(MUSIC PLAYS)
HOST:
OK... look at you all! I thought you'd all be late. I wasn't ready. We're thrilled to have Professor Jane Bertrand here as our next keynote speaker. My mother-in-law has a theory that everywhere in the world, in February, the weather is awful.
So, I've come from Brisbane. I had to get myself to Sydney because there was such a hailstorm out of Brisbane that I couldn't fly to Melbourne. I got to Sydney and the weather was absolutely terrible and the rain was howling and they shut the airport and I got to Melbourne and went, this is very nice. So, perhaps that's why all our international speakers are in Melbourne this February. Now Jane could speak to us about any number of things. If you happen to look online, there's the most wonderful resource there of all the wonderful bits of wisdom and research and evidence that she shared. And the way she wraps it up, I think really does relate so well to what you do and what she does, which is really love and care and educate young children. She talks about the power of friendship. She talks about playful learning. What we've asked her to talk to you about today is educational leadership. I've just spoken to her backstage, and part of what she wants to do, as Iram did, was share with you research, but also bring it back to some actual strategies you can take out of here to think about, to reflect on, to develop your own practice. So, a quick introduction. Jane is the Program Director at the Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation in Canada, adjunct professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto, Honorary Fellow at the Mitchell Institute here in Melbourne, And an advisor to Our Place, which is how she happens to be here. She's been involved in several groundbreaking studies, worked with the Ontario Early Learning Advisor for the Premier of that state, and she was a professor at the School of Early Childhood at George Brown College until June 2011. Again, talking to you about the evidence on pedagogical leadership and new ways that you as educational leaders can lead effectively, Please, make her very welcome.
JANE BERTRAND:
Well, thank you very much for that introduction. Hello, all. I'm delighted to be here. As you can tell from that introduction, I'm old. I've been doing this for a long time in early childhood education. This is an amazing crowd. Yes.
This is a lot of people. Yesterday was the first time I'd done any kind of presentation with, like, real people in three years. And now there's about four times as many people. So, here we go, a new experience for me, remembering what it's like to do live presentations. I am delighted to be here today. I am an early childhood educator by profession. I have had amazing opportunities as an early childhood education to have do research, to work at the intersection, really, of research, policy and practice. I have taught in post-secondary in our programs that are equivalent to CERT three-year, we call it two year diploma and in Bachelor of Education programmes. And I'm an adjunct professor attached to the PhD in early learning at OEC. So, I've had those opportunities definitely been involved as a player, as a part of a team doing, excuse me, research on some of our initiatives. But most of all, I've had the opportunity to work directly with early childhood educators and early childhood leaders across Canada and over the last 10 years has spent a fair bit of time coming here to Australia, partly with Good Start, partly with Our Place and other venues across the country. So, I'm delighted to be here again. I appreciated the morning presentations. Kim Little, I don't know if you're still here or not, but that was an impassioned, powerful recognition of the value of early childhood educators and of leadership for them. Wow. That was wonderful to hear that. And Iram, fabulous to hear you again. I always get, there you are, it's always a little intimidating to me to be talking about things like early childhood leadership and giving my interpretation of the evidence if Iram is in the room. And it also makes it harder to cite her stuff and describe her research because she's just described it, because there is a lot of value and I've used it a lot and value that. So, I don't have a PowerPoint presentation. I am going to talk to you about pedagogical leadership from an international perspective. I do draw on evidence. I also draw on my own personal experience. First of all, I think we have to really think about what is pedagogy? Now, I know this isn't new to you and you all have your definition of it, but for now, for today, let's just stand back and I'm going to go through a few official definitions of pedagogy from various early learning frameworks internationally. From 'Learning and Teaching Scotland', Pedagogy is about learning, teaching and development influenced by the cultural, social and political values and principles we have for children in Scotland, and by a strong theoretical and practical base." Next one also from the Scottish Government, an updated one 'Building the Ambition' from the Scottish Government, Pedagogy is about the interactions and experiences which support the curriculum and the process of how young children learn." From the government of British Columbia, a province in Canada, and from the British Columbia Early Learning Framework, which was recently, just before the pandemic, it was released, updated. The method and practice of teaching by exploring ideas and issues and creating environments where learning and thinking can flourish. With this understanding, education and pedagogy are not learning facts, but are concerned with ethical questions of living in the world together." From Ontario 'Early Learning for Every Child Today' short, it's a short one, The understanding of how learning takes place and the philosophy and practice that supports that understanding of learning." From Australia, your volume to your revised Belonging, Being and Becoming' Pedagogy is the art, science or craft of educating. It is the foundation for professional practice, especially those aspects that involve building and nurturing relationships, curriculum, decision making, teaching and learning." The 'Belonging, Being and