“You’re trusting us to do what????”

An update on Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in our topic “Social Learning & Development”

By Jessie Jovanovic, Lecturer in Early Childhood

Following its success and feedback from childcare directors in 2012, Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) is back bigger and better than ever in 2013. Last year student teams were asked to put theory into practice by implementing a socio-emotional dimension of a childcare centre’s Quality Improvement Plan (QIP). They observed centre practices and reflected with educators about their practices, and their centre’s policies and procedures. While this work was incredibly powerful for our students who were able to apply their learning, it fell short of its intent; to collaboratively support centres with the ever-increasing policy dimensions of our work in children’s services.

So after student teams had submitted their reports to centres (detailing their recommendations and research) we sought feedback from directors about what we could do differently, to establish a more supportive and meaningful approach to WIL for centres in 2013.

At a post-topic forum in July 2012, directors asked us to:

  • Revise the assessment task, so students would feed their work directly back into centres’ QIPs as a part of the process of continuous improvement
  • Run the WIL project across the semester so students would get to know the centre’s context, children and educators better, particularly as they sought to understand centre practices and protocols
  • Support continuous improvement by offering more student hours per week for implementing, reviewing &/or revising the QIP
  • Broaden the WIL focus to assist in confirming the centre strengths &/or assisting in the progress or establishment of centre goals for improvement

We listened. Beginning in March teams of 3 students (on average) were paired with a centre in their local community to offer between 5-10 hours of QIP support a fortnight. While students have been directly updating centre QIPs, this is not a professional experience placement. So there’s no extra paperwork or time-consuming mentoring. Instead, students teams have been focussed their attention on the socio-emotional dimensions of their centre’s QIP by:

  • Reviewing &/or writing centre policies and procedures
  • Sharing the latest literature and research
  • Leading discussion and reflection with educators
  • Documenting observations of centre practices
  • Supporting the writing of progress notes and improvement plans

We currently have 90 students working on 30 childcare centres QIPs across metropolitan Adelaide. One BEd(EC)/BA student is typically paired with two special education students, but we also have international early childhood exchange students and behavioural science students who add another dimension to our work in this topic. If you’d like to work with us in 2014, would like any further information on the topic, or have feedback for us please do not hesitate to contact us on 8201 5716 or .