Research, Challenge, Reflect

So we spent eight months writing our statement of philosophy, eight months of brainstorming, consultation, researching, writing and more consultation. We ended up with a document that we were proud of, we shared it with families and children, we shared it with colleagues. But then I thought, now what?

Coincidentally, I had just received an assessment for my Advanced Diploma on developing a Code of Conduct and I thought that this could be the answer I was looking for. That is, building a Code of Conduct around the Philosophy, articulating what we do on a day to day basis to embed it into our practice.
The first step, having a team meeting to brainstorm! Unfortunately with the end of the school year looming it was getting increasingly hard to find time for a meeting, so I needed to come up with something else.

Along with our philosophy, I sent home a simple Y-Chart with all our educators for them to reflect with.

I was very grateful for the participation of the educator team, their thoughts were insightful and on the ball.

First our Statement of Philosophy

Our service is guided by My Time, Our Place – Framework for School Age Care in Australia (The Framework) in the development of our program. The Framework acknowledges the importance of play and leisure in children’s learning, and of the relationships between children, families, schools, the greater community and educators . In line with the Framework, educators believe in the importance of collaborative relationships, and that these relationships provide caregiving, companionship, socialisation , and opportunities for learning for children and families .

We consider our service to be ‘a community of learners’ , wherein children, families, educators and other community members participate in the shared endeavour of providing a caring, engaging and stimulating environment for school age children.

We believe that children develop and learn through their participation in sociocultural activities of their communities, and by sharing the caregiving role with families, we are giving children opportunities to engage in and observe these community activities.

We do this by:

Demonstrating respect, honesty, and independence in our interactions with children, families and community, and expecting these in return,
Demonstrating the Organisations Values of integrity, individuality, courage and curiosity in our interactions with children, families and community,
Providing opportunities for children to be confident, creative, active and informed members of the community ,
Supporting and catering for the individual needs of children and families,
Promoting strong relationships between home, school, community and the service,
Participating in a wide range of community activities including Clean Up Australia Day, National Families Week, Harmony Day, Children’s Week and more,
Actively encouraging families to participate in a wide range of information sharing opportunities including verbal and written feedback, and our Parent Advisory Group.

In our service, children, educators and families are active in structuring shared learning. Educators and other adults guide process and act as facilitators as they support children’s changing participation in their shared endeavours . Children will become active participants in their own learning and they will learn as they collaborate with other children and adults , and educators will assist children to make meaning of these interactions.

We do this by:

Encouraging the children to teach us what they know,
Giving children the opportunity to be independent and make their own choices in regards to how they spend their time whilst attending the service,
Encouraging children to question, test ideas, take considered risks and learning that it is ok to be wrong, and to try again, and reflect,
Embedding in our service the opportunity for children and families to participate in the development and evaluation of our program,
Welcoming families to participate in the program, and share their skills and expertise.

This Statement of Philosophy was created after consultation with children, families, educators and selected members of the community. Consultation included workshops, brainstorm sessions, directed questioning and feedback via posters and whiteboards.

References

DEEWR (2011) My Time, Our Place – Framework for School Age Care in Australia, Commonwealth of Australia.

Rogoff, Barbara (2003) The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Oxford University Press, New York, p120.

Rogoff, Barbara; Goodman Turkanis, Carolyn; Bartlett, Leslee (eds) (2001) Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community, Oxford University Press, New York.

Rogoff, Barbara (1994) ‘Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners’, Mind, Culture, and Activity, 1:4, 209-229.

The educator's reflections

From here, we identified similarities and themes, and put together our code of conduct.

What does our Philosophy look like in practice?
How do we embed our philosophy into everyday practice?

Educators will:

Engage with the children are their level. This may mean that educators will physically adjust their position to accommodate this.
Participate in play with the children, but must be considerate of when they are asked to join or asked to leave the play.
Make time to talk to children, and find out what they know, ask about their day/plans for the weekend with interest.
Ensure that activities are set up in an engaging way before the children arrive at the program.
Ask the children what they would like to contribute to the program and feed this back to the Director.
Learn both children and families names.
Not pressure children to participate in activities.
Be understanding when children need alone time or support.
Participate actively in documentation, ie/ observations, activity reflection, photo stories.
Attend team meetings as scheduled, and participate in discussion, brainstorming and reflection

The Director will:

Make time for all educators to be off the floor for a portion of time at the end of each shift, to allow time for documenting observations and activity evaluations.
Collect and make available to educators resources on a variety of Community Activities, such as NAIDOC Weeks, National Families Week and Clean Up Australia. These will be made available before the event so that educators can familiarise themselves with them.
Encourage educators to participate actively in the programming cycle.
To provide a reflection book for all educators to contribute to. This reflection book will be used during team meetings to lead discussion.

My reflection on the process:

Challenge:

Not everyone had seen a Y-chart before and this needed explaining when they were given it.

Benefits:

All educators were given the opportunity to participate, which is sometimes not possible, particularly for casual educators if they cannot attend the meeting.
Educators felt more confident in given their opinion and contribution.

Responses:

Not all educators ‘got’ how the Y-Chart works, but with further discussion it helped.

Next time?

YES! It was a great alternative to team meetings and can compliment them.

Research, Challenge, Reflect

Monday, August 8, 2016

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