Getting to Know Your International Contacts-Part 3

My professional goals at this moment is to try and establish a supportive document I am truly cultivating a relationship with Kurt, an early childhood teacher from Bateau Bay, near Sydney, Australia who happens to be my international contact. We have shared our thoughts about excellence and quality. We also shared our hopes,dreams, and goals. Even though we have not met in person, it seems as though we are comfortable with sharing information with each other. I did get a chance to ask Kurt some of these questions:
1. What issues regarding quality and ec professionals are being discussed in your area?
There is big talk about equity in pay for EC teachers here in Australia. Primary and secondary teachers receive a greater rate of pay and a much more friendly award in regards to holidays, sick pay, etc. This has caused many ECT's, like myself, to transition into a primary teaching job. The Australian government has offered to try and fix the pay divide by funding pay increases, but private centre owners and local government run centres can't afford to maintain the pay rise once the government funding ceases. To keep the pay up, fees go up, families can't afford it and centre numbers dwindle. Centres prefer to employ younger and less experienced ECT's because their pay is cheaper. This in many cases from my experience leads to lower standards of care. There is some debate about what the role of an ECT is in Australia now.

 2. Tell me about opportunities and/ requirements for professional development.
In Australia we encourage all EC professionals to see themselves as reflective practitioners. To do this we are encouraged to keep up to date with trends and changes by attending at least 2 inservice training events each year. This is paid for by the employer. These inservice's give you the chance to meet other professionals, share ideas and learn new or differing teaching approaches.

3. What are your professional goals?that assists ECT's in Australia to devise appropriate child centred programs that cover the government expectations and regulations. I hope this will develop from my blog. In recent years there has been a lot of changes made to the way centre operate. The accreditation process has gone from having state wide expectations to national standards. This has led to confusion and dread in a lot of centres. I hope to be able to work as a consultant with centre directors and teachers to share program operation ideas.

 I also hope to take my experience and love of teaching to educate children in the older age brackets. My aim is to gain fulltime work in a Primary School environment and see if I can implement my play and interest based learning beliefs (project approach-Malguzzi) to the Primary school environment.

Comments

  1. Michelle RollinsJune 22, 2013 at 10:37 PM

    It is interesting to see EC professionals from other countries are dealing with the same issues EC professionals are dealing with here in the United States of America.

    ReplyDelete

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