Dr Kathryn Hopps

This is the first in a series of resources to support partnerships between primary schools and early childhood education and care services. I'm Kathryn Hopps and I'm an Adjunct Research Associate at Charles Sturt University. I also work for Early Childhood Australia as a BU consultant, and my background is as an early childhood and primary teacher in both prior to school, school and school aged care settings, as a teacher educator and a transition to school researcher.

I'd like to acknowledge that today I'm talking to you from Narrandera, Nyulnuyl Land and I pay my respects to the Nyulnyul elders in the Canberra community, the ancestors, the elders of the past and children and young people who will be the Nyulnyul elders and leaders in the future. I'd also like to acknowledge my own personal past and current connections to Wiradjuri, Awabakal and Wonnarua lands. I encourage you now to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that you are on in your own way.

Let's begin now by having a look at an overview of this resource. So, the overall learning outcomes are about understanding why partnerships between educators are important for transitions and awareness of contemporary transitions research and implications for partnership practise, building knowledge of fundamental aspects of partnerships, and to actually begin some planning for partnerships too. And this resource exists in 2 parts.

In the first part, we're gonna look at some theory and research, including ecological perspectives on transitions, and a couple of concepts from Urie Bronfenbrenner's work in particular, intersetting communication and intersetting knowledge. We're gonna have a look at some research on transition practises, and in particular, some research about partnerships between educators. We'll briefly look at the impacts of COVID-19 on transitions and then bring this all together by considering some implications of theory and research for your partnership practise.

In part two, we're going to begin looking at some partnership fundamentals. We're gonna consider what partnerships can look like and to help us to do that, we're gonna have a brief look at the collaboration continuum, which is a particularly useful tool for considering how we can work together. We'll start to look at trust as a really important element of partnerships and connected to that, we'll touch on the notion of empowering partnerships. This resource will help you to start to develop some common goals for partnerships with educators in schools or early childhood education and care settings. And we'll finish up by looking at some further resources, which you can use in developing partnerships.

This resource can be used in a number of ways, including for individual learning and reflection, for watching together with a colleague in your own team at your school or service, or for shared professional learning. So, for educators, from schools and early childhood education care settings, professional learning together, you can watch this in one sitting or you can take your time to work through the sections by pausing and coming back over time. Critical reflection on practise is really important in striving to improve the transition experiences of children, their families and educators. And I encourage you to use this resource as a stimulus for learning, reflection, and action for both affirming what you might already be doing and inspiring new actions too.

Let's begin by looking at some theory which is useful for understanding transitions and particularly partnerships. Urie Bronfrenbrenner's early ecological and later bio ecological theory have been used widely in transitions research and practise to conceptualise transitions around children's immediate context of home, school, early childhood education and care setting and the connections between them. This theory provides a really solid rationale for why we should seek out partnerships to support children's transitions. You may recall that Bronfrenbrenner structured a child's ecological environment into four systems, the micro, meso, the exo, and the macro systems. The model on the screen now is how Scottish Transitions researcher Aileen Wendy Dunlop, has applied Bronfrenbrenner's work to the context of transitions and put these as transitions as an ecological system.

Microsystems are those immediate settings a child participates in, including the home, the primary school, early childhood education and care settings. And the interactions between those different settings make up the meso system. Children's learning, development and wellbeing influenced by not only what happens in those immediate settings, the microsystem, but also directly and indirectly by what is happening in the wider context, including the relationships and interactions between people in the different settings. The meso system. Bronfrenbrenner argued the interconnections between children's settings impact on how they function in new settings such as the primary school.

Urie Bronfrenbrenner also wrote about the importance of interconnections between settings and the primary connection being the child, but also other connections including communication between settings which he termed intersetting communication. Communication is an important element which impacts a child's functioning in the new settings such as primary school. Based on this, positive personal connections between people and children's settings has been advocated as a support for children. Intersetting knowledge. The knowledge that exists in one setting about the other is also another supportive connection. And intersetting communication is one way to gain intersetting knowledge that supports transitions. As New Zealand transition researcher Vanessa Paki says, children benefit when they see that all parts of their world are connected.

Ecological approaches to transitions have been one way or one lens through which to research transitions, and we now have over 40 years of research in children's transitions including children's families and educators perspectives. So, there is a large evidence base from which we have to draw upon to guide practise. The research both nationally and internationally, has emphasised the importance of children's experiences at this time in having both immediate and long-term impacts on children's development. The transition to school is a time of opportunities for children, opportunities for their learning, their wellbeing, relationships and identities, and children experience starting school in different ways. And for many children, it is an eagerly anticipated time, but starting primary school is also a transition for families as they become, for example, parents, grandparents, or siblings of a school student.

National and international researchers, as well as Australian policy makers and educators came together in Aubrey New South Wales to develop a transition position statement in 2011. This aspirational statement drew upon a wide range of research to inform and guide research, policy and practise in transitions to school. The statement incorporates findings from decades of research and makes some recommendations for practise. And right up front in this document, it situates why transition to school is important. Captured in the quote from the position statement on the slide here. 'The importance of a positive transition to school has been emphasised in research around the world. It is well established that a successful start to school is linked to later positive educational and social outcomes'. Children who have a positive start to school are likely to regard school as an important place and to have positive expectations of their ability to learn and to succeed at school. The position statement is based on a number of principles, including the importance of genuine partnerships involving reciprocal, responsive and respectful relationships.

A range of transitions to school practises have been researched or recommended from the results of transition to school studies. Some of those I've got on the screen. So, they include seeking, listening and responding to children's views and voices about transitions, including new entrants and older students, fostering children's existing and new friendships, building positive relationships with families and respecting families as partners in children's education, connecting families together, asking families and children about their hopes and aspirations for starting school. There's also been recommendations around ongoing dialogue between educators in prior to school and school settings.

Recommendations have also been around schools being ready for children and families whenever they arrive, and via whatever transition pathway, a focus on children and family strengths and alignment of curriculum and pedagogies across school and early childhood education and care settings. It's also been long held recommendations around transition to school programs and those as being distinctly different from orientation activities.

Let's take a look now what the recent research says, specifically about communication and partnerships between educators. So, Tess Boyle and her colleagues at Southern Cross University worked on a project called the Building Bridges Professional Learning Community, which involved educators from schools and prior to school settings as they developed an inclusive communicative space and used inclusive language to work together for children's transition. The educators in this group addressed power relations through respectful language that positioned all educators and settings as equals. And although each educator held different views, they were still able to work effectively together. The group developed group norms for their meetings and they shared aspirations for meeting together and were committed to understanding both worlds of early childhood and primary education through sustained professional conversation.

Laura Rantavuori from the University of Tampere in Finland studied interprofessional planning and evaluation meetings between preschool and primary educators and highlighted some of the barriers to working together for transitions. And she made recommendations to support interprofessional working. Most significantly, Laura recommends the equal positioning of early childhood education and care services and primary schools as environments of learning and also the knowledge of all educators being equally valued and shared.

Bob Perry and Sue Dockett in Australia have led a national transition to school and school aged care project called Continuity of Learning through Effective Transition to School. And the research team travelled round Australia investigating sites of excellence in transition practises in the book that resulted from this project. A whole section is dedicated to stories of transition partnerships. The authors write that partnerships between professionals set the context for consistency and continuity of children move from one education setting to another. Partnership practises in the book that resulted from the project include community hubs and transition network meetings, school age care services, involved in school transition programs, schools inviting early childhood education care educators to their shared staff meetings, early childhood educators and health professionals collaborating to develop transition programs for a whole community.

In my own PhD research, I looked at intersetting communication between preschool and school educators in New South Wales and Victoria. The methods in my study included case studies of schools and preschools who were already working together and focus groups with educators. And also in online survey. Some of the publications that have resulted from my thesis include results about the challenges of written communication, how communication impacts on educators' relationships with each other, using a strengths approach in communicating about children, which includes their strengths and their challenges, and what kind of communication supports positive relationships between settings. There's also been a couple of papers published in 2020 from other Australian researchers focusing on the use of collaborative pedagogies to support transitions by early childhood and primary educators by Nicola Yellen and Elise Waghorn, and the importance of having collaborative professional identity in working together to support continuity for children transitions by Jamie Hoffsteisen and colleagues. So, there is a lot of research to draw upon, and we have quite a good evidence base for practise in this area.

Among the results of my own PhD study is included the following factors that enhance communication between educators in schools and early childhood education and care settings and in turn support children's transition. So, communication between educators is enhanced when educators know each other and are familiar with each other's settings, when they hold shared beliefs about children, when they trust each other. When educators convey value and appreciation in their communication, when educators develop relationships that support the exchange of information and when they have opportunities for face-to-face or verbal communication. Communication's also enhanced when educators reflect on their descending communication and its potential impact on other educators, children and families. Also engaging in ongoing two-way communication is really important and recognising and addressing power relations and also communication between educators is enhanced when educators are employed by organisations that prioritise communication and relationships.

Moving on now to COVID-19 and transitions, and there is quite a substantial body of research evident now, but which will continue to emerge over the coming years about the impact of the pandemic on children's learning, wellbeing and relationships, as well as the impact on families, educators, and education systems. So, research to date has largely focused on the impact of COVID-19 on children's educational achievements and wellbeing on children, families, and educators, experiences of remote learning and also the impact of the pandemic on educators' wellbeing. So, some of the social, economic and health impacts of COVID-19 on families have been reported, including effects on their financial wellbeing, alcohol related harm and effects on their relationships and mental health, in particular, the difficulties of balancing work with remote learning have been highlighted, and whilst many of the impacts have been adverse, families have also reported some positive benefits including those two family relationships. Research for Viner and colleagues in 2021 showed an increase in children's distress, particularly anxiety and depressive symptoms rises in screen time and social media use and reductions in physical activity, particularly during periods of lockdown. Negative impacts also felt more by children and families with low resources.

Whilst a lot of the research results indicate negative impacts, and we hear a lot about things like learning loss and higher rates of children regard as developmentally vulnerable and negative impacts on children's mental health. Research is also providing a picture of some of the positives and the benefits and opportunities which came about because of unique and unprecedented set of circumstances brought about by COVID restrictions in particular. Research by Celine and colleagues shows that while parental mental health declined, the majority of children experienced either no change or improvements in their mental health, particularly for children connected to early childhood education and care settings, parents increased time engaged in activities with their children at home has resulted in learning and wellbeing benefits for some children.

Positives have also been highlighted by researchers like Steen and colleagues through positive in innovations that occurred during school closures, including teachers increased familiarity with online tools and also those deepened family teacher partnerships. Transition practises also experienced positive innovations. So, whilst there's a lack of research at the moment, specifically looking at children's transitions during the pandemic, you'll know from your own experience that schools and early childhood services had to adapt and adjust and modify or introduce completely new transition practises. A couple of studies which have included the perspectives of young children have highlighted the multiple transitions children experience between education settings during the pandemic and the strong desire for children to be with their friends.

So, what are the implications of theory and research for our practise? In both theory, research and practise, we know that partnerships are an important support for children, particularly for children and families at greater risk of experiencing vulnerabilities such as educational disadvantage. Therefore, aspiring to partnerships, including partnerships with other professionals such as educators in schools and early childhood education care settings is an important transition practise.

Communication is the foundation of professional partnerships and paying particular attention to the ways we communicate with each other and aspiring to build trust and to share power is vital. Partnerships are one way we can work towards providing some continuity and consistency for children and families. And partnerships are one aspect of transition to school policy that is drawing increased attention, particularly in the context of efforts to address population data such as AEDC. And with ongoing recognition of the importance of the early years and children's transition to school. Positive innovations that emerged during the pandemic can have an ongoing positive impact on practise, including potential for enhancing transition practises. Cohorts of children over the next few years will have lived their entire lives or the majority of them in the pandemic context, including increased stresses within many families, but also some children will have experienced positive benefits for wellbeing and learning.

And finally, transition to school is a really important time to support a child and family's wellbeing. What happens during their transitions can make a big difference in a child and family's life. And by working together we can share knowledge, expertise, experience and resources to support transitions for all children.

At this point, let's take a few minutes to reflect either individually or together with others on one takeaway message from theory and research presented here, and then identifying one action to implement into practise as you begin or continue to develop partnerships with educators in schools or early childhood education and care services.

So, I'm gonna suggest 10 minutes for this activity, but please feel free to take more time if you need. So please pause the video now and reflect on part 1.

[Activity – 10 minutes

Reflect and discuss with others one key take away message from theory and research.

Identify one action to implement into practice as you begin, or continue to develop partnerships with educators in schools or ECEC services.]

In part 1, we've been particularly focused on the following learning outcomes, understanding why partnerships with other educators and educating settings are important for transitions. Awareness of some contemporary research about transition practises and implications for partnership practise.

