This content introduces a four-dimensional model for understanding the sophisticated role of an educational leader in children's education and care services, emphasizing the interconnectedness of these dimensions and encouraging reflection and discussion among leaders and approved providers.
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hello everybody my name is Katherine
heyen welcome to this a sequa video
exploring the role of the educational
leader the model we'll discuss today
comes from the educational leader
resource on the isqua website you might
like to take a moment Now using the
information on your screen to find where
this model is being described cribed in
the educational leader resource it might
be helpful to have it in front of you as
we're having this
discussion the role of the educational
leader is a extremely sophisticated role
and an exciting role there's lots of
opportunities to think about what the
role can provide in particular
children's education and care services
around the country for many of you
you've begun a really intense
conversation in your particular sites
and done some very deep thinking around
what it means to be an educational
leader as part of the educational leader
resource we're interested in thinking
more deeply about what it takes to be an
educational leader and how we might
understand the role in more
detail to help us do this we've used a
model that helps us understand what the
dimensions or aspects of the role might
look like and in this video we want to
introduce this model to you as you go
into the resource you'll find more
details about the individual aspects of
this model and you'll also find some
information and some reading and
understanding from some leading
academics in Australia to help us think
about what those particular aspects of
the role and how we understand it in
this model might look like we encourage
you to do some thinking and discussion
with your colleagues about what this
looks like for you what it means for you
and have the conversations locally about
why you think these dimensions are
important and what areas you might like
to think about in terms of developing
your skills and understanding this video
is also for Approved providers who
support educational leaders in that role
and in that context it's about
supporting an educational leader to
develop particular aspects of the role
and how it might look in your particular
place so let's have a look at the
model in order to think more deeply
about the role of the educational leader
and how approved providers might support
that we've had a look at a model that
helps us understand leadership and what
that might look like in the context of
educational leadership to construct this
model we've drawn heavily on the work of
Dr Elizabeth stamopoulos who works at
Edith Cowen University in Western
Australia her research work has
identified four key aspects of
leadership that we think are really
important in the development of
understanding of the role of the educational
educational
leader these four elements that you can
see on your screen now help us to think
really deeply about how an educational
leader enacts that work and how they
understand themselves as a professional
how they relate to others and how they
lead reflective thinking in their
particular setting there are four
dimensions of this model the DI
conventions work in an interrelated way
they connect and overlap it's important
for you as you look at this model to
think about the aspects that are
particularly relevant in your setting or
that you would like to develop further a
conversation and discussion with your
colleagues with your approved provider
and if you are an approved provider with
your educational leader about how these
particular Dimensions work in your
setting is really
important there'll be an opportunity as
we progress through this video for you
to pause and have a bit of a think about
what these dimens look like for you and
there's some reflective questions that
go alongside each of these particular
Dimensions if we now turn to the model
itself and hopefully you've got it in
front of you so you can have a bit of a
look while we have these discussions
you'll see that there are four
dimensions and what I might do is have a
look at each one of them in turn and
then refer to the reflective questions
as we go the First Dimension is
knowledge this is an important aspect of
the work that an educational leader does
and if you're an approved provider is
the important part of what an approved
provider does to support an educational
leader the knowledge we're talking about
here is knowledge of the work that
happens on a daily basis the practice
and pedagogy that happens in the
particular setting its knowledge of
Children and Families and context its
knowledge of the particular area that
you're working in its knowledge of the
community that you're part of its
knowledge of the regulations and the
national quality standard you can see
that the list of knowledge that an
educational leader might need to acquire is
is
significant but what we want to do here
is not suggest to you that an
educational leader needs to know
everything rather the case here is to
think about knowledge as something that
you're interested in acquiring that you
build a real hunger or a thirst for
knowledge and that as an approved
provider you might really support and
encourage an educational leader to have
a really strong sense of the knowledge
that they have and to go out and acquire
more knowledge the other aspect of this
knowledge dim menion is that an
educational leader and the approved
provider in the support that they offer
might want to think about how that
knowledge is shared with the team of
people that you're working with
knowledge kept to yourself is not going
to help in the way that we support
