Using open source learning techniques to enhance professional development opportunities for the early childhood education and care sector in Australia

Abstract

In early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Australia, practice is situated largely across the health, education and community services sectors. Within these sectors, silos of practice exist (Press & Woodrow, 2005), which restrict the opportunities for knowledge exchange and create duplication of services and contribute to increased costs. Moreover, lack of knowledge exchange means that new ideas and approaches in particular sectors are often not completely understood in others, thereby increasing protectiveness of individual knowledge bases, limiting possibilities for leadership and integrated practice in the ECEC field and fostering suspicion that decisions about particular practices/approaches are not evidence-based (Cheeseman, 2007). Such factors undermine, rather than enhance, possibilities for effective leadership in ECEC. This paper will report on an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant, which provided possible solutions to these barriers. These solutions were enabled through the design of an open source learning environment, which allowed participants to better understand how these silos disrupt their practice and to develop some strategies for overcoming such barriers. Participants were also supported with a structured course within a learning management system to enable student interaction, facilitator support and consolidation of the theory/practice nexus via access to multiple resources.