We've had a brief look at Bronfrenbrenner's ecological systems theory to situate partnerships between professionals as a support for children during times of transition. And we've also had a look at some of the research nationally and internationally about transitions generally, about communication and partnerships between professionals and some of the latest research about the impact of the pandemic on children, families, and educators. We also touched on some of the implications of research and theory for policy and practise, and had an opportunity to think about what we might like to apply to our own practise.

Moving on to part 2, partnership fundamentals, Sue Dockett and Bob Perry explain about partnerships between different professionals working together to support children and families. The collaboration that characterises these partnerships requires educators to acknowledge, trust and respect the knowledge of others, utilise open and reciprocal approaches to communication and engage in shared decision making as they work towards common goals.

There are many different ways that professionals from different organisations can work together. Not all are partnerships and not all involve collaboration. Many partnerships begin very differently to how they eventually emerge and grow to become. One really useful way to help us think about different ways of working together and what's possible is the collaboration continuum. This is a concept originally developed by Arthur T. Himmelman but it's been redeveloped and adapted in many ways, but in essence, it situates working together on a continuum with networking or connecting on one end, then moving across to coordination, cooperation.

And at the other end is collaboration. And as collaboration is at the far end of the continuum and something we can aspire to in partnerships, often the place to begin is at the left end with connecting and networking to build partnerships where we might collaborate in the long term. Networking and connecting involves meeting and getting to know others, some exchange of information, but seldom any joint decision making or sharing of resources. As partnerships move along to coordination and cooperation, this will involve some shared or common goals and some joint activities. And when we collaborate, we have a shared vision and goals. There are significant joint planning and implementation of activities, and we share resources and might even have formal agreements and a strategic partnership. As we move along the continuum, higher levels of trust and often more time and commitment are needed, and there is more shared or joint decision making and sharing of resources.

Really critical to partnerships, particularly those further along the collaboration continuum and connected networking is trust. So, a very basic definition of trust is how safe you feel in being vulnerable with others. So, including feeling safe to share information, ideas, thoughts and feelings. A complex relationship exists between trust and communication, so communication itself is crucial in building and maintaining trust within and between organisations. For example, when people receive information at work that is timely, accurate and relevant, they're more likely to trust the sources of that information.

Studies in a range of disciplines have shown that trust is related to levels of collaboration and that a culture of trust can be created through open and honest communication. In my own PhD research, trust between school and preschool educators was impacted by positive and not so positive communication experiences with educators in the other setting.

Empowered partnerships are those where power is shared so that there is shared goal setting and shared decision making. And the further along the collaboration continuum, the more trust that exists and the more empowered these working relationships are. Sometimes working in partnership with other professionals involve sharing the power that we have, particularly where power imbalances have a traditionally or currently exist.

One very practical tool, which involves trust and sharing power is the development of common goals and a plan for how to realise your partnerships. When developing common goals, it can be helpful to think about your own motivations for partnering, your values and philosophy, the goals that you wanna achieve from the partnership. You know, those could be goals for children, families, for your school, or early childhood service, goals for yourself and for your community.

When you've had some time to think individually or as a school or service team, this can extend to a conversation with open dialogue between partners to develop your own common or shared goals. This could then be developed into a shared vision of the partnership.

If you'd like some guidance in developing common goals or a common starting point, you may like to use a dialogue tool, which was developed by the Danish Evaluation Institute to assist collaboration between schools and early childhood education care services. It contains a process guide and a set of dialogue cards, you may like to develop or adapt the dialogue cards to suit your specific context and community. And there's a link to this tool at the end of this resource.

At this point, let's take a few minutes to reflect either individually or together with others and note down your own goals for what you would like to achieve. Partnering with educators in schools or early childhood education and care services. Suggest about 10 minutes for this activity, but please feel free to take more time if you need. A Venn diagram might be helpful to identify commonalities and differences where you put the goals that you have in common in the overlapping space between the circles as shown on the screen, and any different goals in the outside parts of the circle. So please pause the video now for this activity.

[Slide content: 'Activity – 10 minutes

Note down your own goals for what you would like to achieve from partnering with educators in schools/ECEC settings. Share these with the people you are aspiring to partner with.

You may like to use a Venn Diagram to discover a common starting point/common goals.'

End slide content.]

Let's review part 2. In part 2 of this resource, we've been particularly focused on the following learning outcomes, building knowledge of fundamental aspects of partnerships and beginning to plan for partnerships. We've started to look at some fundamental aspects of partnerships, particularly elements like trust and respectful communication. We've also looked at what partnerships can look like using the collaboration continuum and talked about the importance of empowering partnerships and developing common goals.

I'd like to leave you with these further resources and reading that you may wish to use in developing your partnerships. You can use these as a stimulus for conversations about your shared goals for working together and web links are provided at the end of this resource.

So, one in particular I'd like to mention is New South Wales Department of Education resource around conversations about transitions with Sue Dockett and Bob Perry. And in particular, conversation number one, creating a strong start to school. It's gonna be a really useful document for developing your shared goals. The other resource is a PDF resource titled, what does a strong start to school look like? And again, that could be really useful in developing, having conversations about and developing your shared goals.

Third dot point on the screen there is the transition to school position statement, which I mentioned. And this brings together a lot of the research that we referred to in part one of this resource and also the Danish Evaluation Institute resource. The working together for a good start to school dialogue cards and process is something that you might find helpful and that can be accessed online.

So, this final slide with references and resources brings us to the end of partnership fundamentals, research and practise. Thank you very much and look forward to seeing you next time.

[End of transcript]

Dr Kathryn Hopps

Welcome, everyone, to Planning for partnerships, the second in a series of resources to support partnerships between primary schools and early childhood education and care services. I'm Kathryn Hopps and I'm an Adjunct Research Associate at Charles Sturt University, and I also work for Early Childhood Australia as a BU consultant. And my background is as an early childhood and primary teacher in both early childhood education and care services, primary schools, and school aged care settings. And I've also worked as a teacher educator and a transition to school researcher.

I'd first like to acknowledge today that I'm talking to you from, so Ngunnawal land, and I pay my respects to the Ngunnawal elders in the Canberra community, the ancestors, the elders who have passed, and the children and young people who will be the Ngunnawal elders and leaders in the future. I'd also like to acknowledge my own personal past and current connections to Wiradjuri, Awabakal and Wonnarua lands, and I encourage you now to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that you are standing on in your own way.

Let's begin now by having a look at an overview of this resource. So today, the overall learning outcomes are, understanding some of the barriers to and enablers of effective partnerships, considering continuity and change as a common starting point for partnerships, and to begin planning for partnerships between early childhood education and care services and primary schools.

So, this resource has 2 parts. In the first part, we're gonna build upon information presented in the first resource in the series in taking a more detailed look at some fundamental elements of partnerships, and in particular consider how these can be barriers or enablers of effective, successful partnerships. Knowing about these helps us to plan ahead for how to enact enablers and overcome barriers. We'll also look at the importance of reciprocal two-way communication, also known as transactional communication. And we'll then look a bit deeper into the important influences of overlapping fields of experience and how overlaps in fields of experience can be built with intersetting knowledge. And we'll then spend some time considering relations of power that exist between early childhood education and primary school sectors, which can have an impact on our partnerships. And we're gonna think about the ways those things can build and break trust in our relationships.

In part 2, we're gonna continue to look at planning for partnerships, and like all innovations, starting something new, having a specific plan, and really knowing why we're here and why we're doing this and seeking partnerships contributes in many ways to success and positive outcomes. And we'll first spend a bit of time looking at the idea that transitions involve both continuity and change for children and their families, and then delve a little further into what we mean by continuity and then how we might partner to provide continuity of learning and wellbeing during times of transition to school.

We'll also touch on the changes and the adjustments that children and families make as they start primary school. And in the last section of the resource, we'll look at some conversation starters for how we might partner and support children and families experiencing continuity and change during transitions.

So, this resource can be used in a number of ways, including for individual learning and reflection, or it could also be used for watching together with a colleague in your own team at your school or service, or for shared professional learning. So, when educators from schools and early childhood education and care settings come together. You can of course watch it in one sitting, or take your time to work through the sections by pausing and coming back over time. And that critical reflection on practise is really important in striving to improve the transition experiences of children, families, and educators. And I encourage you to use this resource as a stimulus for learning, for reflection, and action, and you can use it for both affirming what you might already be doing and inspiring new actions as well.

So, let's begin Part 1: Partnership Fundamentals.

In the first resource in this series, we touched on communication being the foundation for relationships and having such an important part to play when we are considering partnerships with other professionals.

In my PhD research, which focused on communication between educators in early childhood education and care services in schools, I drew upon one particular model of communication that was really helpful in understanding communication between professionals, and that was the transactional model of communication. And this model is really helpful in understanding the importance of two-way reciprocal communication. So transactional models view communication as a dynamic and complex process. It's much more complicated than just a linear model where one person sends a message and another person simply receives that message.

The transactional model recognises that messages are interpreted through a communicator's own field of experience, and that messages are impacted by and influenced by various forms of noise and the context in which the communication is happening. And 2 forms of noise, which we'll look at shortly, are power relations and trust.

Feedback is also really important in this model, and feedback is a critical element of all human communication. And at a very basic level, feedback helps the sender of a message determine if their message has been received and comprehended. It also assists in clarifying the meaning of messages. And feedback also has an important function in interpersonal relationships. So, it helps to show value, what the sender is communicating, and responses to messages provided through feedback convey value or lack of value for the sender, which helps to establish climates for communication.

So, when we feel confirmed, when we feel valued by the feedback that we receive in a communicative relationship, this can lead to really supportive climates for communication where people are more likely to communicate openly with each other.

In contrast, when we feel disconfirmed or not valued, this can learn to really defensive communication climates where people are more unwilling to communicate with each other. And these types of concepts in the transactional model I found really helpful in that it really conceptualises communication as both having a content, so the information in a message, but also a relational, or a relationship element. Communicators are in a relationship with each other and their communication has important influences on their relationship. So, we're gonna have a little look now at one of the concepts from the transactional model, and that's a communicator's field of experience, which is represented by the 2 ovals in the model on the slide.

Communication occurs within each communicator's personal field of experience, and it's within these personal contexts that messages are constructed and interpreted, and each communicator's field of experience must have some overlap with the other person's in order for them to generate a shared understanding and for communication to occur. When there's no overlap, or limited overlap between fields of experience, it's really hard to communicate effectively with each other and there's an increased potential for misunderstandings. And fields of experience reflects the personal histories, the past experiences of communicators, and include a myriad of factors about individuals, such as their education, gender, physical location, age, culture, occupational status, preconceived ideas, biases, values, beliefs, world views, perspectives, interests, and assumptions.

So, what does this mean for partnerships between early childhood education and care services in school? As well as personal, we also have professional histories and past experiences, and these will be shaped by the particular sector that we currently work in or have worked in in the past. We'll look a little further into the particular histories of the early childhood education and primary school sectors a little later, but for now, let's spend a little time thinking about our own professional fields of experience.

So, we're gonna do an activity now and we're gonna use a Venn diagram, as we did in the first resource. So, if you can draw 2 overlapping circles and label one of them as yourself, and if you're engaging in this resource today with a colleague, you can do this exercise together and label the other one, the other circle, as your colleague. So, pop in your circle some information about your current and past professional history, such as the type of education settings you've worked in, age groups of children you've worked with, your geographic locations, your qualifications and training. That might also be any particular professional interests that you have, professional learning that you completed. And perhaps you'd like to extend this list in your circle and you can pop in there some of your professional values and philosophy.

And so, if your colleague does the same in the other circle, anything that you have in common with your colleague, you can pop in the overlapping part. If you're on your own today, you might like to use this tool together with an educator in the setting you're going to be partnering with as a way of discussing your professional backgrounds.

So please pause the video now for 5 minutes for this activity. So, assumptions, bias, and preconceived ideas are also an element within our own fields of experience that influence our communication and our relationships with others. And it's useful to reflect upon what assumptions, bias, and preconceived ideas we may have about the setting and the work of other professionals that we wish to partner with. So, self-awareness is a very first step and it's useful. And it can also be about reflecting on your own previous experiences of the other setting.

I'm gonna do another short activity. And in this activity, there's 2 questions. So, the first one is, what are some common assumptions, bias, and preconceived ideas that people outside your workplace, or in the general community have about your education setting or your work? And the second question is around what do I already know or think about the other education setting, children's experiences there, and the work of educators within that setting? So, if you are working in an early childhood education care setting, that you would answer that question in relation to primary schools, and vice versa. If you're in primary school, think about that second question in relation to early childhood education and care services.

So please pause the video now for 5 minutes for this activity.

So, one way of creating some more overlap in our fields of experience is by developing our intersetting knowledge. So just recapping, intersetting knowledge, which we touched on in the first resource, it's a concept articulated by you Urie Bronfennbrenner and it’s knowledge that exists in one setting about the other and it's generated when educators have some understanding of the other setting and the role of educators within that setting. Intersetting knowledge can be gained in a number of ways, including by reading written information in transition statements, for example, by engaging in reciprocal visits, or working together on projects. Also in things like network meetings.

