Project Details
Layman's description
DP Application: DP230100427. Led by Associate Professor University of Sydney. I am second CI.
Quality early childhood education (ECE; birth to five years) is recognised in Australia and internationally as a key policy level that supports children’s learning and development, school transition, women’s workforce participation, social inclusion and national productivity. Integral to quality ECE is the employment of early childhood teachers (ECTs), yet in Australia there are persistent high rates of ECT turnover and chronic ECT shortages. Initiatives intended to increase the supply of ECTs are being rolled out, yet these initiatives are without a clear evidence base to support their efficacy, and lack due attention to the quality of the ECT workforce. Despite teacher quality in Australia being facilitated through early childhood teaching degree requirements, the accreditation of initial teacher education (ITE) programs and ECE services, and teacher registration, research conducted with ECEC employers highlights variation in the quality of both ECT graduates and ECTs working in ECE. EC ITE programs are increasing in diversity and choice, yet there lacks an evidence-base that shows what program features best retain and prepare ECT graduates to work with children in the early years. There is also a paucity of evidence specific to ECTs to show what factors in a complex, diverse and fragmented early education sector best prepare, support and sustain quality teachers. The Teachers in Early Education (TEE) project has been developed to generate new knowledge about, and innovative approaches to address, these longstanding ECT supply and quality issues.
Aims
The TEE project is guided by the overarching research question – What factors support the supply of a quality ECT workforce in Australia? – and associated sub-questions: (i) What characterises the best ECT candidates? (ii) What impacts preservice and graduate ECTs’ career intentions, motivation, satisfaction, efficacy and wellbeing over time? (iii) How well do EC ITE programs prepare graduates to work in the early years sector? (iv) How can current approaches to assessing ECT quality be reconceptualised to better reflect the work that they do and the diverse contexts in which they teach? (v) How can new, ecological conceptual and empirical understandings of ECT supply and quality inform policy directions intended to support and sustain a quality ECT workforce?
The TEE project thus aims to:
1. Track the career intentions and lived trajectories of ECTs from degree commencement to early-career;
2. Produce new knowledge about the personal and contextual factors that individually and interactionally support or constrain the recruitment, development, and retention of quality ECTs;
3. Co-design an innovative tool that assesses ECT quality in context, thereby advancing current understandings about, and measures of, ECT quality; and
4. Generate new insights into ECT supply and quality to progress national workforce policy initiatives.
Quality early childhood education (ECE; birth to five years) is recognised in Australia and internationally as a key policy level that supports children’s learning and development, school transition, women’s workforce participation, social inclusion and national productivity. Integral to quality ECE is the employment of early childhood teachers (ECTs), yet in Australia there are persistent high rates of ECT turnover and chronic ECT shortages. Initiatives intended to increase the supply of ECTs are being rolled out, yet these initiatives are without a clear evidence base to support their efficacy, and lack due attention to the quality of the ECT workforce. Despite teacher quality in Australia being facilitated through early childhood teaching degree requirements, the accreditation of initial teacher education (ITE) programs and ECE services, and teacher registration, research conducted with ECEC employers highlights variation in the quality of both ECT graduates and ECTs working in ECE. EC ITE programs are increasing in diversity and choice, yet there lacks an evidence-base that shows what program features best retain and prepare ECT graduates to work with children in the early years. There is also a paucity of evidence specific to ECTs to show what factors in a complex, diverse and fragmented early education sector best prepare, support and sustain quality teachers. The Teachers in Early Education (TEE) project has been developed to generate new knowledge about, and innovative approaches to address, these longstanding ECT supply and quality issues.
Aims
The TEE project is guided by the overarching research question – What factors support the supply of a quality ECT workforce in Australia? – and associated sub-questions: (i) What characterises the best ECT candidates? (ii) What impacts preservice and graduate ECTs’ career intentions, motivation, satisfaction, efficacy and wellbeing over time? (iii) How well do EC ITE programs prepare graduates to work in the early years sector? (iv) How can current approaches to assessing ECT quality be reconceptualised to better reflect the work that they do and the diverse contexts in which they teach? (v) How can new, ecological conceptual and empirical understandings of ECT supply and quality inform policy directions intended to support and sustain a quality ECT workforce?
The TEE project thus aims to:
1. Track the career intentions and lived trajectories of ECTs from degree commencement to early-career;
2. Produce new knowledge about the personal and contextual factors that individually and interactionally support or constrain the recruitment, development, and retention of quality ECTs;
3. Co-design an innovative tool that assesses ECT quality in context, thereby advancing current understandings about, and measures of, ECT quality; and
4. Generate new insights into ECT supply and quality to progress national workforce policy initiatives.
| Acronym | TEE Study |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Effective start/end date | 1/01/23 → 31/12/28 |