Becoming' goes on and I think this is a really value added component that I'm taking back to Canada, goes on talking about place-based pedagogy and relational pedagogy. Place-based pedagogy, a pedagogy that refers to an understanding that educator knowledge of the setting or context will influence how educators plan and practice. This pedagogical approach is particularly important to Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples, and their connection to land and places should be explored with local elders and community members in culturally responsive ways. Relational pedagogy underpins the ways in which educators build trusting, respectful relationships between children, families, other educators and professionals, as well as members of the community. Knowledge and practices and creativity that educators use to intentionally foster and nurture children's learning, development and pedagogy. Sorry, development and well-being. When educators establish respectful relationships with children and their families, they are able to work together to use relational and place-based pedagogy that assists in developing curriculum relevant to children in their local context." Now I know that's wordier and more ideas wrapped into it than some of the previous ones. The previous one you had in your first early years learning framework. But I think there's a lot of value in it and it's really takes forward the thinking to think about place based and relational pedagogy. And I imagine you're starting to work with that. It's relatively new. I think the last couple of months it has come out and the work will begin to work with it. Contrasting to that, I'm going to give the definition of curriculum from the Australian Early Years Learning Framework because we often think pedagogy and curriculum together In early childhood settings, curriculum includes all the interactions, experiences, activities, routines and events planned and unplanned that occur in an environment designed to foster children's learning, development and well-being. And this has been adapted, as I'm sure you all know from New Zealand's Tabaki and one that we have drawn on in Canada. So, when we think about pedagogy, it's mate is curriculum, right? Curriculum and pedagogy, we often think of them together. And a very if I look at all of those well-worded, carefully thought-through definitions, to me it boils down to what and how. The curriculum is what and how we do it is the pedagogy. Simplistic, I know, but you know, we're good at being getting big ideas and making them simpler and more practical as early childhood educators. I think we are anyway, and I think that's something to take forward when we're how the two things work together. Pedagogical practices inform curriculum. They inform, the curriculum is the what. But what happens with the what is informed by how we do it, by our pedagogy. So, let's talk about leadership in early years programs, all forms of leadership. There is management of the setting. There's professional values. The sharing good practice. Passion. Control of budgets. Financial oversight. Never one of my favourite aspects, but some people are very good at it. Knowing what children understand and can do. Delegation. Being there to delegate who does what, when. Monitoring quality of the programs. And we heard a lot from Iram about that topic and some studies about how best maybe to do it. Reviewing staff planning and documentation. Human Resource management. The list could go on. I'm sure you could add others to it. And if we were a smaller workshop, you might be doing that right now. But I don't think we'll stop and get you to do a small group. We'll just carry on. But there's others we could add to that and so it could be a long list. Ultimately, it breaks down into two large buckets, the administrative leadership, the control, the budget, the human resource management, the delegation, management of the setting of the physical environment, OK? Administrative leadership takes care of those things. And pedagogical leadership takes care of some of the other things I mentioned. It's about professional values that we carry forward. It's about pedagogical leadership is very much about sharing good practice. Pedagogical leadership is definitely needs to have at its core, passion. If you're not passionate about young children's learning and how we can best support it, it's pretty hard to be an educational leader. Passion's part of it. Knowing what children understand and can do, like really having an embedded framework inside our heads about what children understand and can do that framework and then the children in front of us and we can put those two things together and see where those kids are at. Monitoring quality of the program. Yes, you have to. There's no one definition of quality. Some people say it's in the eyes of the beholder. But we do have some elements that we agree on and being able to monitor, decide what's important, and then for our context, for our team, for our time, and then being able to monitor that. Reviewing staff, planning and documentation really is central part of pedagogical leadership. Reviewing and planning and documentation that educators and early childhood teachers produce. Reviewing it and providing comments that are value added. Nice job, doesn't quite cut it. Being able to name something that's valuable in it to be able to suggest an additional step that really does prod more professional practice, more quality environments. So, we have the core functions, the administrative leadership and the pedagogical leadership. Internationally, they can be combined or separated in any number of ways. Sometimes it's one combined role. A centre director, a centre supervisor is both the administrative lead and the pedagogical lead, is responsible for everything. And internationally that's far more common when there are small centres. One person does it. Or there can be separate roles where there is an educational leader and a centre supervisor. And in Australia and in Victoria you do have educational leaders as a named required position. At least that's my understanding from away that that's there. So, you have it in somewhat separate role. Whether it