Nicole Jamison is a Lecturer in Early Childhood Education (Creative Arts and Play) in the Macquarie School of Education. She is the Course Director for the Early Childhood undergraduate and postgraduate Initial Teacher Education (ITE) degrees: BEd(EC) - StepAhead Program, BEd(EC), BEd(ECP), BTeach(ECE), BABEd(Primary) - ECT Major and MTeach(0-5); an Assistant Director of the MQ Early Childhood Education Research Centre (ECERC) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Prior to her position at Macquarie University, Nicole has taught and researched in a range of early childhood, primary and tertiary settings in Canada and the UK. She was a Lecturer and Course Director for the BA(Hons) Early Childhood Studies degree at Bath Spa University, a sessional instructor at the University of Alberta in Canada in a range of early childhood units focused on play, literacy, and early numeracy. She also has experience as an early childhood teacher in Alberta, Canada for 10 years, served as a mentor teacher for primary teacher trainees in placement, co-facilitated teacher professional development workshops, was an early childhood research intern with the Government of Alberta’s Ministry of Education, and a pedagogical partner supporting early learning and childcare centres with curriculum framework implementation.

Nicole’s teaching and research specialises in children’s play, arts-informed and creative pedagogies and methodologies, and reconceptualist and intercultural practices in early childhood. She is particularly interested in young children’s voices, perspectives and experiences that are shared and negotiated through childhood activities of play and art-making.

Her interdisciplinary PhD research drew on a range of creative methodologies to examine how young immigrant children in Canada participated in and made sense of their everyday lives, experiences, and understood complexities of migration, culture, gender, and identity. Her research also examined how child-led play and personal art-making activities functioned as important prompts and tools to share perspectives, negotiations, narratives, and understandings. This research was funded by various bodies including Canada’s Killam Trusts, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), a doctoral fellowship from the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and the University of Alberta.

Nicole teaches in the undergraduate and postgraduate early childhood programs. She currently convenes:

EDST8702 Contemporary Curriculum and Pedagogy in Early Childhood

EDST2550/EDST8804 Engaging with the Outdoors as a Learning Environment