continuous Improvement rather knowledge
gained is knowledge shared and cultivate
a real sense of understanding about how
important knowledge is in the work of
the educational leader and in the
Improvement of practice over
time the second dimension of of this
important model in thinking about
educational leader is professionalism an
important part of the role of being a
professional is to think about your role
as promoting an ethical dimension of the
work to think about what is right to do
in the particular circumstances and how
we can hold our ground on particular
decisions that we make in the best
interest of Children and Families for
some educational leaders and approved
providers who support them stepping up
into this role and behaving in a
particular way that promotes a
professional aspect is at times quite
challenging and it's important here that
some time is spent thinking about what
it means to be a professional what it
means to assume this role and what it
means to take a strong leadership role
in promoting quality practice as you
progress the third dimension of the
model is
relationships we know that building
relationships in early childhood
education and school Age Care is pivotal
to the quality of the work we understand
that de developing strong relationships
with families with children with
Educators also Al influences the way
that we can promote high quality
teaching and learning from an
educational leaders perspective and from
the perspective of the approved provider
ensuring that relationships are of a
high priority within the context of the
work that happens with educational
leadership is an important conversation
to have it's about making sure that
relationships lie at the heart of the
work that happens and that relationships
help you to navigate changes that you
want to see happen and continuous
Improvement conversations that are most
def ly part of the work that happens in
children's Education and Care
Services educational leaders will find
at times the relationship management and
the relationships that they form with
their colleagues sometimes quite complex
but also it can be incredibly rewarding
as you see people grow and change and
develop in their skills prioritizing
relationships for educational leaders
leaders is something that is worth
considering how is educational
leadership developed in a relational way
how do you understand the different way
ways that you can relate to education
Educators who are different and diverse
how can you think about building
relationships with families and other
people who are external to the service
the fourth dimension is reflection
reflective practice is a critical part
of continuous Improvement and the Quest
for Quality relies heavily on Educators
being able to ask really important
questions of themselves in terms of the
nature of the quality of the practice
and the way in which they make a
significant impact positive impact on
the work
educational leaders take a lead role in
thinking about how reflective practice
is cultivated and educational leaders
also might need to take some time to
think about how they understand
reflective practice and how they can
make sure that there is time and space
for that process to happen as approved
providers they might like to think about
the way that they support educational
leaders to create space for for
reflective practice reflective practice
is also being able to lead conversations
with others sometimes really challenging
and difficult conversations about the
ways that practice can be changed and
shaped to better support Children's
Learning into the future it's also a
space where educational leaders might
ask the hard questions about why we do
what we do to challenge taken for
granted practice but also to give
opportunities for people to recognize
when practice is really strong and how
they can replicate that into the future
now that we've had a look at the
dimensions of the model it might be
helpful to pause and have a bit of a
think about some questions that you
might like to ask yourself yourself in
relation to each of those
Dimensions the dimensions as I said
before work in a really fluid way they
relate to each other and
interconnect but taking some time to
reflect on them will help you to
understand what they mean for you in
your particular context as an approved
provider and an educational leader it
might be a discussion that you want to
have together about what it means for
you and how it looks as you progress and
promote the
role the first set of reflective
questions that you can see on your
screen here talk directly to the
knowledge that an educational leader has
and how we might grow and cultivate that
knowledge base so the questions here
relate particularly to the way we
understand knowledge what do educational
leaders need to know from your
perspective what are the things that you
need to prioritize in terms of building
knowledge as an approved provider what
are the key priorities that you have in
terms of the vision for the service that
you want to help support an education
leader to know Are there specific
knowledge bases that you need to
cultivate within your own practice in
your service there might be a particular
community of families and children
potentially new arrivals to Australia
you might have a significant culturally
linguistically diverse community that
you want to know more about how do I
build as an educational leader my
knowledge as an approved provider how do
I build my knowledge about the role of
the educational leader what do we
already know about that we can maximize
how do we share what we already know
with the people who work in this
particular space what else do we need to
know that is contemporary knowledge and
helps to support a building and a
generating of new
ideas and how can we best communicate
new knowledge that's coming through all
