TEACHER DECISION MAKING IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION Anna Dorothea Kilderry ...

303 Pages·2012·2.12 MB·English

TEACHER DECISION MAKING IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
EDUCATION

Anna Dorothea Kilderry

BA, Grad Dip Ed, MEd

A thesis submitted to fulfil the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Centre for Learning Innovation
Faculty of Education
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
2012
Abstract
The study investigated early childhood teacher decision making at the preschool
level in the state of Victoria, Australia. Victorian teachers at the preschool level
were in an interesting position in 2004. Unlike most other Australian states Victoria
did not have a curriculum framework guiding educational content and pedagogy.
Consequently, this study was able to take advantage of this situation and examine
teacher decision making at a time when early childhood teachers were relatively
autonomous in deciding curriculum content. The opportunity to study teacher
decision making in this way has since passed, as Victorian preschool teachers are
now regulated by newly introduced state and national curricula frameworks.
To identify influences affecting teacher decision making three preschool
teachers were interviewed and curricula related policies were analysed. The data
were analysed using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) technique.
Critical discourse analysis enabled a close analysis of influences on teacher decision
making illustrating how discourse is legitimated, marginalised, and silenced in
certain curricula practices. Critical theory was the underpinning framework used for
the study and enabled taken-for-granted understandings to be uncovered within
early childhood policies and teacher interviews.
Key findings were that despite there not being a government-mandated
curricula framework for Victorian preschool education in 2004, teachers were held
accountable for their curricula practice. Yet as professionals, early childhood
teachers were denied public acknowledgment of their expertise as they were almost
invisible in policy. Subsequently, teachers’ authority as professionals with curricula
knowledge was diminished. The study found that developmentally appropriate
practice (DAP) was a dominant discourse influencing teacher decision making
(TDM). It operated as legitimated discourse in the 2004 Victorian preschool
context. Additionally, the study found that teacher directed practice was legitimated,
marginalised, and silenced by teachers. The findings have implications for early
childhood teacher decision making at the practice, research, and policy levels.
Findings show that the dominance of the DAP discourse informing teacher decision
making limits other ways of thinking and practising.

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Key Words
Teacher decision making, early childhood curriculum, policy, accountability,
preschool education, critical theory, critical discourse analysis (CDA).

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Table of Contents

Abstract...................................................................................................................ii
Key Words.............................................................................................................iii
List of Figures.......................................................................................................vii
List of Tables........................................................................................................viii
Glossary..................................................................................................................ix
Statement of Original Authorship.........................................................................xii
Acknowledgements..............................................................................................xiii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...........................................................................1
1.1 A Brief History of Early Childhood Curricula in Australia..............................3
1.2 Preschool Governance in Australia...................................................................5
1.3 Victorian Preschool Provision...........................................................................7
1.4 Recent Australian Early Childhood Curriculum Developments.....................10
1.5 Significance of the Study................................................................................12
1.6 Research Questions.........................................................................................13
1.7 The Study........................................................................................................13
1.8 Structure of Thesis..........................................................................................14
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.............................................................16
2.1 Curriculum in Early Childhood Education.....................................................17
2.2 Teacher Decision Making and Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education.......20
2.3 Contextual Factors Influencing Teacher Decision Making............................31
2.4 Discourses Affecting Teacher Decision Making............................................33
2.4.1 Child development....................................................................................34
2.4.2 Child-centred practice...............................................................................39
2.4.3 Developmentally appropriate practice......................................................48
2.4.4 Accountability...........................................................................................61
2.5 Summary.........................................................................................................71
CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK...............................................73
3.1 Critical Theory and this Study........................................................................73
3.2 Discourse and this Study.................................................................................75
3.3 Ideology and Self-reference............................................................................77
3.4 Dominance, Power, Hegemony, and Counter-hegemony...............................80
3.5 Applying Critical Theory to Education...........................................................82
3.6 Critical Theory and Teacher Decision Making...............................................85
3.7 Limitations of Critical Theory........................................................................88
3.8 Summary.........................................................................................................89
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY.......................90
4.1 Critical Discourse Analysis.............................................................................90
4.1.1 Using discourse as data.............................................................................93
4.2 Critical Discourse Analysis: Data Analysis Technique..................................94
4.2.1 Description of texts...................................................................................95
4.2.2 Interpretation of texts..............................................................................100
4.2.3 Explanation of texts................................................................................101
4.3 Data Collection..............................................................................................102

