone who not only posses great knowledge of early childhood theory, practice and research, but also who is observant of individual children and team member needs, backgrounds, strengths and weakness and is able to deliver a collaborative and mentored approach to managing issues.

So at the coal face what does that mean to you as an early childhood leader?  Below we have outlined some key tasks LIFT can help you to develop yourself as an early childhood leader while also helping you collaborate and mentor. 

Always on a path of continuous improvement, you need to work with your team to set the vision for your service and breakdown that vision into simple target and goals. Typically your vision statement will be your philosophy statement and you will want to continuously review and revise this.  In LIFT upload your philosophy statement into your service set up page. Click Setup, Service & insert your philosophy statement.

Now take out the key aspects of vision/philosophy statement and break them down into goals.  You will use these to link to your observations & programs.  In LIFT click setup, Add goals (or Goals if you want to edit and existing goals).  Make sure you goals are simple and easily measurable against.  Later you can review your progress against certain goals by doing an audit/search of observations that link to that goal.

Audit & Review

Take stock of current practice?  What are you actually doing?  What are you achieving?  This requires the educational leader to step back and take careful observations of practice. We recommend you document these observations in the Quality area of LIFT.  They can later be used to reflect or create actions from. Goto Quality, Add document.  You can link your audit, review, observation ‘Document’ to a particular quality element which you can later search for when reflecting overall about a particular quality standard or element.
We have also created an ‘Auditing’ page in LIFT where educational leaders can take stock of key ‘overview’ aspects of planning including:

• Counts/Types of observation methods used;

• Counts of observations with a follow up experience (demonstrating responsiveness)
• Links to the EYLF (a broad look at what individuals, teams or even the whole service are focused on)
• Links to various EYLF outcomes;
• Participation of families (comments on observations).
• Reflections against programs, including the type and content of critical reflection;
• Reviews against different NQS practices or principles.

 
Reflecting

Take Action

References:
 
National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program - Newsletter 33: The educational leader  

A very popular observation technique: learning stories are illustrative narratives about children's learning which involves all the stakeholder who are involved and/or support children's learning, including children, educators & families. "Learning stories shows a child’s progress over time and tend to be a more engaging form of reporting. The stories also provide valuable information which can be used to establish strong links between home and the care environment, and provide parents with an insight into what happens when the child is in care" (Ryan, K. nd). 

Learning stories evolved from New Zealand's Te Whariki curriculum and over time have been simplified into three key questions:

One of the contemporary issues facing educators and families today is raising children to become culturally competent and sensitive from a young age.  When interacting with people whose culture and background are different from their own, children need to learn how to respect and accept these differences, else they risk growing up into adults who contribute to problems brought about by discrimination.  Only by teaching children cultural competence can we hope to have a society based on mutual respect and acceptance.

Turning Differences into Opportunities

As an early childhood educator, how would you respond to confronting statements such as these: “Maria can’t really speak English well, can she? Is she stupid?” or even: “Michael says Keisha’s skin is so dark because it’s very dirty”.

Children are naturally curious about the people around them. They attempt to formulate a sense of their own identity by defining what makes them different from everyone else. Thus, a child will typically ask questions about observable characteristics like skin color, accent, or manner of dress. “Children are around two or three when they begin to notice physical differences among people” (Kupetz, 2012). For the most part, these questions are innocent and not motivated by any intention to offend or hurt.  It is therefore, up to the parents and educators to use these opportunities to send a fair and accurate message about each culture, so that children learn that these differences only makes a person unique, not inferior.

Take the case of Inigo, a kindergartener who recently migrated to Adelaide with his family. On his first day in his new school, his classmates noticed that he spoke English with an accent, and that his hair and skin was darker than most of his classmates. His teacher, instead of ignoring these observations or forbidding the students to verbalize them, explained that his hair and skin were darker because his parents had dark hair and skin too. She also explained that he spoke English with an accent because he spoke Spanish and was still getting used to English. She pointed out that there are different sounds of accents which mostly depend on where you come from, such as American accents, British accents, and even Australian accents. The educator may also find opportunities to extend an appreciation for Spain, including facts about Spain and Spanish people.  A quick check on Google could also lead to some fun fact discussions like the fact that there are no tooth fairies in Spain - instead, there is a tooth mouse named Ratoncito Pérez!

Addressing such observations and questions about differences is a proactive way to foster cultural competence. The teacher can maximize the potential for learning by helping students see each cultural encounter as an enriching experience. “The process of intercultural interaction, of contact between people from different cultural backgrounds and a readiness to learn from one another, is the real foundation for equality” (Balcock 2010, p.33).

Role Model More Than Just Tolerance!  Teach Enrichment from Difference

Understanding the impact of the environment children are raised in, including the child’s own culture, family, social and educational settings, is vital for both parents and educators who will need to work collaboratively to actively prevent development of bias in young children. Foremost to this is for the key adults in a child’s life to be sensitive to the fact that young children are always observing their behaviours, both good and bad.  Children base their concept of right or wrong according to what adults around them are saying and doing; they take adult behavior as cues for social expectations and norms (Wilson, n.d). It is for this reason that educators need to find numerous opportunities to display desirable behaviours. In practice this means that educators need to find ways for children to become familiar with, understand and if possible even experience joy from difference.  Families NSW (2011) recommends simple examples ways to embrace diversity within an early childhood setting:

·         Make a point of acknowledging where all the children in the group come from by simply hanging a map and tagging locations with the child’s name and country of origin.

·         Showcase a country each week or month and take the opportunity to invite parents to share words or phrases from their language, songs, music, food, traditional dance and costumes.