Generating intersetting knowledge may also lead to developing shared understandings, shared understandings about children, about education settings, among other things, are really key to communication, but also ultimately to partnerships. And in the first resource, we started to think about our own goals for partnerships and developing common goals. And in the same way, being intentional in developing shared understandings is really vital for successful partnerships.

Gonna pause again now to complete another activity. And in this one, we're gonna start thinking about what we would like to know about the other education setting and children's experiences there and the work of educators within that setting. So that's the first reflective question. And the second one is about what are some really important things I would like to tell or show my partners about my education setting, children's experiences here, and our work?

So please pause the video now for 2 minutes for this reflective activity.

So we know from recent research about transition partnerships that being able to articulate what it is that you do in your education setting is really important. So, taking the things you would like other educators to know about your work in your setting and spending some time writing that down, as we have today, and also then articulating to others will be a really helpful practise if you're not feeling very confident about articulating pedagogy and practise together. So hopefully this activity, if you are not confident about communicating that to other people outside of your organisation, the notes that you've taken today I hope will be helpful.

Moving on now to empowering partnerships. And to empower our partnerships, it's important to be aware of some potential power relations, particularly with respect to the early childhood education and care and primary school sectors in Australia having evolved from very different histories.

So, in terms of governance, early childhood education and care services for a long time sat within health and community services portfolios, and schools sat in dedicated education portfolios. And whilst this has now changed, it continues to be more difficult, for example, for education settings providing long daycare services to be regarded equally in both the education sector and in the general community as an education setting and as a valued place of children's early learning.

A feeling that our work of educators and our expertise is valued irrespective of the education setting we work in is really important. And successful collaborations between educators in primary and early childhood education and care services require ongoing communication that does convey value and the nurturing of relationships based on trust.

We're gonna engage in an activity now about building trust. When we use the transactional model of communication, trust has a really important influence on our communication. So, let's take a moment now to think about the kinds of things that build trust for us and the things that break trust. And this particular activity I learned from Kay Clancy, who works with organisations wishing to grow a culture of trust, and Kay calls this a trust bank. So, this can really be helpful as a self-reflection tool, but also in sharing with others who we are partnering with.

So, I'd like you to pause the video now for 5 minutes to write down your trust builders and breakers.

And if you're working together with a colleague today, you may like to share your thoughts. And whilst we've only dedicated a few minutes for this activity, please feel free to spend more time on this if needed. So please pause the video now.

So, some ways to build trust include what we call micro affirmations that help people to feel valued. So, things like saying hello, knowing everyone's names, acknowledging accomplishments, acknowledging even just the receipt of an email or a phone call, referring to the specifics of the conversation to show that you're listening, and asking others for their opinions and validating their experiences and expertise.

So, in Part 1, we've been particularly focused on understanding some of the barriers and enablers of effective partnerships through the lens of the transactional model of communication, elements which can be both enablers and barriers of trust, overlapping fields of experience and relations of power. And reflection through the activities we've been doing contributes to our planning for partnerships, such as discussions of our commonalities and awareness of the importance of trust and navigating power relations.

Let's move on now to Part 2: Planning for Partnership.

So, in their position statement on transition to school, the Educational Transitions and Change Research Group define transition to school as, "A dynamic process of continuity and change as children move into the first year of school." So, let's first consider continuity.

For some time, continuity has been promoted as a support for children and families during transition to school. If we think of what continuity generally means, we might think of a continuum or of something continuing on. So, continuity doesn't necessarily mean that things continue to be the same. So, if we think about a continuum, for example, movement along a continuum can be more about progression than sameness.

And children themselves have said in transitions research that they expect primary school to be different from early childhood education and care, but have also expressed a desire for some things to continue on into primary school, particularly recognition of their capabilities, strengths, and interests, and those being supported, and also opportunities for play. And quite a bit of research now has focused on the benefits of continuing children's learning journeys from early childhood education and care into school. And what was never intended though from advocates of continuity around transitions was the loss of aspects of early childhood education philosophy, values, and approaches in what has been termed a push down curriculum or a push down pedagogy. So pedagogies and expectations more suitable for upper primary school years being utilised in early childhood education and care, and in the early years of school. So, this is what Peter Moss terms schoolification of early childhood, and it has been of growing concern to international experts and something to be aware of as we seek partnerships between early childhood education and care services and schools in order to build continuity.

Transitions are about continuity, but they're also about change. So there's many things that children and families will need to make adjustments to during the transition to school, particularly changes in roles, in identity and expectations, and also in routines. Working in partnership, we can support children and families if they experience these many changes and adjustments. It can take very little time for some children and families and much longer for others. It's been quite common in transition research for families to say that it took themselves and their child a number of years to adjust to the changes resulting from becoming a student or a parent of a school student.

So, on the slide here is a list of things that have been highlighted as needing some continuity for children as they start school.

So, continuity of curriculum, of pedagogy, of relationships, and that's relationships with other children and with educators, continuity in the supports that children and families receive, continuity or progression in their learning journey, and continuity for children's wellbeing, for example, continuity in terms of a focus on supporting positive mental health and continuity in how children are supported when difficulties arise.

Can you think of any other aspects to consider that may be important to have some continuity for children and families?

The exchange of information between early childhood education and care services and school educators is widely promoted in the early childhood and primary sectors as one way of potentially providing continuity for children. For example, in the National Quality Standard, which sets the benchmark for early childhood education and care services in Australia, the exchange of information is contained within quality area number 6, collaborative partnerships with families and communities. So, continuity of learning and transitions for each child are supported by sharing information.

And exchanging information in this way also supports professional expectations like those contained in the Australian Professional Teaching Standards. So it supports that differentiating teaching to meet specific learning needs of students across all abilities and supporting student participation in supportive and safe learning environments.

And there is a lot to communicate about exchange information about, and communication that can support continuity and change includes seeking, providing, and responding to information about children's strengths, their interests and challenges, strategies to support children's wellbeing and learning, and also about curriculum and pedagogy.

For some communication between educators and exchange of information, you can use the transition statements. And this information can also be sought and provided during reciprocal visits, which has the added bonus of providing some valuable context for the information, and also opportunities to ask questions and be curious and seek clarification in two-way interaction. And we know from research that transition statements, or other written documents are really enhanced when there's also opportunities like this for two-way communication and the building of relationships that are built on mutual trust and respect. And that feedback about information provided in transition statements and how it's used by schools, we know is really important for early childhood education and care educators.

And educator relationships during transitions are best seen not just as context for sourcing or seeking information or such, but also as very valuable ongoing professional collaborations. And the bottom part of the slide here is about, we should really consider opportunities for partnerships for ongoing dialogue about connections between the early years learning framework and the K–6 curriculum, pedagogy which support transitions, and also ongoing dialogue about opportunities for partnerships all year round.

So, in the first resource, we started to develop our own goals for transition partnerships, and we are going to now think specifically about goals and visions for supporting continuity and change. And to assist in having conversations about this, here are three more dialogue cards from the Danish Evaluation Institute's tool, Working Together for a Strong Start to School. So, we've got some conversation cards that you can use together with your partners in schools or early childhood services. Children need continuity, children need to play and explore for themselves, and children should be supported in their own learning. So you can use these dialogue cards or similar questions to have conversations with your colleagues.

So, we're going to use these cards for an activity now, and this is around further developing goals and a vision for your partnership. So, choose a topic from one of these cards that you would like to discuss with the educators you are striving to partner with in schools or early childhood education and care services.

Talk to your colleague or write down what it is that you currently do in your own setting to provide for this. For example, if you are using the card around children need to play and explore for themselves, how you currently do that in your own setting. And then the third step is write down some beginning ideas about a goal you'd like to work towards and how you might be able to work towards this across both settings around the particular topic of the card that you've chosen.

So please pause the video now and spend 5 minutes to complete this activity.

So let's just recap Part 2 of this resource.

So, we've been building upon some of the plans that we started in the first resource about what you'd like to achieve from partnering with early childhood education and care services or school setting. And I hope these activities have [supported] you to have conversations about common goals and having a purpose and a vision for the partnership. And specifically, we've considered supporting children and families in relation to change and continuity during transitions to school. I'd like to leave you with these further resources and reading that you may wish to use in developing your partnerships. So you could use these resources as a stimulus for conversation about your shared goals for working together and where links are provided into this resource. There are lots of resources in the department's Transition to School webpage and the addresses on the screen. Two I've selected here are a transition animation and an article. The animation is about the goal of every student being known, valued, and cared for. And that is a goal you might like to partner with to support.

The article by Wahroonga Public School shows partnerships in action. So one thing that stood out in this resource for me is an insight provided about how school educators just simply knowing the names of educators in the children's early childhood education and care setting is really appreciated by children themselves. And this shows how intersetting knowledge, or knowledge of one setting that exists in the other, can provide a connection between setting.

The transition to school position statement as the third dot point on the slide there has been referred to in this resource and you may like to use that, and also the Working Together for a Strong Start to School Dialogue Tool by the Danish Evaluation Institute.

So that brings us to the end of this resource and this final slide has references and resources that you may like to draw upon as well.

Thank you very much and I'll see you next time.

[End of transcript]

Dr Kathryn Hopps

Welcome, everyone, to Deepening Partnerships, the third in a series of resources to support partnerships between primary schools and early childhood education and care services. I'm Kathryn Hopps, and I'm an adjunct research associate at Charles Sturt University. I also work for Early Childhood Australia as a BU consultant, and my background is working as an early childhood and primary teacher in early childhood education and care services, primary schools, and school aged care settings, and also as a teacher educator and transition to school researcher. I'd like to acknowledge that today I'm on Awabakal land, and pay my respects to their Awabakali Elders, the ancestors, the Elders of the past, and the children and young people who will be elders and leaders in the future. I'd also like to acknowledge my own personal past and current connections to Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal, and Wonnarua lands. I encourage you now to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that you are standing on in your own way.

So, let's start with a bit of an overview of the learning outcomes for today's resource. The first outcome is around developing an awareness of some successful transition partnerships between schools and early childhood education and care services, and also beginning to identify a range of opportunities for partnerships in your own community. And by doing this, we'll also be developing a knowledge of practices which can support the realisation of common goals. So, this resource has two parts.

In the first part, we're going to explore some of the particular general opportunities for partnerships between early childhood education and care services and schools.And in the second part, we're going to look at some specific examples of successful partnerships.

So, this resource can be used in a number of ways, including for individual learning and reflection, for watching together with a colleague, or at your own team, at your school or service, or for shared professional learning. So, for educators from schools and early childhood education and care settings together, and with the recording, of course, you can watch it in one sitting, or you can take your time to work through the sections by pausing and coming back over time. And critical reflection on practice is really important in striving to improve the transition experiences of children, families, and educators, and [I] encourage you to use this resource as a stimulus for learning, for reflection and for action. And you might find it's both very affirming of what you might already be doing, and also great for inspiring new actions, too.

So, let's move on to part one. This resource is titled Deepening Partnerships. And we're going to look at specific ways to work together. The collaboration continuum, which we looked at in the previous resource, is good to bear in mind for today, because the wide range of opportunities we'll look at in part one, and then the examples of practice in part 2 will sit on different parts of this continuum. Deeper relationships are likely to exist at the far end of the continuum, but often begin with the kinds of activities and communication you may be engaging in now or beginning to engage in with practices like reciprocal visits and the utilisation of transition statements. First, let's have a look at the types of partnership opportunities. Now I've categorised opportunities into 4 groups: transition activities, community transition plans, responding to community data, and pedagogical and curriculum initiatives.

So, let's have a look at transition activities, which you could partner to achieve. So, we've got on the screen here, the first dot point is around reciprocal visits. This is by groups of children from early childhood education and care services, together with their educators, for example, for a tour of the local primary school, visits to attend school assemblies for special activities such as book week or NAIDOC Week activities. But reciprocal visits by the term reciprocal, they also by groups of school students and educators to early childhood education and care services. So, this could be the students who are designated as buddies for the new school entrance, but it could also be students from other grades as well. And they may visit to do things like read to the children, or engage in other shared experiences. With reciprocal visits, we might also think about visits back to early childhood education and care services once children have begun at their new school.

So, one community who was involved in my PhD research took their Kindergarten students on a visit to one of the early childhood education and care services in Term 2. And it was a lovely way to reconnect and revisit the place and the people and experiences that they had so enjoyed. The second dot point on the slide there is around sharing. So, there's lots of resources that you might share between settings, such as providing books, books about your school and social stories, or videos such as what a day in Kindergarten is like, and reciprocally, books about early childhood education and care settings. It's really nice for children to have something in school to remember those experiences, the people, and the places from their early childhood. If you have an early childhood education and care or school mascot, they could visit the school, or the early learning service accompanied by a diary. Schools might like to also share uniforms with early childhood services, like to set up a school play area. The third dot point there is around communication and connection with families. So, you can partner together to plan and implement information nights, forums, webinars, provision of all sorts of information. You can also partner to plan for transitions for individual children, such as children who have diverse learning and care needs. You can also partner around information exchange, so that exchange of transition statements and information about school transition programs. You can also partner to plan for whole community school starters transition to school.