the time to our team and this might be a
conversation that happens between
educational leaders and approved
providers the next Dimension is
professionalism and this again is an
opportunity for educational leaders and
approved providers to come together to
have a conversation about what it means
to be a professional in this space the
questions that really important to ask
here is what is mean to be a
professional in an educational leader
space and defining that in clearer ways
making sure that that can be
communicated with others is a really
important conversation to have what do
educational leaders need to know what do
approve approved providers need to know
in order to help support an educational
leader to feel themselves to be more of
a professional and to be able to
communicate that to others and
importantly how can an educational
leader demonstrate that to other people
and how can an approved provider help an
education leader to talk about that
really strongly to the team that they're
working with you might take for example
a family daycare scheme where an
educational leader has just been
appointed but doesn't really work every
day with the team of people that they're
leading and an approved provider and
educational leader might like to talk
together about what does it mean to
establish this role and to promote this
role in a really clear way to a very
diverse educator group who they don't
see all the time the third dimension is
relationships and the reflective
practice questions that we're asking
here relate directly to the way that you
connect with other people and the way
that the approved provider supports the
education leader to connect with the
team and the questions here are around
how can I be effective in my
professional relationships what are the
challenges that I face in building those
professional relationships how is it
that I build professional relationships
and how does an approved provider for
example support an educational leader to
have the time and space to build those
relationships what are the skills that
an educational leader needs to be able
to cultivate really strong relationships
and how do they communicate what those
relationships are going to be like with
their team and as an approved provider
how do you identify and articulate
potentially in job descriptions and
position descriptions the way the the
sorts of skills that an educational
leader might need to build the types of
strong relationships that you need and
ident in identifying the challenges that
you might face in building those
relationships it's also helpful to be
able ble to think here about the types
of strategies that you might use to
develop really strong relationships so
that you can drive a culture of continuous
continuous
Improvement the last Dimension is
reflection and the reflective practice
questions here relate more to the
process of reflective practice rather
than the reflective practice process
itself these are about how we create the
time and space and we drive the culture
that we need to help to motivate a group
of people to engage in reflective
practice so here we are are asking
questions about the processes that an
educational leader or an approved
provider in supporting that work use to
create time and space for reflective
practice and the considerations of the
particular context that you're in a
school Age Care Program might have a lot
of casual staff for example and so
creating something that helps to be able
to build an opportunity for reflective
practice might take quite a bit of
thinking in this aspect to these
reflective questions also start to ask
really important questions about the
knowledge Bas of the understanding of
the approved provider and of the
educational leader in what they know
about reflective practice so here's
where knowledge and reflection come into
connection with each other and also in
this too we start to think about
relationships as well and its connection
with reflection because how do the how
do I build a reflective Culture by
relying and strengthening the
relationships that I have with my educat
team how can also another really
important question is how the
educational leader might develop their
own skills at reflective practice and
again that's a conversation that an
approved provider or and an educational
leader might like to think about in how
they build and make opportunities for
reflective practice to happen for the educational
educational
leader and then we might move to a
conversation and a question that you
might have about how how you might lead
a culture of reflective practice how you
might set up processes and practices
that help to drive a process of drawing
other people into a reflective practice
process and again as we have in other
dimensions thinking about the the
challenges and the particular
constraints or the limitations that you
might have and how you can overcome them
in your particular area or in your
particular space so that you can really
drive a culture of reflective
practice each of these sets of questions
help you to dig deeper into these
Dimensions what we know about these
Dimensions is that they are very Broad
and they talk to a really strong and
powerful understanding of the role of
the educational leader the possibilities
are indeed endless and we encourage Lots
of you to have conversations and
discussions in your own teams with your
approved provider in networks about what
these Dimensions look like to you you'll
see more ideas develop over time and we
hope to see lots of conversations being
generated by an exploration of this
model we wish you all the best as you
continue to think about this and we
encourage you to generate conversations
locally about what it means to be an
educational leader and what it means to
support them in their role [Music]
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