actually stays separated or there's overlap, from my experience and what I've seen varies. One of the questions that comes up with that is in Australia is what is the working relationship between the educational leader and the centre director? How do they fit together to be more than the sum of one plus one, or do they kind of not quite fit together and are at cross purposes from time to time? There's experience. I've seen experiences of both. One thing about, I'm going to talk for a moment about administrative management and leadership. It's often shaped by the governance structure and who is responsible for making what decisions. In multi-site centres where you're one of many centres under a central organisation is one type of you have management above as well as management at the centre. And then there are standalone centres where the centre supervisor is the boss. There may be a board of directors, there may be an owner-operator, an owner of the centre, but they're reporting up to them. So, that governance structure and who is responsible to make what kind of decisions help shape the roles and responsibilities and functions of administrative management. If the management of an early childhood program works well, the program is well organised and administrated, the infrastructure is often invisible to educators working in the program and to families. Like it's just there. It's happening in the background. We don't think about it. It's like we expect the lights to come on, you know, we expect things to happen. The food is going to be there, our paycheque's going to come. Like we don't give it a lot of thought about what's going on behind to make some of these things happen. However, when there are problems that are not managed well, either with physical environment or other kinds of infrastructure, inadequate becomes very visible quickly. Think about something like a leaky roof or broken toilet. Indecision about fee increases. Are we going to increase them this month? Are we going to cut back spending? We don't know. We'll wait another month to figure it out. That kind of indecision, delayed paycheques, as I mentioned, or late lunches. These very much can interfere and do interfere with our work with young children in promoting their early learning behaviour well-being, alright? They interfere greatly and we become very aware of administrative management. But when it's working well, we often it's often invisible to us.
(COUGHS)
The management of early childhood programs have has an impact on what children and their families experience as well. And it certainly has a direct impact on the quality of the work environment, our professional work environment on a day to day basis. So, we need good administrative management leadership to be in place. And many centres have that and it works well and but we need to ensure that there is more difficult in many ways for standalone centres. You know, 50 years ago when I got into this work, standalone centres, coop parent boards, that's what we loved, but the world was much simpler then, much less complicated, fewer requirements. I'm not saying it was all wonderful, we all did a wonderful job, but it was much less complicated to organise and manage child care centres that way, early learning programs that way than it is today. It's become far more complicated for small standalone centres to do it. Centres that have boards of directors is another layer that can be complicating, can be supportive or not. What is important is that the centre director management role and responsibilities are identified, are clearly identified. What is that role responsible for and where do they get the support to do it? That's very important for administrative leadership. Now let's move on to the main event today that we're talking about, and that's pedagogical leadership. There is a recent review by the OECD, Organisation for Economic and Cooperative Development, that has a substantial area on early childhood care and education, and has done numerous reports. People from Australia have been involved in them. But this is and they often put out very helpful overview reports about what's happening in different parts of the world and different systems, summarise evidence quite well. And the recent one, well, not that recent, but 2019 fairly recent, was leadership for quality, early childhood education and care. And it was mainly a lit review of pedagogical leadership with some overall analysis done about it, and not surprisingly, I think the main conclusions will resonate with those of you and those of us who have been in some of these positions. ECE leaders often face challenges in balancing tasks across the core functions of administration and pedagogy. And that holds true whether it's in two people doing two separate roles or one person doing both roles. Balancing the tasks and who does what when there's two people seems to be something that challenges many, many programs in many jurisdictions operating under different governance. Some are operating entirely as part of education, others are very separate from education and different ministries or departments. But this notion how to balance those tasks is something that keeps comes up, continues to come up. The other big conclusion from this overview was that both roles should be included in initial education and should be specific ongoing professional development to support them. And we heard about some professional development and professional development that's been carried out in the UK and studied from Iram's presentation this morning. And what the OECD is pointing out is we need to do more of that. We need to continue that. We need to pay a lot of attention to it and we need to bring it in into our initial training programs and provide opportunities in an ongoing way. So, some of the specifics that have been reviewed, the OECD found a review from Ireland, noted different issues for pedagogical leadership in large and small centres. PD may focus more on administration was one of the findings that they had that there was less on pedagogical leadership and more in the administration. In small centres, The Ireland review found that the centre leader may also, who's both the administrative