So, the department has a transition timeline for schools, which you could use to identify a range of activities that could be done in partnership with early childhood education and care services for a whole-of-community transition activities, celebrations and events. This could also extend to developing a community transition to school website or social media page. And we'll have a look at some examples of communities who have done this in part 2. There's also many opportunities to work in partnership around pedagogy and curriculum. So, some examples of this include shared excursions and incursions, so planning these together, linking them to your curriculum, sharing those links. So, when I was teaching at a preschool in Victoria, I worked with two local schools to organise a bush walk in Chiltern-Mt. Pilot National Park, and also a talk from some people from the friends of the National Park. We'd also meet in the community garden together once a term. And one of the schools also had a plot there. So, the children from the preschool, and also from the school, would tend the vegetables and herbs together. We also worked with the local primary schools on a health initiative together, where we planned for lots of different things, including a community Ride to School day. And so, these types of activities are more than familiarisation activities. They weren't just about transition. They were linked to curriculum and planned together. They're also linked to whole-of-community health outcomes. And sometimes those types of activities also involved other people from the community. You can also use information that you exchange to plan for teaching, learning and wellbeing.

So, transition statements exchange, which can now happen digitally, but you may consider still getting together to discuss the statements, and also begin to look at planning for teaching learning and wellbeing. These types of collaborations are most valuable and effective when there's that two-way conversation and provision of feedback. So, knowing how the information gained in transition statements and reciprocal visits and professional conversations for early childhood education and care educators, it's really affirming if they have that two-way flow of information about what happened with the information that they provided. You can also partner around connecting the Early Years Learning Framework and the K–6 curriculum. So, having conversations about how the two are connected are really valuable. I've sat in on early years network meetings where this was actively worked on together. So, each group in that particular network meeting took one focus, such as literacy, and looked at the K–6 curriculum, and the Early Years Learning Framework and also identified how this was provided for in each setting, and how they could provide that continuum of learning journey for children.

So, the fourth point there is around fostering early mathematics, literacy, social and emotional skills in partnership with families. So, there's all sorts of initiatives that you could partner together to work on. So for example, the Smith Family's Let's Count Program, where early childhood educators work with families to build early literacy and numeracy. That program and experiences can be extended into primary school. And one community I worked with in my PhD research, both the early childhood education and care educator and the Kindergarten teacher were involved in the Paint the Town Red or Read initiative. And through attending those planning meetings together, they'd become really well known to each other, and they both shared a commitment and interest in early literacy, and Paint the Town Red, or Paint the Town Read, is a perfect initiative to collaborate around, because it involves a shared vision around early literacy, and the whole thing is based on community collaboration. You can also partner together around developing shared pedagogy and programs. So, this is where there's a very intentional approach in trying to use similar early childhood pedagogy across early childhood education and care services in school. So for example, utilising play-based pedagogy or investigations pedagogy, loose parts play, bush Kindergarten programs, for example, learning your local Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language from language custodians.

The learning beginning in early childhood education and care services and continuing into primary school is another idea for an initiative that you could partner around. And there's also shared professional learning and shared actions. So, this might be where educators not only attend professional learning together, but also discuss how they'll action that in their own services and schools, and possibly plan for collective actions. For example, you might attend professional learning together on trauma-informed practice, and then discuss how this can be applied in each setting. And with that view of providing continuity for children and families. You can also partner around responding to community data. So, you can draw upon a range of data sources to identify and respond to community needs, community challenges, and strength and interests as well, including AEDC data. You can also use transition evaluation information. You could also use results from family surveys, student or child surveys. You could also use just general feedback from families or insights from conversations with families, for example, families who may have started school in the last couple of years. You might also consider a range of other formal and informal data sources. So for example, if you identify informally in your community that families are concerned this year about separation anxiety, you could collaborate on this in terms of the actions that you might take, so, what information you're going to provide, and how, and when.

So, both early childhood education and care services in schools, embedding information about separation anxiety into parent information books, providing opportunities to discuss this on enrolment, including information nights or in webinars. You might want to work together to purchase books or pamphlets to source some really good information. And it might be about including books for children in early learning service and schools. And also, it could be about sharing practices about what's worked well in early childhood education and care services, and how children have been supported with separations there, but also providing some information about how separations are supported at school as well.

You could also draw on more formal data. So for example, the AEDC, Australian Early Development Census. For example, if the emotional maturity domain is one that you'd like to address for your community, you can partner with together with schools and early childhood education and care services to plan a local response. So, that might include an intentional focus on children's social-emotional wellbeing, and making visible what it is that early childhood education and care services do to support this, and also what schools do [to] support this as well. It could also be around getting together to talk about what information you might provide for families, connections with broader community, and mental health services.

If you're looking for some ideas for more ways to reach out to the schools, or early childhood education and care services that you'd like to partner with, here are some challenge cards from the Illawarra Transition to School Program.

[Cards:

• Promote professional development for educators and families relating to transition to school.
• Contact your local school and ask to attend a school assembly.
• Organise a BBQ with your local school.]

These ideas are suggested for early childhood education and care services to action, but I equally think these are a great resource for schools as well, and for primary schools, a reminder that there is a fantastic department resource, it's called the Transition Practices Checklist, that can assist you to plan for a range of transition practices that support continuity of children's learning and the development of relationships with early childhood education and care services, other professionals, and families as well.

We're going to do a little activity now for you to take 5 minutes to write down what are some of your current programs, activities, initiatives, practices, or current priorities, which could become partnership opportunities? So, when you're thinking about this and writing down some ideas, you might consider opportunities that you could action now, in this term, almost like a quick win, something that you could do fairly immediately. But also think about other things that you think might be possible, or you'd like to explore in the future. So, I invite you to pause the video now for 5 minutes, and jot down some of your partnership opportunities.

So part 2, Partnerships in Practice. I'm going to have a look at some examples now of early childhood education and care services who are engaging in transition activities that involve partnerships with school. One of the case studies on the department's website around early learning transitions is from Albury Preschool. And in this video, the director, Jo Barton, speaks about the range of transition activities and connections they have with local schools. So, let's watch the video now.

[video playing]

Jo Barton

Albury Preschool is situated in Central Albury, but it's in a unique position away from most primary schools in the area. Our closest one is 2 kilometres away, and we draw and send children to eight local primary schools and seven independent schools. So, transition is a process we've really had to engage and work with in order to make it a successful transition for kids. We believe that ongoing strong partnerships with family schools and our community lead to lifelong benefits for children. So, we believe transition is a very positive process that we like to be engaged in. So, over the years, we have established visiting programs with several of our major primary schools that we feed to. The schools bring year 5 students to our preschool to visit with our children. When the primary school children visit, they also develop skills in dealing with younger children. So, it's a positive experience for them as well. They will be the buddies of these children when they do attend school. They engage in experience with our children in everyday learning opportunities, reading stories, and introducing some of the programs that they will learn when they do transition to school.

We are going to send some questions to the kinder kids at Albury Public School. If you have a question about what you want to know at big school, what happens, or something that you are worried about, or something you just want to find out about, put your hand up, and I will choose you. Cooper? Matisse?

Student

Where do they have lunch?

Jo Barton

Oh, that's a good question. because I don't know where they have lunch. I'm sure they'll be able to answer for us though. Flynn?

Flynn

What type of play do you get?

Jo Barton

Great question, I would love to know what there is to play with at school. Lulu?

Lulu

What do we make at big school?

Jo Barton

Oh, I wonder what you do get to make, I'm sure you get to make things as well as learn things. We also host a parent information night here with a local assistant principal presenting to families information about working with the school, and supporting their child's strengths and interests in preparing for school readiness. Our staff engage in professional development opportunities, which is offered in partnership with our local schools. This facilitates relationship and network building, as well as ensuring the knowledge of our Early Years Learning Framework and the primary school key learning areas within the curriculum can be considered in both our program and practices. Staff also make themselves available to meet with school principals and teachers at both our preschool and at primary schools to support sharing knowledge, and help with the smooth transition to school, especially with children with additional needs.

We've also developed our own transition to school booklet that we give to families at the beginning of Term 4. These have pictures of areas of the school that they will be attending, information about the school, pictures of teachers, things that may worry them. And this was developed with the children themselves asking what they would like to know about the schools they're going to attend. And they're just simple things like, where are the toilets? What can I do if I need help? And those sorts of things. So, they're a nice little resource that we also offer to our children in their transition to school. The outcomes that we're looking to achieve in these transition activities is a smooth and stress-free transition for children and families to develop stronger partnerships with our schools, and develop support skills in the primary children, and more knowledge of the needs, fears, and expectations of the preschool children with whom they'll be working with. And lastly, it's all about empowering the children to make transition a positive experience through building their knowledge.

[video ends]

Kathryn Hopps

Okay, so the second dot point on the slide there says Good Start Learning Bathurst, because they have also engaged in a variety of activities and connections, including being involved in a local transition to school network. The service was awarded the excellent rating by SEQTA in 2020, and their partnerships with community were particularly noted in this awarding, and in the article published on SEQTA's website to announce their excellent rating, two of their partnership practices included that the service worked with a local Kindergarten teacher and a principal to provide visual resources for a child to support their settling in and class engagement, and through their own partnership with the Bathurst Local Aboriginal Land Council, which saw them being granted permission by the local Wiradjuri people to access a site for its bush kindy program, which was available to toddlers through the preschool children. They then supported a local primary school to introduce a K-2 bush kindy program, and receive permission to access a local site for the school's program. So, some fantastic examples of some partnership practices.

So, let's move on now to a couple of examples of collaborations around responding to AEDC data. One of the case studies featured on the New South Wales department website transition webpage is about Oakhill Drive Public School and one of their strategies for transitions is collaborating with early childhood services. So, quoting from the case study, which you can read in full via the link, the school works directly with 12 early childhood education and care services as part of the transition to school process.

Oakhill Drive Public School maintains relationships with all the early childhood education and care services that feed into their school through a range of practices. This includes having regular communication with each service, attending the services for observations of children, sharing videos developed by the school to build children's familiarity, and providing parent information sessions for all families at the early childhood education and care service.

It has the strongest collaborative relationship with AppleTree Preschool, and this service is closely located to Oakhill Drive Public School, and the majority of AppleTree preschool children attend the public school. The school describes its relationship with AppleTree as strong and reciprocal. The school and the service communicate regularly throughout the year to prepare for transitions. Children at AppleTree attend the school for visits, including library lessons, playground time, and assemblies to build familiarity with the school setting. The school also shares resources with the service to assist the transition process, including the school social story, uniforms, and school videos, introducing the teachers and the school, and showing what a day in the life of Kindergarten is like. And a quote from Natalie Masiti, the Assistant Principal. In this article, she says it's about connecting both ways.

So for us, sharing information with the services, but also having the service share information with us in order to support families. Another example is from Kurri Kurri and District Preschool. This story features on the AEDC website, and includes a number of strategies to address data indicating developmental vulnerability in physical health. And one of the ways they did this was involvement in a local network of early childhood services, including long daycare services and primary schools. The network members meet once every school term to discuss ways to strengthen physical health programs for children.

Another way to build partnerships and to actually enact partnership are networks. So, network groups are a fantastic way to do this, and there's some great examples all over Australia, and there's some networks which focus specifically on transition to school. And there's other networks which have a general early-years focus. So, networks can actually be considered a transition pedagogy in themselves, as they're often the place with the planning, and the coordination, and the collaboration for a transition activities projects actually occurs. And so whilst networking sits at the beginning of the collaboration continuum, networks over time are places where trust builds, and that coordination, cooperation, and collaboration can happen.

In research by Jesse Davies who studied a number of transition to school networks in Australia, educators perceive them to be a worthwhile strategy to enhance transition to school experiences. And the networks offered a space for educators to come together and work collaboratively with one another with the specific aim of promoting positive transition to school in their communities. The networks were where education settings worked on a range, wide range of transition projects, including things like organising buddy visits, all about school books, reciprocal visits, and also information notes.

One of the examples of transition practice on the New South Wales Department Transition webpage is for the Wahroonga Public School, and a talking transition network, which is made up of the school and a number of their local early childhood education and care services. And so the meetings are conducted once a term, and the hosting of those meetings is shared. And if you follow the link to the article, there are also tips for setting up a network. And whilst networks might seem like a big thing to achieve from where you might be starting from right now, they often do start small.

And I have experience in initiating two transition to school networks. The first one began at the school I was doing my internship at, and I gathered together the theatre Early Childhood Education and Care Services, and the other one, I started as the preschool teacher, and gathered the schools together. They do rely on leadership, and ideally a team of people driving them. And those networks that are sustained usually adopt some form of shared leadership approach. And they also have a strong shared vision and purpose. And some networks have partners and members other than early childhood services and schools.