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4.3.1 Participant selection and the Victorian early childhood context............102
4.3.2 Participants and early childhood settings................................................104
4.3.3 Data collection timeframe.......................................................................106
4.3.4 Semi-structured interviews.....................................................................107
4.3.5 Curricula documents...............................................................................114
4.3.6 Selection of regulative and governance policies.....................................114
4.4 Reliability and Validity.................................................................................120
4.5 Reflexivity.....................................................................................................123
4.6 Ethical Conduct.............................................................................................126
4.7 Limitations....................................................................................................127
4.8 Summary.......................................................................................................129
CHAPTER 5: POWER, AUTHORITY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN
POLICY.................................................................................................................130
5.1 The Role of Policy........................................................................................130
5.2 Forms of Control...........................................................................................132
5.2.1 Power......................................................................................................135
5.2.2 Authority.................................................................................................135
5.2.3 Accountability.........................................................................................136
5.3 Curriculum in Policy.....................................................................................137
5.4 Policy and Teacher Invisibility.....................................................................146
5.5 Summary.......................................................................................................157
CHAPTER 6: TEACHER DISCOURSES OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND
PERFORMATIVITY...........................................................................................158
6.1 Teacher Accountability.................................................................................158
6.2 Teacher Performative Accountability...........................................................160
6.2.1 Performative anxiety, confidence, and disregard: Lily...........................161
6.2.2 Performative anxiety and confidence: Christiana...................................172
6.2.3 Performative confidence and disregard: Ruth........................................176
6.3 Summary.......................................................................................................178
CHAPTER 7: LEGITIMATED, MARGINALISED, AND SILENCED
DISCOURSES.......................................................................................................180
7.1 Curricula Terms Identified in Interviews......................................................181
7.2 Teacher Directed Practice.............................................................................184
7.2.1 Teacher directed practice legitimated: Ruth...........................................185
7.2.2 Teacher directed practice marginalised: Lily..........................................190
7.2.3 Teacher directed practice silenced: Christiana.......................................192
7.3 Developmentally Appropriate Practice: Legitimated....................................195
7.3.1 Unfamiliar curricula practices becoming familiar..................................195
7.3.2 Legitimating children’s interests............................................................202
7.4 Summary.......................................................................................................209
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION............................................................................210
8.1 Aims of the Study..........................................................................................210
8.2 Findings of the Study....................................................................................212
8.3 Critical Insights and Implications.................................................................217

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8.3.1 Critical insights and implications for early childhood teachers, policy
makers, and regulators.....................................................................................217
8.3.2 Critical insights and implications of study findings for policy...............220
8.3.3 Insights into the methodological value of the study...............................220
8.4 Recommendations.........................................................................................221
8.5 Concluding Statement...................................................................................224
8.6 Postscript.......................................................................................................225
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................229
APPENDICES.......................................................................................................257
Appendix A: Consent and Study Information.....................................................257
Appendix B: Interview Information....................................................................274
Appendix C: Policy Information.........................................................................287

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List of Figures
Figure 2.1. Research on teaching in early childhood education according to Genishi
et al. (2001).......................................................................................... 25
Figure 2.2. Where the study is positioned............................................................. 26
Figure 2.3. Influences on teacher decision making in early childhood
education…………………………………………………………….. 34
Figure 2.4. International studies measuring teacher beliefs about DAP modelled on
instruments developed by Bredekamp (1987), Charlesworth et al. (1991),
and Charlesworth et al. (1993)............................................................. 58
Figure 2.5. Australian studies investigating the impact of the accountability
discourse on early childhood teacher decision making during 1999 to
2010..................................................................................................... 64
Figure 2.6. Effects of the accountability discourse on teacher decision making in the
Australian early childhood context....................................................... 66
Figure 4.1. Interview schedule………..………………………………………… 112
Figure 5.1. Teacher decision making, power, authority and accountability......... 132
Figure 5.2. Accountability in teaching: Common terminology........................... 136
Figure 7.1. Curricula terms used in interviews………………………………... 182
Figure 7.2. Curricula terms used in interviews: Christiana……………...…..... 183
Figure 7.3. Curricula terms used in interviews: Lily……………..….……....... 183
Figure 7.4. Curricula terms used in interviews: Ruth……………….………… 183