and the pedagogical leader, may be part of the day working directly with children, considered part of the ratios or part of the staffing team and have a real limited ability to focus on either the administrative or the pedagogical leadership, alright? And at the end of the day, when that happens, the administrative leadership tasks are going to take over because people have to get paid, the children need lunch, etc. And the pedagogical leadership disappears. And that was a recurring theme, particularly from small centres. From Reggio Emilia in Italy which is often a pilot that we hold up, a star that we want to observe and follow some of the amazing things around inquiry approaches that have come out of Reggio Emilia. They concluded that sustaining educators ongoing professional development within a collective framework guided by pedagogical leadership was a core practice they put a lot of emphasis on. They valued it a lot. It wasn't the first thing to go when push came to shove that pedagogical leadership and the role of the pedagogistas, as they're called, was considered the primary thing to keep going to the primary focus. So, that's kind of interesting. Different perspectives. Overall findings, though, do really indicate that ongoing professional development and sustained pedagogical leadership do contribute to the quality of early childhood education. And again, I think my colleague here, Iram, pointed that out to us, that this has evidence and there's evidence from other parts of the world that underlie this, that when we have strong pedagogical leadership, we have better quality programs for young children. And guess what? When we have better quality programs for young children, children benefit from that, too, and we have improved outcomes. And you know what else which might even be more important? They're happier. It's a good place for them to be. They have more opportunities for making connections with their friends. And guess what? Two young children in pre-school programs and in kinder programs, even naught to three, what matters most in an early childhood program is typically the other children, friends. Very young, pre-verbal children will get more excited about their friend coming in the door than anybody else, even the educators. Not always, but often. And four and five-year-olds, when you ask them, what do you like most?
Friends. What matters most? Friends. Playing with friends, my friend, variations on it. Get them to draw pictures about it. It's what stands out most to them are their friends. So, I think when we're thinking about pedagogical leadership, we've got to think about the child's perspective and what are we doing in our pedagogy to support that? Because at the end of the day, that's what they care about the most. When you ask them, what don't they like? Occasionally it's nap time, sometimes the food, but most of the time it's about unhappy experiences with other children. I don't like it when Bobby's here because he always pushes me. That sort of thing, often, is the predominant thing. This has been research done by colleagues in Toronto at OEC fairly, and there's some work of the same kind of work that's been done here in Australia. It's been repeated over and over. Friends matter to young children in early childhood programs probably more than anything else. So, when we're thinking about pedagogical leadership and the how we do things, I think we need to bring into context how we organise things, how we promote things, how we support their learning, how are we supporting that within the context of friendships, OK? If we want to be effective, and if we want our children to be happy and have a good day, which matters a lot, I think, as much as improving vocabulary, improving understanding of numbers, these are very important things too. I value them and I really value, though, that they have a good day and it's a good experience and they're happy. So, I think paying attention in our pedagogical leadership to what we're doing to support friendships needs to be part of the mix as well.
So, that's my soapbox about children and their friends. Overall findings also indicate that clearly defined roles for administrative and pedagogical leadership is really important, particularly if they're separate positions, OK? It's really important to define who's doing what, but it is also important that there be a common pedagogical understanding between the two roles and positions between the two people that the centre director and the educational leader are on the same page, that they respect each other. Yes, they may not be identical, they may have some differences, but they've come to understand and able to fit them together. So, they're not presenting conflicting leadership to educators. Because sometimes no leadership would be better than conflicting leadership. So, finding a common understanding, coming to a common ground about that is important. If the administrator leader is the boss who makes final decisions, particularly final human resource decisions, it's important that that role, that person values and reinforces the pedagogical leader and recognises educator practice or else it's not deemed as that important to the educators. If the boss doesn't care, do I really need to pay attention? Is this really valuable? So, that seems to be a critical element for how well the split between educational leadership or pedagogical leadership and administrative management. So, I want to take you to strategies. Few strategies from the evidence presented in these international reports and some of the research, such as what Iram presented today, as well as from my own personal experience. OK, I admit it, I'm dropping in my own personal experience into this. I call it evidence-based storytelling. Yes, I value good evidence, but I also value my own story. And when I find that they mix, I really like the evidence. But these are mutually collaborating, mutually reinforcing concepts that I'm going to talk to you about. First of all, and I've already mentioned it and that's what today is about, really, is pedagogical and management, leadership skills development. And I heard some announcement today earlier there's going to be more of that coming