So, the second dot point on the screen there is the Far North Early Childhood Network, which is in Queensland, and it has many partners. They include from health, from family and community support services, and early childhood primary and vocational and tertiary education. And on their website, they've put that their vision is raising the profile of the importance of the early years by linking early childhood professionals across Far North Queensland with a goal of supporting every child to enter school healthy and ready to engage in learning. So, you can read more about these two particular networks in the web links provided.

You can also partner together around specific projects. So the Illawarra Transition to School Project grew out of the original Wollongong Transition to School Network, and it's been operating since 2005. It is funded by Families New South Wales, and managed by an organisation called Big Fat Smile. And it has a really long history of transition projects, including the development of a starting school brochure for families, parent expos, and also hosting a Lord Mayor's Picnic in the Park for school starters for all children starting school in the community. They've also developed a starting school mascot called Billy Backpack, which was based on a winning children's drawing design for a mascot. And Billy appears at the picnic and in real life, and is the project's logo on their merchandise, and also available for schools and early learning services to borrow. And this project is so well-regarded that Tracey Kirk-Downey and Shabnam Hinton wrote a chapter in an international transitions book published in 2014. And their work has inspired the projects of many other transition networks in Australia.

And one of those is the Bathurst Child and Family Network, who began a School Starters picnic in 2017, which also included a School Starters parade. They also have a School Starters drawing display in the town library and in shop windows. And there is a transition to school network as a subgroup of the broader Child and Family Network, and they have meet and greet networking nights. And if you'd like to read more about these projects, there are web links that are provided in the resource and reference section.

Another idea for a partnership or collaboration is the development of a community transition to school website. You could also work collaboratively to develop transition pages of your own schools, or early childhood education and care service website. And there's three here examples on the slide, and browsing, having a little look at this fantastic work might also inspire other ideas for your own partnership practices or projects. So, the Central Coast Transition to School Project have a brilliant website, and in particular, there's a fantastic 'Let's Yarn About Big School' book, which was collaboratively produced involving Killara Preschool and Shickley Public School.

There's also social media pages connected with some of these websites, which are a great way to engage families and community in an ongoing basis, and advertise your transition events, and also drive people to new things on your website as well.

So, you can also partner around pedagogy and curriculum. So Nicola Yelland and Elise Waghorn researched a transition collaboration in South Australia, the STEM Bridge project, which was an initiative of the Department of Education in South Australia. And quoting directly from this research paper, this project was a sustained collaboration between preschool, which is called pre-kindergarten in South Australia, and the first year of school teachers over a period of a school year. The project was named the STEM Bridge, as the goal was to build a bridge between the preschool and school, so that transition was possible. The project took place in 6 public school sites, where preschools were co-located with them, and the project educators worked collaboratively to create STEM learning ecologies.

I just want to share one example from this study where a school and a preschool site, they wanted to build some continuity for children in introducing play-based pedagogies in the school setting, and to increase children's agency in their learning at school. So, they chose, in consultation with children, loose parts play for their STEM investigations, as this was something already embedded in the preschool, and something children said was one of the big differences between preschool and school, and something that they missed. This then led to the school accessing some funds to purchase materials in a shed to store them in close to the first year of school classrooms, so that students could continue using loose parts play in their STEM investigations at school as they had done at preschool.

And another project involved a school and a preschool having shared STEM learning time together on a piece of nearby native bushland where children from the preschool and the school and their educators engaged in inquiry-based learning. And there were many professional conversations between the educators that needed to occur to do this work, including how they could meet the expectation of the Early Years Learning Framework, and the South Australian equivalent of the K–6 curriculum, and STEM really was the medium that they used to explore how they could include the play-based pedagogy in school. And there are many different mediums that you could use if you would like to work on a pedagogical collaboration such as this one.

So, as you focus on the next steps, and the here and now, and transitions for children this year, and some of the projects and networks and collaborations I've introduced to you in this session, you might be feeling that they're not something that you know you can achieve in the short term. However, those seeds that you're sowing at the moment when you might be going about reciprocal visits and interactions over the next few terms, these could very well grow into something much bigger over time. The important thing is to start to reach out, and that starting small and nurturing trusting relationships can eventually lead to bigger things like pedagogical collaborations. Before we move on to our final activity, I'd really like to acknowledge and say thank you to all of the early childhood education and care services and schools whose practices, projects, and collaborations that we've looked at today, that may inspire future practices and collaborative partnerships for transition. I'm going to pause now to do our reflective activity.

What's one idea presented today which you'd like to try in partnering with an early childhood education and care service or school? And when we think about, and maybe write down some notes about this, consider how this idea might address any of the common goals that you have for partnering together for transition. So, I invite you now to pause the video for 5 minutes to record your reflections. That brings us to the end of the resource. The two final slides contain resources, which I've mentioned throughout the presentation today, and the web links that you can access them, and also some references for the studies that I referred to around transition partnerships. So thank you everyone, and I hope to see you next time.

[End of transcript]

Dr Kathryn Hopps

Welcome everyone to Embedding, Sustaining and Evaluating Partnerships. The fourth in a series of resources to support partnerships between primary schools and early childhood education and care services. I'm Kathryn Hopps, and I'm an Adjunct Research Associate at Charles Sturt University. I also work for Early Childhood Australia as a BU consultant, and my background is as an early childhood primary teacher, both early childhood education and care services, primary schools, and school aged care settings, but also as a teacher educator and a transition to school researcher. I'd like to acknowledge that today I am talking to you from Ngunna Dharra Ngunnawal Land, and I pay my respects to the Ngunnawal Elders, the ancestors, the Elders of the past, and the children and young people who will be elders and leaders in the future. I'd also like to acknowledge my own personal past and current connections to Wiradjuri, Awabakal, and Wonnarua lands. I encourage you now to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of land that you are standing on in your own way.

Let's begin with a bit of an overview and the learning outcomes for this resource. So, they are around understanding some of the ways that partnerships can be embedded in practice and sustained over time. Going to begin to plan for how partnerships with transitions can be evaluated or reviewed to inform future directions. And we're also going to build some intersetting knowledge about key documents in primary schools and early childhood education and care settings. And this resource has 2 parts. In the first part we're going to explore some opportunities for partnerships to be embedded and sustained, and particularly looking at how we can back up and support the introduction of something new, such as transition partnerships, including practices like reciprocal visits and the changes in practices that might result from this to help ensure that these become part of the business as usual or the everyday practices in the long term. And at the same time, this is also about providing an impetus or motivation for away into these by linking them to key guiding documents, and goals, and plans, philosophy, or visions that we are already setting out to achieve. In the second part, we're going to look at the importance of evaluation. We'll link it back to part one in terms of evaluation being really key for sustainment of transition partnerships. And also we'll outline that evaluating transitions can be a partnership activity or opportunity in itself.

So, this resource can be used in a number of ways, including for individual learning and reflection or for watching together with a colleague, or your own team at your school of service, or for shared professional learning, so learning together with educators from primary schools and early childhood education care services together. Obviously with the recording you can watch it in one sitting or take your time to work through the sections by pausing and coming back. So, that critical reflection on practice is really important in striving to improve the transition experiences of children, families, and educators. And I encourage you to use this resource as a stimulus for learning that reflection and the action that results from it as well. And it can be used for both affirming what you're already doing and inspiring new actions as well. All the resources and references that I mentioned in the resource are all pulled together in a resource and reference list, which is available to you as well. So, let's move into part one. So, first let's have a look what I mean by embedding and sustaining partnerships. So, thinking about embedding, when we embed something into practice, it becomes part of what we do, rather than seen as an additional or extra thing to do. It's seen as part of standard practice and regarded as such rather than potentially feeling like a bit of a burden. So further, when a practice is embedded, you can see that commitment to it reflected in many places, you know, there's follow through.

So, we'll be looking at ways that transition partnerships can be backed up and supported shortly. So, what do I mean by sustaining? So, the word cloud on the slide here captures some of the words that come to mind for me when I think about sustaining something like transition partnerships. So, there's words here like endurance, to continue, or continuation, to keep something going in the long term, to persevere, to maintain, or prolong. Sustain change is of course influenced by many things. So, favourable conditions, support and encouragement from leadership, resources including funding, capacity, workloads, those many competing priorities, and also individual and collective motivation. There's a couple of quotes here on the slide and they are from a group of German transition researchers and they really sum up for me about the importance of attending to how we can embed and sustain partnerships between early childhood education and care and schools. So the first one is, "Professional cooperation has to be embodied into the concepts of the institutions in order to promote long-term sustainability of the established cooperation." And also that, "Cooperation based solely on positive collegial relationships is likely to collapse in the event of personnel challenges." And we all know too well how changes in staffing impact particular initiatives in schools and early childhood education care services.

So, seeking to embed can help really sustain and survive the absence of particular individual people. So, let's look at one way to embed and sustain, and that is to link transition partnerships and connect them to the key responsibilities that we already have. So, if we can connect transition practices, including partnerships to these, it can assist to embed and sustain them and also be an enabler of implementation, and a motivation to keep them going, because they're assisting you to achieve what you're already trying to do and meeting your key responsibilities. And I've used a Venn diagram here on the slide to show a few of the key documents which outline responsibilities that we might utilise to embed and sustain transition partnerships. So, for early childhood education and care services we have the Early Years Learning Framework and the National Quality Standard. And for primary schools we've got the K–6 Curriculum and the School Excellence Framework. And then in the middle of the Venn diagram, and applying to both, early childhood education care and schools, are the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. There are other examples of requirements of both sectors, such as the Child Safe Standards, but we'll focus on the ones on the screen for today. You might be able to think of some other ones as well.

So, on the slide here are two key documents relating to the responsibilities of early childhood education and care services. So, on the left we've got the National Quality Standard, which sets the national benchmark for early childhood education and care services. And there's seven quality areas which are assessed by the regulatory authority, and services are rated on these. In terms of partnerships for transitions, for the NQS, this falls under quality Area 6, which is called collaborative partnerships with families and communities, and more specifically 6.2, which is collaborative partnerships enhance children's inclusion. 6.2.1, continuity of learning and transitions for each child are supported by sharing information and clarifying responsibilities. And 6.2.3, the service builds relationships and engages with its community. So, on the right there we've got the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, and it is the approved national learning framework, and it's required by national law based on it. The second updated version has just been recently released, and it includes principles, practices, and learning outcomes, which guide the curriculum and pedagogy of early learning service educators.

Collaborative partnerships between school and early charter education and care services can potentially reflect many of the principal's underlying practice in the Early Years Learning Framework, including partnerships, respect for diversity, equity, inclusion, and high expectations. Continuity of learning and transitions are a practice embedded in the Early Years Learning Framework as well, including that educators work collaboratively with each child's new educator, teachers in schools, and other professionals to ensure a successful transition. And interestingly, on its own, the word transition appears in the Early Years Learning Framework 33 times and continuity is in there 14 times. So, it's fair to say supporting transitions and continuity are an expectation of the work of early childhood education and care services and educators. So, on the screen now are two documents which reflect some of the key responsibility of primary schools, the School Excellence Framework and the K–6 Curriculum.

On the left, the framework identifies quality practice in learning, teaching and leading. And it's designed to assist schools to engage in continuous improvement. The overall focus is about students being known, valued, and cared for. And one of the themes in the framework, under the learning domain learning culture, is transitions and continuity of learning. There are many ways that initiatives that involve partnerships between early childhood education care services and schools can support the domain of the framework. And this includes, but it's not limited to, the learning domain with the wellbeing focus. For example, to support every child's wellbeing, seeking the expertise of children's early childhood educators about how children's wellbeing has been supported in their prior school settings can assist to provide for continuity in wellbeing supports in the early years of school. Finding out about children's social and emotional learning, how that's been facilitated and intentionally planned for and implemented in the early childhood education and care service is also a fantastic way to continue on from children's prior experiences.

So, hopping over to the right of the slide there is a list of the K–6 Curriculum syllabus taught in the Early Stage 1 Kindergarten. In this list there's some new syllabus which started to be taught from Term 1 in 2023. So, both early childhood education and care services and schools are learning, unpacking, implementing new curriculum documents this year, 2023. So, how can transition partnerships support responsibilities in the K–6 Curriculum? Well, in addition to information that school educators gain in your own assessments of children's learning, including in the Best Start Assessment, information from transition statements and information also gained in reciprocal visits and in conversation with early childhood education and care educators can provide really valuable insight into where children are at in relation to working towards Early Stage 1 outcomes across these subject areas. For example, in a reciprocal visit, school teachers may be informed that children at a particular early childhood service have already been learning aboriginal languages as part of the educational program, or how children have been engaging with the creative arts through incursions, excursions, and regular access to art resources in the learning environment.

