Our overarching goal is to improve children’s lives by providing them with the tools needed to succeed in life. To do that, we need a committed team of pedagogically aligned teachers and educators.
Educators are the heart of early education; we understand that creating and maintaining a positive workplace culture is critical to maintaining educator engagement and retention, which is beneficial for the continuous relationships between educators, families, and children. Research shows educators feel more engaged when their voices are heard, and action occurs. Therefore, in our Service, we have developed systems for educators’ voices to be heard and valued.
Our team created service values very early in our inception; these values became our philosophy. Trust, Play, Belonging, Inclusion, Knowledge, and Wonder, have framed our pedagogical direction and critical reflection. In all decision-making, we ask ourselves, will this fit our values?
Team cohesion is vital for a positive workplace. It is built through communication and educators understanding themselves, each other and their roles. To develop an understanding of themselves and others, all educators have participated in personal DISC assessments. “The DISC Advanced assessment is a valuable tool that can be utilised for self-awareness and the personal development of the respondents, in conjunction with a properly facilitated process” (DISC Assessment workbook). These assessments are valuable for individuals to understand how they behave and react to stress and pressure and their preferred way of communicating with others. When debriefing as a team, educators can understand each other better, primarily in how we communicate, resulting in a more cohesive team. These reports are now integrated into our Personal Development Time meetings (Appraisals). They provide insight into each other’s communication styles and preferences and inform reflective questions, as a continuous cycle of reflection by team members, and support developing relationships in new teams.
We recognise the significance of whole team development alongside individual professional growth. To facilitate the entire team’s professional development, we have engaged in professional development projects with specialised consultants over extended periods, ensuring we have time for deep learning and critical reflection on a particular topic. For example, we have been connecting with Koori Curriculum since 2016, learning how to deeply work through embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in our program.
Educators’ connection to change is another way to enable a positive workplace culture. Several years ago, we embarked on a project to change the way we organised groups of children to create smaller groups and develop educator engagement . Over a six-month project, educators researched grouping possibilities, decided how the grouping structure would work, considered the impact on the learning environments and initiated a new daily flow.
Through this change we coined the term ‘Things belong to places, people belong to each other.’ to describe our new way of working. This change enabled a more collaborative and transformational leadership structure best supporting children and enabling the professional growth of our teachers.
A practice we have created to enable critical reflection is through thinking pairs. We use thinking pairs when undertaking professional development webinars to provoke critical reflection of practice or to critically reflect on documents like the new EYLF 2.0 or our service philosophy. Essentially, it is a pair of educators who critically reflect together. Our educational leader intentionally constructs thinking pairs to critically reflect on a practice. They are curated to ensure educators are paired with others with different years of experience, different levels of qualifications, different lengths of time working at the service and working with different groups of children. Constructing pairs this way provides space for multiple perspectives and the opportunity for informal mentor/mentee relationships to develop. Working in pairs provides space for quieter voices to contribute to professional dialogue. It also honors the opinions and ideas of all educators, regardless of their qualifications, experience or position.
The most important thing we have learned about engaging our team is to listen. We meet each educator where they are and continually reflect on their needs to build their sense of belonging to our team.
