Professional Learning and Development for Pedagogical Leadership in Family Day Care in Tasmania

This chapter describes a qualitative study undertaken to address the question: What professional learning and development strategies are Family Day Care settings in Tasmania using to develop pedagogical leadership in response to the introduction of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF)? Telephone interviews with managers of 10 family day care schemes across Tasmania were used to gather information on the EYLF related professional learning and development strategies adopted by the schemes. During the interviews two open ended questions invited comments on how, according to the scheme managers, participation in professional learning and development contributed to pedagogical leadership among scheme coordination team members and home-based educators. Findings showed that the family day care sector in Tasmania has adopted a wide range of professional learning and development strategies with EYLF focused in-house sessions led by members of the coordination teams and external workshops being the most often used. Increasing educators’ confidence in their capacity to adopt EYLF practices was identified as the most significant pedagogical leadership outcome from participating in the professional learning and development offered to date. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the context for the study and related literature. The method, findings and discussion are then presented along with concluding comments.