In relation to PD/Health/PE, school educators may be informed that children have been involved in the Munch and Move program. Observation, as well as professional discussion with early childhood education and care colleagues can be really beneficial in this regard. And acknowledging that children are coming to school with a rich range of experiences and early childhood settings, and then responding to what children already know and can do in planning, teaching, and learning programs, particularly in the early weeks of school. Discussion and learning about the mathematics curriculum in Kindergarten can also assist early childhood education and care educators to know what's covered so that they feel less pressure to introduce formal academics and more freedom to engage children in mathematics through play and exploration, knowing that it's still contributing to numeracy without the need to replicate formal teaching and mathematics, which will happen in later school years. So, transition partnerships can really enhance planning for teaching and learning across the K–6 Curriculum.

So, for teachers in both sectors, engaging in partnerships between early childhood education and care schools addresses a number of professional knowledge, professional practice, and professional engagement standards. On the screen, it's not an exhaustive list at all, but it's just three examples of the ways that professional conversations, reciprocal visits, exchanging transition statements can develop your teaching practice and expertise. So, that standard one, know students and how they learn. 1.5, differentiating teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities. Standard 4 creating and maintaining supportive and safe learning environments, particularly 4.1, supporting student participation. And standard 7, engaging professionally with colleagues, parents, and carers in the community. 7.3, engaging with parents and carers. And 7.4 is engaging with professional teaching networks and broader communities.

To take things further from knowledge of how transition practices are so important for our work from the documents that we've just looked at, to embedding that then into the documents that you develop, right, and action is really key. So, for early childhood education and care services, we have the Quality Improvement Plans. We've also got opportunities to do this in the services philosophy statement, you might even have a vision statement, individual professional learning plans, and in your policies and procedures. Those just are some of the documents that you might be able to embed transitions and partnerships into.

And for primary schools, we've got opportunities in School Excellence Plans (SEP), and your reports, and also the school vision. So, for example, one simple action could be to audit these documents and see if transitions or partnerships are already reflected in them in some way. Perhaps that's really explicitly, but perhaps it's reflected more generally. And if they aren't as yet, you know, you might like to table this for discussion with your team and your community when it comes time to develop or review them. If you can think of any other key guiding documents that you have for your setting that aren't on this list, it'd be really great at this time to note those.

Let's have a little bit more of a look into some opportunities to embed transitions and partnership. So, related to the National Quality Standard and the national law and regulations require that early childhood education and care services have a Quality Improvement Plan, or a QIP, which we call it for short. So QIPs must be regularly reviewed, at least annually, and they've got to be available on requests by families enrolled with children enrolled at the service, or for inspection by an authorised officer of their regulatory authority. There's no requirement for early childhood education and care services to publicly publish their Quality Improvement Plans.

So, if you are a school interested in learning about what areas of improvement are the focus of your local early childhood services, I'd suggest contacting service directors or including these as an item in your collaborative transition discussions. Quality Improvement Plans, you know, help services self-assess how they're going in delivering quality education and care and for planning for future improvements. And the QIP also helps regulatory authorities with assessing the quality of the service.

The QIP includes the identification of strengths as well as areas for improvement. And all 7 areas of the National Quality Standards must be addressed in these plans, and services can strive for an exceeding the NQS rating, also need to address three additional exceeding themes. On the screen now is an excerpt from ACECQA's Quality Improvement Plan template. And you can see in the below image that one of the exceeding themes is practice is shaped by meaningful engagement with families and/or community, which is where early childhood education care services can also highlight partnerships with schools.

Let's move on to look at primary schools and the School Excellence Plan (SEP). So, all New South Wales public schools develop and publish a School Excellence Plan, or a SEP. Schools self-assess using the School Excellence Framework, which informs the SEP. The School Excellence Plan (SEP) details the steps that schools will take to improve learning outcomes and the achievement and growth of all students. So, just like the Quality Improvement Plans in early childhood education and care services, the School Excellence Plan (SEP) are about ensuring continuous improvement. So, SEPs are linked to school budgets, so they're quite key to resourcing things like new innovations and practices. And it's a requirement that plans are published. And if you are an early childhood education care services interested to read the School Excellence Plans (SEP) of your local schools, they're easily accessible on New South Wales government school websites. And each plan can include up to 3 strategic directions. And whilst one of them must be student growth and attainment, the others can be identified from a self-assessment and situational analysis.

Other examples of strategic directions are teaching, learning, and innovation, connect, succeed and thrive, or connection and belonging, wellbeing, engagement, and high expectations. One strategic direction that transitions and transition partnerships relate to is those around wellbeing, connection, and belonging. Transition partnerships could be one of the initiatives that you identify to address your purpose and improvement measures in relation to things like reported sense of belonging to the school community, positive relationships amongst students and families, and positive sense of wellbeing.

Another example of where transition practices, including partnerships, can be included in a School Excellence Plan (SEP) is for student growth and attainment. For example, if you have improvement measures around student attendance, working in partnership with early childhood education care services who have already established positive relationships with families, you could work together to listen to child and family concerns about starting school, which you can then action to positively influence attendance, particularly in the early years of school. So, structurally, QIPs and SEPs have some commonalities.

So, you may like to discuss with your transition partners any similar goals you may have as a way of further exploring ways that you might work together in the long term. We're going to do a little reflection activity now. So, reflecting on your own Quality Improvement Plan or School Excellence Plan (SEP), or other plans that you might have, is there something in the plan currently that transition partnerships could support? And the second part of this activity is, is there an opportunity in the future to include transitions and transition partnerships in these plans? So, I invite you now to pause this video for about 4 or 5 minutes to jot down your reflections.

So, let's move now onto part 2. What I've learned recently from implementation scientist, Robert Milton, is that evaluation is widely understood in that field of research as being really key to the sustainment of innovations. So, collecting and analysing data over time informs ongoing continuous improvement and make sure we don't continue to do things that are ineffective or effective for one group and not another. And you've got your own evidence base to move forward on. So, this is particularly important for promising practices which have an evidence base, but their success depends on the context in which they're implemented. So, things like reciprocal visits and the exchange of transition statements, professional notes, shared professional learning, they're promising practices. But it really depends on the context in which they're implemented. So, when we evaluate or review something, we might immediately think about anecdotal feedback that we might've received or our own teams thoughts and feelings about how things have been going with something that we've been implementing. But in this section of the session, we're going to look at how to plan for the collection of data from a range of stakeholders about transitions more generally, but also specifically about partnership practices.

Let's begin by watching a section of one of the videos in the series of conversations on transition with Sue Dockett and Bob Perry on the department's website. So, I'm just going to stop sharing my screen and share the video with you.

[Video playing.]

Jacqui Ward

We're here today in our conversation series on transition with renowned academics, Sue Dockett and Bob Perry. So welcome.

Bob Perry

Thank you.

Jacqui Ward

And this conversation series number 4 is talking about evaluation of transition programs and practices. So, I guess the sort of million-dollar question here is what constitutes an effective transition?

Bob Perry

I think that's a really interesting question, and many people will have different answers. Obviously, a transition program needs to be effective for all the people involved. So, it's not just a matter of the children, the teachers, the Kindergarten teachers need to feel that it's effective for them, the preschool teachers need to feel that it's effective for them as well, families, community, and so on and so forth. So, what does it mean to be effective? Well, certainly in terms of the children, we would look at it in terms of their feeling as though they belong in the school, that the school is for them, that they're learning, that they've got friends, and so on. For the teachers in Kindergarten effectiveness probably means that things go along as they were planned, that the children feel comfortable, and that there's effective learning going on, that the children are learning things.

For families, effectiveness might mean feeling comfortable about finding out what goes on in the school, finding out just how the school works and how they work within the school community. So, effectiveness depends on who you are and what you're trying to do. But it also depends on what is the overall aim of the transition. And so we need, before we can talk about effectiveness to say, well, effectiveness for whom?

[Video stops.]

Dr Kathryn Hopps

So, really just a little snippet there from Bob, and Sue, and Jacqui. And the main point that they make really well in that little segment is that evaluating transitions together is a really valuable thing to do in and of itself as a partnership activity. And you might like to look at transitions generally rather than a specific practice to do this, or you could focus on one particular aspect, like your partnerships. So, let's now have a look at ways that you might partner to evaluate transitions. So, when planning a shared evaluation, there are some questions to consider. So, firstly that what will be evaluated? Is it the whole transition experience or is it a particular practice that you have been implementing? Against what will we evaluate? So, this is really important to link it back to, it could be your individual or common goals, it could be a process or an outcome type of evaluation. So, it could be around the process, so for partnerships, the process of developing the partnerships or could be what happened as a result.

Next question is, who will we ask? And I invite you to consider a range of people here. So, children, families, educators, community. So, those holistic approaches are best where we seek multiple viewpoints. Next question is when will we ask? So, do we want to just ask a one-off or at multiple points in time? So, it's important to start somewhere and it might be that you could collect some data at one point of time, for example, it could be at the end of Term 1 after children have started school, or it might be at the end of Kindergarten. However, we know that asking across time is important because for some children and families, transition occurs over many weeks, months, and sometimes years. For example, you might like to follow up with children in grade two. So, they're reflecting on their transition experiences down the track.

Another question is, so how will we measure this? So, what are some indicators and how can they be measured? So, if we're interested in the extent to which children and families feel connected and a sense of belonging, how can that be asked about? We know there's surveys for older students about this, but how might we ask younger students and their families? And not on the slide, but a further point, is how we're going to document? So, the planning documents that've been using for this transition partnership project could be used as somewhere that you could record evaluation. Also, early childhood education and care services could use their quality improvement plan and schools could use the planning document that's provided. So, we're going to stop here for a reflective activity here. So, in relation to that second point on the previous slide, against what will we evaluate? If we want to focus on an outcomes evaluation, we might look at our outcome goals. So, it's likely that one of your goals for transitions and possibly also for your partnerships might relate to effective or successful transition. So, first, it's important to discuss what an effective or successful transition is. This could be just listing the first words that spring to mind, or it could be further developing them into a sentence or a paragraph.

So, I invite you to think about indicators. So, how is this expressed? How do we know and what will educators hear, see, and feel when a transition has been effective or successful? So, invite you now to stop the video for about 4 or 5 minutes and write down your thoughts about what is an effective or a successful transition and listing some of the indicators that transition has been effective for children, educators, and families. Going to have a look now at a couple of examples of shared evaluations. So, early childhood education and care services and schools working together to gather and respond to evaluation data. So, drawing on a study of children's transitions in Iceland and its recommendations, here's an example of how children can be involved in developing transition programs. And how listening to children's advice can also improve collaboration between early childhood education and care and primary schools and the resulting transition practices. So, please note I've adjusted the language to use the terms as they are in New South Wales, in particular Kindergarten, in this little excerpt from the research paper.

So, a bit of a background here with this project. Preschool children and their educators went on an introductory visit to the local primary school. And after this initial visit, the educators asked the children before each subsequent visit what they would like to explore at the school. And then they sent an email to the school principal providing this information. Part of the visit then was planned by the school to respond to the children's interests and advice.

The preschool educators recorded the responses of children to the visits in a range of ways, including conversations, observations, notes, and photos. The children suggested many things including that they would like to meet the children now in the first year of school that they knew previously at preschool. So, that older cohort who had already gone on to school, This request was incorporated into the subsequent visit where all the preschool and school children sat in a whole group, and one by one, each Kindergarten child introduced themself to the preschool children before they went off and did some activities in the classroom together. In evaluating the school visits, most children were happy with the activities and liked the visits, but some children said they didn't like having to wait so long during the introductions. And so reading from the slide now, the educator said, "You met the children in Kindergarten, how was that?" And the first child said, "It was okay, but I didn't like waiting." Educator said, "Did you have to wait when you met the children in Kindergarten?" That first child said, "Yes, we had to sit for so long." And the second child said, "Yeah, that was boring." Educator said, "Why was that boring?" And the second child said, "Because I don't like to sit and wait." And the first child said, "Yeah, that's really boring." Other children said that there were too many children in the classroom and she liked it when they did smaller group activities.

It was suggested then in the research paper that the preschool children be asked what kind of activities they'd like to do with their former preschool friends, and also that children in Kindergarten be asked what they would like to do with their visiting preschool friends. So, after this visit, children were asked in more detail about what they would like to do next and their suggestions were followed up. And this included responding to the concerns about there being too many children in the classroom by providing the preschool children time without the Kindergarten children to explore the classroom, and also other requests like being able to meet their older siblings already at school. So, the preschool and the school educators also met together to discuss the visits rather than just forwarding the ideas via email.

You might also consider as a partnership activity surveying families about transitions. So, one example is surveying families specifically about the provision of information about starting school. So, an example of this is provided by Bob and Sue in one of their chapters of their book, "Evaluating Transition to School Programs". In this example, the evaluation was led by the early childhood education and care service and the data generated was shared with the schools. So, reading from the chapter, "As the end of the preschool year approached, several families were seeking information from educators and about their children's transition to school about what would happen at school. And as is documented elsewhere in the book, attendance numbers at school hosted information nights were low.

