Investigating multi-tasking and task rotation as aspects of the complexity of early childhood educators’ work

ABSTRACT

Researchers of early childhood educators’ practice have noted the usefulness of applying various conceptual and methodological resources to create accounts of complexity. This article contributes to an under-researched area, providing evidence of multi-tasking and task rotation as aspects of the complexity of early childhood educators’ practice. The data regarding these aspects were generated in 46 focus groups conducted with 111 directors, teachers and assistants working in Australian early childhood education and care services. Findings of the thematic analysis of focus group data suggest that for participants, multi-tasking and task rotation were considered an integral and regular aspect of practice. Participants also described a range of ways services had to make these sometimes-challenging aspects of practice work for themselves, children and families. This article concludes with suggestions for making multi-tasking and task rotation more manageable through shared understandings and the creation of enabling conditions within early childhood work environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood educators or teachers
• quality
• early childhood education and care
• multi-tasking
• task rotation
• complexity

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority to identify the population of Australian centre-based services that hold ‘exceeding’ ratings and the feedback of anonymous peer reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In Australia, ‘educators’ refers to those working directly with children birth-five years – regardless of qualification.

2. In Australia, education and care services are predominantly provided through centre-based services (97%) – including long day care and preschool services, with family day care schemes making up the remaining 3%. Some states and territories also offer preschool programs within the school system. These are not included in the ACECQA quality rating system. Service provider management types are: private (i.e., non-government), for profit (50%); private, not for profit community-managed operators (21%); private, not for profit organisations (14%); State/Territory and Local Government managed (7%); State/Territory government schools (4%); Independent schools (3%); and Catholic schools (1%) (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority 2022).

3. Due to participant availability, in 16 cases, individual interviews were conducted with directors.

4. Participants were also informed of results of a set of ratings of job satisfaction and perceived stress collected through the RTS app after each time use diary entry; however, these results are not reported here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC LP160100532), including financial and in-kind contributions from seven industry partners.