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List of Tables
Table 1.1. Australian preschool provision …………………………………… 06
Table 4.1. Stages of critical discourse analysis…………………………….... 96
Table 4.2. Curricula related information……………………………………… 115
Table 4.3. Participants’ regulatory and governance context in 2004….……… 117
Table 4.4. Key policy documents……………………………………………… 119
Table 5.1. Early childhood teacher decision making: Matrix of power
relations............................................................................................. 134
Table 5.2. Teacher authority, obligation and constraint across policy………… 148
Table 5.3. Constraints on discourse and structural effect (Adapted from
Fairclough, 2001b, p. 62)………………………………..………… 155
Table 6.1. Typology of early childhood teacher accountability (adapted from
Ranson, 2003, p. 463).......................................................................... 159
Table 7.1. Teacher directed practice………………………………………….... 185

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Glossary
Accountability in an educational context refers to teachers being held responsible
for monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of their teaching and children’s
learning.
Child-centred practice (CCP) is an approach to education where education is
centred on children and their experience, rather than being solely driven by
curriculum content and learning outcomes. Child-centred practice stems from
educational progressive theories espoused by Rousseau, Froebel, Dewey, Piaget and
others, and was popularised in primary education in England during the 1960s and
1970s (Darling, 1994; Entwistle, 1970; Walkerdine, 1998).
Child development (CD) is concerned with the developmental stages of children,
including their biological, social, emotional and cognitive growth (Berk, 2003;
Doherty & Hughes, 2009; Kaplan, 2000; Santrock, 2004).
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) stems from a combination of critical theories,
social theories and linguistic theories and is an analytic approach looking for
patterns in language use. Critical discourse analysis has the ability to critique social
practices and can focus on the role discourse plays in maintaining unequal power
relations (Fairclough, 2001b).
Curriculum is all the planned and unplanned educational experiences and
pedagogical practices that occur in early childhood settings.
Curriculum content refers to all the content, subject or topic areas that teachers
deem as important knowledge for young children to learn.
DAP is Developmentally Appropriate Practice and is recognised in early childhood
education through the practice of meeting the developmental needs of young
children through an individual and age-appropriate approach and doing away with
subject areas as a basis for curriculum (Bredekamp, 1987; Bredekamp & Copple,
1997; Copple and Bredekamp, 2009).
DIP is Developmentally Inappropriate Practice and refers to practices that are
deemed “inappropriate”, whether “harmful to children”, “merely waste children’s
time” or are “highly questionable” practices in the DAP approach (Bredekamp &
Copple, 1997, p. 123).

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Discourse refers to the ways in which people represent the world. Discourses are
sets of social practices and associated language that are found in common sense
assumptions in particular contexts (Fairclough, 2001b, 2003).
Dominant discourse is apparent through its ability as a discourse to sustain
dominance (Fairclough, 2001a). Dominance is visible through discourse where it is
evident that social practices operate in hegemonic ways and sustain power
(Fairclough, 1995).
Early childhood teachers in the State of Victoria are three or four-year university
educated teachers who are qualified to teach in state-funded preschool settings and,
depending on their qualification, in primary schools.
Hegemony is the process of the reproduction of knowledge, values, ideologies,
morals, and norms (Gramsci, 1971).
Kindergarten in the Victorian context, describes the educational year before formal
school. The term is used interchangeably with the term preschool and pre-reparatory
year. Children who attend kindergarten in Victoria are aged four to five years.
Pedagogy is how teaching and learning is enacted. It is the way that teachers go
about the business of teaching including how they interact with children and prepare
the learning environment.
Performativity in educational contexts is visible where performance-related
practices, such as teaching and learning, are regulated through measurable criteria
(Ball, 1994, 2003; Lyotard, 1984).
Pre-preparatory or pre-prep are terms used in Victoria to describe the educational
year before the Preparatory year for children aged four to five years in a school
setting. The pre-preparatory year is also referred to as kindergarten or preschool in
the state of Victoria.
Preschool in the Victorian context in 2004 refers to an educational program for
children aged four to five years in the year before formal schooling. The preschool
year is also referred to as kindergarten. In the Victorian school context in 2004,
preschool was sometimes referred to as pre-preparatory year.

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