So, surveying families about their information needs and preferences could provide valuable insight, such as family preferences to meet their child's teacher individually rather than receive general information at an information night. Information is more accessible and inclusive if it's available online so that it can be located and read at any time." And I'd also add that if time and resources allow some follow-up conversations with individual families might provide really valuable in-depth data that a survey can't, and the very act of distributing the survey and reaching out to families conveys care and respect for the transition experiences of families and not just their children in isolation from the family. And as was pointed out in the little video that we watched, we do have to consider the ethics, if you do follow up interviews, who will be doing those, because it might be a little bit confronting for a family to provide direct feedback, for example, to their own classroom teacher.

So, we're just going to touch on the need to evaluate partnerships themselves. So, evaluating partnerships can be both a process or an outcomes evaluation. Partnerships involve particular practices, which in and of themselves could be evaluated or partnerships could be looked at as part of the process of transitions and evaluated in that way. So, process evaluations happen during the implementation of something. So, during the course of developing partnerships or during a series of reciprocal visits, for example, we ask questions in order to gain feedback into improvements as you go. The outcomes of partnerships might be looked at at the end of something that you've been working on together or after a period of time, for example, after a cohort has started school. You will very likely have invested a lot of time into partnership practices, so it is important to stop and review and evaluate them regularly using some of the questions on the slide as a guide. And it's great if you've got anecdotes that support the outcomes of your partnerships. But planned evaluations are important as they provide sound data to base decisions on that can guide partnerships now and into the future.

And as we finish up today, we're just going to pause for a moment and write down one action you'd like to implement after this session to start to plan for evaluation of transitions or of partnerships together with your partner schools or early childhood education and care services. So, I invite you just to pause the video for a couple of minutes to write down what you might do next. So, I'd like to leave you with these further resources. If I had to pick just one to recommend, it would absolutely be the video that we watch, that small excerpt from today. It's all about evaluating transitions and it's from the conversation on transition series of videos on the department's transition webpage. And the link will be in the resources. There's two books which have been published, which are really fantastic, if you want to take a deeper look at including children's perspectives in evaluation and also evaluations in general, and both edited by Bob Perry and Sue Dockett. And that brings us to the end and time for evaluation.

[End of transcript]

Dr Kathryn Hopps

Welcome everyone to Partnering to support children and families with specific support needs. This is the fifth and the last in a series of resources to support partnerships between primary schools and early childhood education and care services. I'm Kathryn Hopps and I'm an Adjunct Research Associate at Charles Sturt University. I also work for Early Childhood Australia as a BU Consultant and my background is as an early childhood and primary teacher in both early childhood education and care services, primary schools and school care settings, and also a teacher educator and a transition to school researcher.

I'd like to acknowledge that today I am talking to you from Ngunna Dharra, Ngunnawal Land and also recognise many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have connections to this Land. I pay my respects to the Elders past and present and recognise the children and young people who will be community leaders in the future. I'd also like to acknowledge my own personal past and current connections to Wiradjuri, Awabakal Winhanganha lands and invite you now if you would like to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that you are standing on in your own way.

Let's begin with a bit of an overview of this resource. Here are the learning outcomes, so developing an awareness of some particular circumstances and context for children and families that may impact transitions. Also developing a knowledge of how a strengths approach can be used to differentiate transition support for children and families. And also we’ll be looking at developing ways to partner to provide specific support to children and families. And I'm going to draw on both research and practise in this area, in this resource.

And the resource has 2 parts. So, in the first part, we're going to consider some of the circumstances and context for families and children, which may impact their transition to school experiences. And in part two, we'll start to look at some of the ways that early childhood education and care services and primary schools can partner to provide tailored support to children and families. So, this record resource can be used in a number of ways, including for individual learning and reflection, for watching together with a colleague in your own team at your own school or service. Or it could be used for shared professional learning.

So, educators from primary schools and early childhood education and care services together. And with the recording you can watch it in one sitting or you can take your time to work through the sections by pausing and coming back. And I really hope that this provides a stimulus for critical reflection on practise because that's really important in striving to improve transition experiences for children, family, and educators. All of the resources and reference material that I mentioned today, it's pulled together for you in the resource and reference list which will be available to you.

So, let's move into part one. Before we look at particular circumstances and context for children and families which may influence their transition experience. I'd like to be explicit about some of the core principles guiding the research and practise included in this resource.

So, these are on the screen. The first one is inclusion, and this is about everyone having the opportunity to experience a positive transition to school. Also diversity. So, this is about the importance of schools and early childhood education and care services, being ready to accept, support and nurture all children and families in all the diversity whenever they arrive in our schools and early childhood education and care services. Another core principle is belonging. So, this is a key measure of a successful or effective transition to school and a Sue Dockett and Bob Perry in one of their latest book chapters write, ‘The sense of belonging in the new context, which is felt by all participants.’ So, this includes children and their families.

Another core principle is social justice. So, this includes a number of aspects such as supporting every family with their decision to enrol their child in school and acknowledging every child's right to start as long as they are eligible to do so. In other words, the focus of transitions is on readiness of schools, early childhood education and care services and communities to include all children. It is also important to be aware of potential power imbalances during transition to school.

We're also drawing on a strengths approach and this is the way that schools and early childhood education and care services can take a social justice approach to transitions by providing opportunities for children and families to utilise their strengths during transitions, particularly when addressing challenges. And informed consent is really important as well. Informed consent from families when considering if and how early childhood education and care services provide information to schools about family circumstances. There is a process for gaining consent from families in relation to transition statements. And consent is also important when having verbal conversations.

Early childhood education and care services will have their own individual processes and policies for informed consent before exchanging information in line with privacy legislation. And parents and legal guardians have a right to view any information regarding their child or their family circumstances before it is passed on to anyone including schools and school educators and other professionals.

So, when we're thinking about children and families in diverse circumstances and thinking about providing specific support, it's really useful to be consciously aware of our own privileges due to our race gender, education, and socioeconomic resources, for example. Is also used to useful to be aware of our own assumptions.

So, as a first step it can help just to notice or bring to our own conscious awareness, our assumptions, and from there we may be able to challenge those assumptions. For example, while we'll talk today about various groups of children and families who may benefit from specific tailored or differentiated support during transitions, not all families who identify with these circumstances and context will need extra support. And regardless of circumstances and context, all families have strengths. When we are aware of our own privilege and assumptions, we are better able to be inclusive, work with a strengths approach and consider diverse circumstances when we plan transition programmes, communicate with families and partner with our colleagues in early childhood education and care services or schools.

So, we are going to consider some of the context and circumstances, but before that, let's touch on how we come to know about these in the first place. So, a sense of psychological or emotional safety is important for families in sharing with early childhood education and care services and schools about their particular circumstances.

So, this is fundamentally about trust. Many families whose child has been attending an early childhood education and care service will have built a trusting relationship with the service and educators there. During transition to school then trust will need to be built between the family and their new school. While sometimes important information about family circumstances may be shared in things like enrolment forms and transition statements, it's really important for schools and together with early childhood education care services to embed transition practises that provide for the building of trust as well as opportunities for families to share information verbally in two-way interactions.

This is about creating safe spaces for families to share. On the slide are some transition practises to consider in relation to building trust really early on with families. So, opportunities for individual conversations and meetings with the family and the child prior to the first day of school is really important. So, identifying a meeting with the families who have specific support needs is best arranged wherever possible well before that first day of school and can involve many individualised transition strategies. And during the transition to school, there's a need to balance whole class or whole cohort one-way communication with opportunities for two-way conversations with individual families. It's really important that children and families get to meet their child's own teacher. Families and children should know the people who will be keeping them safe. And that is every effort should be made so that children and families have met their child's own teacher before the first day of school.

Also, it's important to let families know how they can contact their teacher as well as actively reaching out, so again, reciprocal two-way communication is important. And a welcoming environment where every family as well as child is known is important. So, taking intentional steps like learning the first names of children's family members is such a small but really significant practise to build trust. And a welcoming environment also is one that reflects the culture of all families. Can I see myself and my family here? So, going back to the previous slide, being open and transparent with families and seeking informed consent when passing on information is really important matter of trust for families and we always respect a family's right not to provide consent to pass on written or verbal information between an early childhood education and care service and school. And this is why opportunities for individual meetings and conversations are really important because it will often be the preferred way for families to share information about their circumstances which may need extra support during times of transition.

On the department's website, there's actually a transition to school story from Tarro Public School, which talks about their individual interviews with families as one of their transition strategies. And quoting from the article that the early identification of the Kindergarten teachers for the following year has allowed for the development of a relationships between children, families, and the teacher. And our families can be assured that our school will be ready for their children.

So, let's now look at some circumstances and context. So, family circumstances include both temporary or ongoing circumstances, which may influence or impact transition to school experiences and or ongoing schooling and education as well. So, these context include cultural social, political, employment and economic context. So, on the slide here, here are some circumstances and context which include children or a family member who has disability or developmental delay, chronic short or short-term physical or mental health issue or condition from a cultural or linguistically diverse background, have a refugee or migrant experience or newly arrived. An Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, they experience or at risk of experiencing vulnerability. They have experience of trauma and adversity, families with low socioeconomic and parenting resources, high potential and gifted education students and mobile families including families from the Australian Defence Force. This isn't a comprehensive list, so please make a note of any other circumstance or context which you think may impact a child or family's transition to school for which specific tailored short or long-term support may be needed.

We will go into a little more detail looking at three of these particular circumstances and context, but before that, I'll just touch on some of the others here. I've included chronic or short term physical or mental health issue or condition as separate from disability or developmental delay just to make this circumstance more visible, particularly because often it's not seen by everybody as disability and it may not qualify the specific funding and support. But children and families in this context will very often benefit from specific tailored or differentiated support. For example, this includes children experiencing separation anxiety, who can absolutely be supported by things like an individual transition plan.

I do also really want to highlight high potential and gifted education students. A former colleague of mine at CSU, Nikki Masters. Masters studied the transition to school experiences of children identified as gifted for her PhD and found that and quoting Nikki "for the gifted child, the transition to school may bring additional challenges. Children's who ability, whose abilities are unrecognised and not nurtured in the early years may develop social, emotional or behavioural difficulties." And Nikki also found the need for an effective curriculum differentiation offering an inclusive approach to education right from the start. I've included trauma and adversity here because for children who've experienced trauma and adversity, that may be from a range of circumstances, some of which are listed on this slide. So, a trauma-informed approach embedded into everyday practise will benefit children in these circumstances as well as all children in the first year of school. Many children will have experienced trauma and adversity and will often not know who those children are.

So, trauma-informed classrooms, schools and early learning services are really important. I've included mobile families on this list, including those in the Australian Defence Force because those who experience really high mobility due to a range of circumstances, including social, housing and employment reasons, these families may experience many transitions at the same time. And sometimes multiple transitions can present as a risk factor for wellbeing and education. For Australian Defence Force members and their families, they often move locations frequently. And aside from that mobility also have other unique circumstances like the absence of a parent posted overseas. And there are some programmes to support Defence Force families in schools such as the education liaison officers and defence school transition aids that schools and early childhood services can partner with to support Defence Force families and their children.

Now, I haven't specifically listed behaviour support needs because children's behaviour will likely be a stress response to one or many of the context or circumstances listed here. And behaviour that educators may experience as challenging is about a child's mental health and social and emotional wellbeing or about their communication and to best support children viewing behaviour which causes distress to the child, other children and adults as reflective of a mental health difficulty and related to a child's capacity to regulate their thoughts, emotions and behaviour is a really good approach.

So, if anywhere it fits in this list, it will be the second point there. So, let's have a look at children and families who have a refugee or are newly arrived. And I'm going to draw up on the work of Katey De Gioia in her book chapter, Giving Voice to Families from Immigrant and Refugee Backgrounds during Transition to School. And this is based on a study of the transition to school experiences of families from refugee and migrant backgrounds in Australia. And reference details for that research is in the reference list. And I would like to acknowledge an intersectionality here between having a refugee experience being an asylum seeker or newly arrived in Australia, and also having a culturally and linguistically diverse background. For children who may be refugee or new arrived when children start school, it's really determined when families arrive in Australia. So, arrival in Australia may coincide with the start of the school year, but it's more likely to occur at other times.

So, children may commence with their peers or they may not. And both these circumstances are best planned for by schools and early childhood education and care services. Whilst the prior experiences of families from refugee backgrounds different from those of migrant families leaving a home country and settling into a new one can be experienced as trauma regardless of the circumstances. For refugees, a child's prior school experience may include experience the war and loss of family members, children being separated from parents and having no access to early childhood education.

Both children and their families may experience significant mental health issues from the experiences of trauma and these are really important to address so that children and families are able to connect, engage and feel a sense of belonging at school. And there are many transition that families will be experiencing. For families for whom English is not their first language, language barriers are really significant, but also new cultural expectations and expectations of a new education system - on themselves and then children. This can mean that there are feelings of isolation even when schools plan activities for promoting connection and belonging.

