I have worked in the university sector since 2016, after 32 years of teaching and leadership in Early Childhood education across all of the Birth – 8 age groups in Kindergarten, Junior Primary School and Integrated Children’s centres and also within curriculum leadership positions with the Department for Education. I have a keen interest in early childhood curriculum and pedagogy. My Masters of Education examined the importance of leadership in early childhood to bridge the two national curricula which impact on this field.
My community engagement includes being a board member of Patch Theatre Company from 2010 - 2022 and current committee position with the Early Childhood Organisation, EChO SA.
I have taught in Reconceptualising Early Childhood, Arts Education, Critical Perspectives on Curriculum and Pedagogy, Curriculum Specialisation EC ( Arts, Hass and Design and Technology), Creating Positive Learning Environments and Professional experience courses. In 2021, I codesigned the Arts Across the Early Childhood Curriculum course for Early Childhood and this will continue into Adelaide Universtiy as Arts Education in Early Years
My doctoral research investigated arts-based pedagogies for democratic participation in early childhood through focus group discussions with early childhood educators and teaching artist and then through ethnographically informed field work with a group of artists, parents/carers and children in a dance based family lab for children up to the age of three. This study used innovative methods such as annotated screen shots to analyse children's contributions to the lab through their movements, gaze and vocalisations, and how these offers were met with the artists' relational pedagogies to co-construct choreography. Through this study the importance of hospitable affective atmospheres, listening to materials and their intra-action with children, families and artists was significant in understanding how children's democratic participation was enabled and constrained. The study has implications for expanding notions of pedagogy, including public pedagogy involving families and community in and through the arts.
I am currently engaged within the Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogies in Early Childhood research project which works with critical participatory action research to engage early childhood educators in both prior to school and early years of schooling to analyse their current pedagogies and reimagine more responsive and democratic ways to work with children and families.