down the pipeline from the state government providing intentional learning opportunities and ongoing mentoring and support. This is absolutely critical and needs to be happening. Now and as Iram's research showed us about the professional development learning studies that she's done, one shot efforts don't really cut it. It might be fun to go to a two-hour afternoon workshop and catch up with a few friends and have a cup of tea, maybe a glass of wine at the end of the event and you may get a real boost from it. Chances are it's not going to have an impact on the practice. Your impact on what you take back to lead other educators. It's a one, and there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, as long as we understand and consider what it is. It's not the same as doing serious work around professional learning opportunities to support leadership skills. So, we need to devise those, think about those, do that, those in a thoughtful manner where we're building, where we have reinforcements for it, either by, as Iram pointed out, more than one person attending the centre director and the educational lead taking part together and then having a collaboration on how they bring it back to the staff team is another approach that can work real well. Having a sequence of things through professional development opportunities and also having additional qualifications around leadership. The OEC PhD that I mentioned earlier that I've been involved with is just that kind of PhD. It is an early learning PhD and the participants who took it all but a couple of them over three different cohorts were working in either in leadership positions in government, they were teaching in our community college system or they were leaders in large multi-site early learning and childcare centres. And they were coming together to get a doctorate, they had masters, they were coming together to get a doctorate in some aspect of early learning. Most of them were in aspects that were contained an element of pedagogical leadership. They were going to do work and study, do their thesis and take it back into their teaching, into the degree program that were in leadership that were just coming along. And there were about 50 or 60 people graduated from that program over the three different cohorts. About 45 of them are in positions in community colleges, in government or in large centres or in school boards where they are providing pedagogical leadership at this point in time in various ways, shapes and form. I'm doing a big generalisation. But that I think was a real boost. It's not enough, but it was a real boost to the capacity to lead those kinds of programs, to lead better degree on leadership, bachelor level on early learning leadership. So, I think we should be thinking of that. I think we should also be clear about career pathways. Career pathways that people can proceed along, that they can see themselves in the future. Not everybody wants to lead the children and their families, and I'm going to come back to that at the end. And we shouldn't, it shouldn't all be about to be successful, you move on from working directly with children and families. In a way that will make a lot of sense. You came into early childhood education because probably young children excited you. You get motivated and energised by being with them and so forth. So, always seeing the success as a career path out of there doesn't make a lot of sense. At the same time, we do want early childhood practitioners to grow, develop their skills and move into leadership positions. And we should have clear career paths for those who want to do that. The use of time, the use of time. Nobody has - does anybody here, I can't see everybody, but I know I'm not going to get many hands. Anybody put up their hand and say, oh, yeah, we got a lot of time for pedagogical leadership. We've got the time we need to meet, to discuss, to problem solve, resolve conflicts. Oh, I don't see any hands up.
No, I mean, if you are, over and over and over again, over the last 20 years, the number one challenge I get back around professional learning and around professional and time spent on pedagogical leadership, we don't have enough time. We don't have enough time. And I think that time issue has become compressed, is accelerated because of pandemic. And what that's done with is it's exasperated our workforce challenges. You're facing workforce shortages, like we are in Canada, that have been compounded by what we've just experienced for three years. So, time becomes really important. On the other hand, I am not sure, that twice or three times or four times as much time is the solution would really get us that much farther. We're quite capable of wasting time. So, I think we have to use the time we've got as effectively as we possibly can and for the immediate future, that is the priority over we need more time or can't do anything. How do we use the time we have? One of the suggestions, and this may be something that's already taken care of and old school, old news to you, but one of the strategies that I think is important to pay attention to in situations I've encountered in Canada is that there's too much of... when there is precious time devoted to getting together face-to-face or online, too much of it is spent on administrivia that could be dealt with in an email. How many of you actually need to spend 10 minutes of face-to-face time about how to fill out, I don't know, your expense form or some other personnel information? Most of you could do that on the computer, on your own with some simple instructions. We don't need to talk. We don't need to spend face-to-face time on that. And not everybody does, but too many do in my experience. So, thinking about the tasks we can delegate away from, administrative tasks we can accomplish in other ways so that our interactive time, our time with each other, can be spent more on the pedagogical discussions and debates that we need to have with each other and can be best carried out in-person. That's one. Another that I think is important is around equity. OK, around equity. We've all become, in Canada and in Australia collectively, so much more aware of the racism and colonialism that we