For some families from refugee and migrant backgrounds with a child done in school, they may experience a lot of anxiety with separations from their children. So leaving their child in an unfamiliar space with unfamiliar adults can be quite upsetting. So building trust with families is vital and this is why practises like children and families being able to meet their class teacher are really fundamental for a sense of safety. And in saying all this, it's really important to avoid a deficit view and to commit to building on the strengths of children and families from refugee and migrant backgrounds.

And in Katey De Gioia study, she really highlighted things like being considerate of individual cultures and having a really good communication with refugee and newly arrived families before commencing school. Such as more information about the expectations of parents and of children, what the school rules are, and also important opportunities to ask questions about the information provided if they don't understand or need some more clarification. The importance of interpreters has been pointed out in research as well. And in Katey's study one Afghani mother explained that she felt too intimidated to attend a meeting with the school teacher because she couldn't explain what she was thinking and there was no interpreter available. In Katey's study, the importance of understanding individual cultures with highlighted by one Pakistani mother in the study who said, it was really important for schools to understand and the quote is on the slide here, ‘Mostly our kids are not very like you know bold Australian kids. Our kids are very shy, mostly - Pakistani kids... And because here kids are very confident, very independent.’

A quote from another recent study about supporting newly arrived children shows that positive transitions to early education can assist children more broadly with their transitions to life in Australia and their sense of belonging. And the authors stated that good quality education can help migrant children to adjust to their new environment and strengthen their sense of belonging in the new country.

While quality education can contribute to their sense of belonging through valuing and embracing their culture, language and home background. So, some strategies for supporting children and families from refugee and newly arrived backgrounds include consulting with local refugee support groups or cultural groups, ensuring the culture of families is reflected in the school and or early learning environment. Running playgroups for local refugee families at the school, perhaps in cooperation with local early learning services and professional learning for staff regarding refugee experience that could be shared professional learning with school and early learning educators together. Now there might be something that you're already doing at your school or early learning service that does specifically provide support to families who are from refugee or newly arrived backgrounds. And it'd be great if you could make a note of those right now.

So, children and families experiencing or at risk of experiencing vulnerabilities. Andrea Nolan and Anna Kilderry have recently published a chapter about the results of a practise review in Victoria, which looked at some of the effective practises around supporting children at families at risk of experiencing vulnerable circumstances. And for the purpose of that review, children experiencing vulnerability were those who were vulnerable to child abuse, neglect and exclusion aware there was reduced family capacity to care for, protect and provide for the child's development and wellbeing. I'm going to use that definition today. It's important to understand that children in these circumstances are likely to have experienced trauma and also the family adversity and hardship. The reduced or low capacity of parents or primary caregivers at home can result in children being disadvantaged educationally in a range of ways from not being able to attend school, reduced learning support at home, a lack of protection from harm resulting in physical and mental health issues impacting all areas of development and learning.

So, this practise review highlighted the importance of things like collaboration between services and schools within transition to school networks, building staff capacity in terms of working respectfully and inclusively, having things like a nominated transition person in a primary school to support the tailoring of supports and and having designated time and resources as being really crucial to enable educators to be supportive of children and families experiencing vulnerabilities. There's been a number of research projects in Australia that have looked at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families experiences of transition to school. And one of the leading ones is the longitudinal study of Australian... Longitudinal Study of Indigenous children. And also the Gudaga Goes to School study which explored the early education experiences and transition to school for 117 urban Aboriginal children, their families in Southwest Sydney. And as Cathy Kaplun and colleagues write in one of their recent publications from the Gudaga Goes to School study. ‘Historically educational policy and practises have not supported the school engagement or educational attainment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.’

So, this means among many things that the parents and grandparents and kingship carers of children starting school now their own experiences of school may not have been positive and this can have an impact on children and families themselves during times of transition. And it can be a barrier to families being connected and positively engaged in school.

Also, historically, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children's ways of knowing, being and doing as well as strengths and interests haven't been recognised or built upon at school. Additionally, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families will be experiencing the ongoing impact of past adversity and trauma experienced by previous generations. And disadvantage and vulnerabilities continue to be experienced today including experiences of racism. So cultural safety is absolutely fundamental in supporting the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families when they start school.

Some other things we know from research that are really important at times of transition are trusting relationships between educators and families, children and community. Also a focus on common goals for children's learning between families and schools. The importance of building those strong communicative safe relationships with teaching teams across contexts and valuing and integrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages into school and early learning curriculum. So, as well as a sense of belonging, which we've talked a lot about other markers of successful transitions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families that have been highlighted in research are a sense of pride in their culture at school. That school is a place where they feel happy, relaxed, and valued. And that school is a positive place to be. They identify as a successful learner and have a positive sense of wellbeing.

For children with disability or developmental delay, I'm gonna draw upon the work of researchers, Wilder and Lillivist in their research about the transition to school experiences of families with a child with intellectual disability. And they state that, ‘It is important that professionals take a family-focused approach and make sure that parents are not worried for the child or family's wellbeing in the transition process.’

And also, that approaching an educational transition for families with children with disability carries many challenges. So, it can be a time where families find it difficult to balance wellbeing. It is often important in families with a child with disability or developmental delay to maintain a stable routine. And starting primary school represents a big challenge to routines which may have been stable for some time. There are often many discontinuities for children with disability or developmental delay during transition to school, particularly discontinuity in the supports that are available to them. And it can be a time where there's extra strain on families as they help other people, the new people, to understand their child's learning health and care needs. There are also experiences of the loss of the helpful source of support of an early childhood education and care service and educators at their service. And children can often be more dependent and in the company of adults more often.

And so, attention to peer relationships is really important during transition to school for children with disability or developmental delay. Partnerships with build on family strengths are really important and that close collaboration with families and early childhood education and care service educators is really imperative and differentiation is very important as well. And we may think about these as both child and family focused transitions. The department has a lot of resources to support children with disability or developmental delay, and I've listed these in the resources section. They include a webpage for families called, When to Talk about your Local School to your When to Talk to your Local School, which you may like to early childhood education and care services might like to let families know about.

There's also department resources around what could go in an individual transition plan for children with disability or developmental delay. So, let's turn to start to look at providing support. So a one size fits all approach to transitions where children's backgrounds, circumstances and context like we've talked about today, if they're not considered in what's provided, it doesn't provide the kind of support that children and families need when starting school. And there's two things to consider when we're thinking about what support can be provided.

So, these are providing tailored, differentiated, specific support for individual children or groups of children. And that may be short term or long term. And then the other thing to think about is embedding into general transition programmes and processes because we know for example, that adjustments to the physical environment that may be made for a child with disability, often many other people also benefit from these. And the same is true for children during their transition to school. So, for example, you may initially implement a transition practise for a particular child where you meet with families and have individual conversations about the child's strengths, their interests and existing capabilities. And then reflecting on the success of this, you may decide that this is going to be a standard transition practise for all children. That opportunity for all families to discuss their child with the school prior to the first day, that could be in person or on the phone or via Zoom, whichever the family's most comfortable with.

So, the particular circumstances you're considering how to provide support may also mean that in your general programmes and processes you consider how inclusive they are and develop ways to be more inclusive and how we can assist all children and families to feel safe in the school environment, engage positively in school and feel a strong sense of belonging. The department has a webpage about differentiated approaches to transitions which you may like to access, and the link is provided in the resources section.

So, we're going to pause for an activity now. I'd like you to consider the ways that you already tailor transition support for children and families. And just to write down one example that you might like to share with the group that you're learning with today or with your colleagues, in schools, in your partner schools and early childhood education and care services. On the screen, it's in the chat box, not available if you're watching the recording, or the microphone, but I really encourage you to share that with your partner educators. Let's move on to part two, partnering to support children and families.

So, throughout the research recommendations for practise, there's a really consistent theme around the recommendation that professionals work together to support children including schools and early childhood education and care services in in partner to survive provide support. So, the quote on the screen here, 'acknowledging the complexity of diverse children and families life circumstances such as families experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage. It is vital that all stakeholders work together to provide a strong support network during times of transition.' And so , this quote is in relation to working with children and families at risk of experiencing vulnerabilities, but could equally be said for children and families in the range of circumstances and contexts that we have highlighted in this resource.

Whilst in part one we have touched on some of the practises and strategies that schools and early childhood education and care services could implement themselves. Let's now focus on ways to partner to provide specific support. So, we've got a list of strategies and ideas on the screen here that I'm going to go through. So, the first one is around that shared professional learning. So, getting together to do professional learning together about things like the refugee experience or trauma-informed practise. Meeting together with Elders to find out ways to respectfully engage with families or even inviting Elders in to be part of transition programmes at both schools and early childhood education and care services.

You could partner to produce things like a transition book like Let's yarn about Big School, which is the Central Coast Transition to School networks book. And it was developed by Kooloora Preschool and Toukley Primary School. The thing for that is in the resources section. Or we could also partner to develop social stories for individual children. Practises like having key transition to school messages interpreted or translated into community languages could be really helpful. Other communications too. Key school communications would be great to be translated into community languages. For example, Marrickville West Public School have had their Acknowledgement of Country translated into a range of community languages. Schools could consider partnering with early childhood education service to actually meet new families and children at the early childhood education care services that is already a safe space for them. That's a really great practise idea.

You could form transition team together with other professionals in the family. So around an individual child you could put that transition team together and you could together write an individual transition support plan for the family and the child. I have heard of early childhood education and care services whose staff come to school and support children in the first few weeks just to be that familiar face first thing in the morning. And feedback from that was that it was a really well received practise. We've covered around writing individual support plans together and encourage you to use, utilise that information from transition statements in those individual plans. Supporting families to connect with other families via personal introductions.

So, any of those activities where you're connecting families together can be really supportive of families and children. And the last dot point on the slide there, I called it the school dictionary project. So, there was a research paper just published about a project which was in Iceland, and it focused on supporting children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who were starting school and the early childhood education and care services and the primary schools worked together with individual children and families to produce books. They were school dictionaries where photographs of objects at school were accompanied by labels in both the Icelandic word and the words in the child's home language. So, in our context, the school dictionary, pictures with words in English accompanied by the child's home language. I think this is a great idea for a collaborative project and one in which the child and family are also really active participants. So, in Iceland, the preschool children visited the school, the primary school with their early childhood education and care service educators. They walked around the school and took photos and families assisted with the translating the home language words. Then these books were utilised at preschool and at home and also at, and the schools had copies and incorporated them into teaching and learning programmes. So, lots of ideas for strategies and ways to partner.

I do want to highlight a particular approach, and that's a strengths approach. So sometimes we might think of a strengths approach just as involving the identifications of strengths alone. But in the strengths approach, which was developed by the late Wayne McCashen and St. Luke's Bendigo, which is now Anglicare Victoria, it takes a broader view and includes recognition of challenges and involves working collaboratively to assist children to achieve their potential. So fundamentally, the approach involves three-way conversations with the family, child, and educators to address challenges by utilising strengths. So McCashen developed a five column tool, which can be used to guide strength-based conversations with children and families. Whilst we don't have time today unfortunately to look at this approach in any great detail, especially I just wanted to flag it as an approach with you because it's a great tool for collaboration and encourage you to access these resources if this approach interests you. And on this slide, the excerpt demonstrates a strength approach to writing transition statements.

So, the information in the statement is from a collaborative strength-based conversation with Robert, so Robert's family and the early childhood educators to prepare his transition statement. And a similar conversation could also include school educators and other professionals who've been working with the child.

So, in the first section are details of the challenges around supporting emotional regulation. And in the second part, educators have included Robert's own strengths in the strategies he has been using and how this has been further guided and supported by the early childhood education and care service. So, Robert really wants his schoolteacher to know that he's not not listening. And this is an indication that if he appears not to be following instructions, that he might not be feeling okay at this time, rather than a behaviour interpreted and responded to as difficult. So, this kind of information is extremely valuable information about strengths and challenges and it can guide that differentiation of transition approaches for individual children. And this excerpts actually from an article which I wrote about a strengths approach to writing transition statements. And I've included that resource in the resource list.

So, we're going to have a look at a case study now I'm going to read from the slide here. The case study is about Carissa, she's five and a half years old. She's currently attending an early childhood education and care service and is starting Kindergarten next year. Carissa's family have only recently moved to the area. Her mother is in the Defence Force and has an upcoming posting overseas. Her father will be the sole carer of Carissa during the posting and has no family support in the area. Carissa experiences separation anxiety when she arrives at the early childhood education and care service and has not yet spoken to educators or children there. The early childhood education and care services already encouraged their family to talk to their GP about their concerns about Carissa's wellbeing. Carissa's mother is worried about Carissa starting school, but she said she doesn't think that she should write that she experiences anxiety on her school enrolment form.

So, I encourage you to pause the video now and consider how you might partner with Carissa's early childhood education and care service or school to support Carissa and her family during their transitions to school. A list of department education resources, some other resources, and also references for this resource. Thank you very much.

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