·         Celebrate culturally diverse calendar events throughout the year.

·         Display and make accessible multicultural and multilingual resources.

Cultural Competence - It’s Not Enough to Just Raise Cultural Awareness

Child Australia (n.d) argues that it is not enough to have cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and cultural sensitivity.  Instead educators need to implement a multi-dimensional approach which includes not just strategies to enrich through difference but also strategies to actively manage bias when it occurs. Here are some strategies to counteract bias:

·         When confronted, openly discuss and acknowledge difference

When a child points out that a certain person is different, he or she is merely making an observation, and not a malicious statement. It is therefore up to the educator to come up with a response that includes three important elements. First, the response should acknowledge that the observation is indeed valid. Second, the response should also explain the reason behind the observation and finally, the response should foster awareness towards a more respectful and accepting attitude.  In the beginning of this article, one of the statements that we cited was:

“Maria can’t really speak English well, can she? Is she stupid?”

Incorporating the three key elements of acknowledge, explain and awareness, a good response to this statement would be:

“Yes, Maria can’t speak English as well as you but that is just because it is not the language which she uses at home. In fact, because she can speak Spanish really well and is also getting really good in English.  Learning another language is difficult and she is actually very clever learning to speak two languages. You see, there are a lot of languages in the world, and each country has its own language. Maria just happened to be from a country where their language was Spanish. Did you know that Spanish and English both originated from Latin so there are some words that are very similar?”

·         Using creative means that encourage children to reflect on their own behaviour.

If a student comes up to you and blurts out: “Michael says Keisha’s skin is so dark because it’s very dirty”, simply responding “No, that’s not true” is not going to make children truly understand the fallacy of such statement. Instead, you need to come up with an explanation which their young logic can process. For instance: “Your hair is dark brown instead of blonde like Sade’s. Does that mean that your hair is dirtier than hers?” This response will help them understand that the being dark is not an issue of hygiene, and help remove the stigma attached to being dark-colored.

·         Responsibly intervening when bias-related incidents occur at home or in the classroom.

An adult who chooses to do nothing when a bias-related incident such as teasing or name-calling occurs is effectively endorsing such behavior. When you learn that such behavior has been committed, take the time to deal with it in a calm, non-punitive manner. In a matter-of-fact tone, simply formulate a response incorporating the key elements of acknowledge, explain and awareness. Make it clear that discriminatory behavior is extremely undesirable and will not be tolerated.

·         Equip children with techniques that will enable them to respond appropriately when they experience or witness discriminatory behavior.

By exemplifying model behavior about cultural acceptance, you are helping children in your care understand how to deal with discriminatory behavior. While this is good, take note that children may be unable to verbalize or formulate appropriate responses without guidance. If needed, you can sit them down (individually or as a group) and teach them how to politely respond to biased and discriminatory statements.

·         Get strategic

Understanding cultural influence in our environment requires educators to actively seek and investigate not just the influences of the child’s family, but also the influences within the service, the community and from themselves (NCCC, 2001).  This could be done through a range of ways including:

-          Team meetings and brainstorming;

-          Surveys and questionnaires;

-          Self assessment and review of systems, policies, procedures  and practice;

-          Other questioning and self assessments like: Are the basic needs for inclusion of all persons using the service being met? Does the service need to provide more help, fact sheets, information or other forms of support?

-          Discussions with families and collections of family information and if possible cultural artifacts.

-          Collating observations of children

Educators can ask themselves how highly services value diversity. Where are their differences? Are these differences physical?  Do these differences confront any persons within the service’s values, principle or ideals? What can I actively do to preemptively eliminate or reduce bias?

Promoting inclusion and cultural competence can often be very challenging and take a long time to implement into practice.  Hence it is recommend that educators create simple strategic plans that map out short and long term strategies for change and improvement.  This way all stakeholders can ‘move together’ towards fostering a culturally competent learning environment.

Authors: Natalie Higgins and Chyrstal Ventura 

About Raise Learning

This article has been written by Raise Learning,  providers of LIFT (Learning Involving Families & Teachers - an online programming and documentation tool) and other early childhood management tools.  If you would like to know more about Raise Learning or LIFT please visit our home page.   

 Further information and links for diversity, inclusion and cultural competence?

For more resources on promoting diversity and equity during the early years, you can the websites listed below or get in touch with various organisations dedicated to this cause. For instance, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (link to www.adl.org) regularly holds workshops for teachers and families so that they can be better equipped with skills and tools for coping with multi-cultural issues.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk

http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu

http://nccc.georgetown.edu

http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com

http://www.racismnoway.com.au

http://amf.net.au/

References:

Peter Baldock. 2010. Google Books. [ONLINE] Available at: Accessed 06 March 12.

Banks, J. A , 2010. Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. 5th ed. Washington: AK Press.

Child Australia  Accessed 06 March 12

Families NSW (2011) Celebrating Cultural Diversity in Early Childhood Services  retrieved 7/03/2012 

Barbara Kupetz, Early childhood NEWS - Article Reading Center. 2012. Early childhood NEWS - Article Reading Center. [ONLINE] [Accessed 05 March 2012].

The Miller Early Childhood Initiative of A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute. 2012. The Miller Early Childhood Initiative of A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute. [ONLINE]  [Accessed 05 March 2012].

National Center for Cultural Competence (2011) The Role of Self-Assessment in Achieving Cultural Competence. The Cultural Competence Exchange, Issue 4. Retrieved 7/3/2012

Sue Wilson (no date) Fostering Goodness & Caring: Promoting Moral Development of Young Children retrieved 7/3/2012

Diversity in Practice tip sheet, retrieved 7 March 2013