have imposed on indigenous peoples, on other peoples, non-white peoples who have come to our countries, and we are struggling to try to make it right. We don't always do a good job, we don't always do the right thing, there's lots of challenges, but we are more aware of the issues and the need for reconciliation than we were 10 years ago. Certainly when I first came to Australia 15 years ago, it's a very different place. When I look at your, the new early learning, early years learning framework, I see a different tone, a different respect in it than was there in the first one. And it's the same thing in Canada, we're struggling, but we're trying to do that. So, when we think about leadership in early childhood education, we have to elevate and encourage pipelines for leadership that reflect the community served. We've got to draw that in. We've got to find ways to get those, not to call them up for a onetime interview and say, hey, tell me all about... but to actually collaborate, bring them in, give them leadership positions to do that. Educators can consider equity in how they design learning environments and acknowledge and champion positive racial identity and that we can bring into our pedagogical leadership. To achieve equity for all children, including indigenous, black and newcomer children, in Canada, there's general consensus that we need to make those who have experienced racism and inequities central to formulating new practices and policies that promote equity. And that includes pedagogical leadership in our early childhood education programs. And we must make sure that all communities are represented at decision making tables, OK? They're at decision making tables, not just on the side. Ask for their opinion. So, I think we have to and there's elements of that. I see pieces of that here in Australia, I see pieces of that in Canada, but we need to keep doing more. if equity is a real thing we want to accomplish, to work towards, OK, we've got to make sure. And when we're talking about leadership, pedagogical leadership, it's important that those voices are there and we carry it forward. The last one I want to bring to your attention is one that I think is the most important. And I think it is consistent with Kim Little's wonderful introduction today. I think it's consistent with the evidence, like real, credible evidence, authentic research evidence that Iram brought us. And that's noticing and naming. It matters a lot. Noticing and naming matters a lot. The belonging, being and becoming learning outcome is defined as a skill, knowledge or disposition that educators can actively promote in early childhood settings, in collaboration with children and families. A skill, knowledge or disposition that educators can actively promote in early childhood settings. That leaves a lot of scope to define the what the specific skills, etc, etc. But that's clearly there as an early as the learning outcomes. The pedagogical leader can ask the question, what learning outcomes are supported by the learning environment? And notice and name them. So, when you walk into a room of children and families and educators, you walk into a room, look around, take it in, look for the interactions children and educators are having, the organisation of the learning environment, what learning outcomes are being contributed to in those environments? Scan the room. You've got the eyes to do it. That's what your profession, your professional education and your practice is giving you. You've got the eyes to walk in and pick up on moments. Small interactions of a child carrying something across the room, a new poster up, a new drawing up, a child interacting with an educator and the educator really listening and paying attention. Just capture those moments. Ask and name them. Say, oh, wow, that's fabulous. That story you were reading and how you responded to Joey's question about blah, blah. That really promoted. You know, name it. It takes about 30 to 45 seconds, but the educator carries it away. It reinforces good practice. It reinforces good pedagogy. Frankly, I think it's one of the most effective things you can do as an educator leader is just always be on the lookout to pay attention to that. Even if you're going in the room to do an administrative task, to leave a note for a parent, to deal with something, just take a deep breath and remember early childhood education, remember the children and sink into that and name and then name it. Maybe not right in the moment, if it's really busy. That could be chaotic. But either name it in the moment or name it soon after so the educator has that reinforcement and they know what they do gets noticed. It matters a lot. Sometimes you can ask provocative questions. Be specific and you've got to be authentic. Don't just go in with the same old, same old every day, oh, that's nice. You've got to be specific. And look for interactions, evidence of planning, monitoring, traces of children's learning are all snippets that you can take in. Now you may see some negative interactions or organisation or negative organisation in the environment. Well, you discuss those later. You don't discuss them in the moment. You put that file that away. We'll have a cup of tea and a discussion about that. But I leave that. I'm not negating any other research or things we should do around the bigger picture, but the one thing we can do all of the time is take notice, notice and name good practice and how learning outcomes are being achieved. It goes a long way. So, I'm going to end there. I think I see my I've got, yeah, my time is up, so I am going to end there and we go on to something else. Yes.
HOST:
Ladies and gentlemen, Jane Bertrand, Professor Jane Bertrand, thank you very much. I'm going to notice and name your good practice. Wouldn't that be wonderful? That's a wonderful way to bring to mind what it is to be a leader to notice in the moment good practice. And as you said earlier, not just good job, because there's a two-word response to that as well, isn't there? My personal favourite is when people say to me at work, I want you to do a good interview. Oh, thank heavens you said. Otherwise, yes, please, thank Jane again. Thanks, Jane.
Updated