Looking to the future: producing transdisciplinary professionals for leadership in early childhood settings

Abstract

This paper reports on an Australian initiative Developing and Sustaining Pedagogical Leadership in Early Childhood Education and Care Professionals, where academics and professionals shared knowledge, experience and research about transdisciplinary practice. The project aimed to develop an understanding of the strategies and skills early childhood professionals and practitioners required to strengthen pedagogical leadership when working in multi-agency organisations. The conceptual framework underpinning the design, analysis and evaluation of the project was bricolage. Bricolage enabled the researchers, professionals and practitioners and other organisational members to consider the principles of multiplicity, complexity, relationality and criticality. The use of bricolage created an opportunity for a more comprehensive level of analysis to occur. A model of professional development emerged from the analysis of the data and was subsequently used to develop an open source learning website.

Keywords:

• integrated practice
• transdisciplinarity
• bricolage

Notes

1. Sash is the term used in patch-working to describe the boundaries/borders of the quilt that determine how each patch is combined to make a cohesive whole.