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It's an honour to be invited to contribute an editorial to AJEC to mark 2008 as the year of Early Childhood Australia's 70th birthday. As noted on another birthday by Manjula Waniganayake (2001), AJEC and its predecessor, the Australian Preschool Quarterly, have indeed been the ‘flagships' of ECA's serial publications programs.
AJEC is a major demonstration of ECA's long standing commitment to scholarship in early childhood education and care. It is one of our organisation's powerful advocacy tools, helping to promote best practice and debate to a wide audience of academics, researchers, practitioners, students and others, right across Australia and further afield.
At this time of celebration, ECA acknowledges with great appreciation the work of past and present AJEC (and APQ) expert editors and editorial committees, as well as the contributions of so many learned authors over the years. Without you AJEC, now transformed into the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, would not be the success that it is. Both ECA and AJEC readers are in your debt. We also thank the staff in ECA's National Office whose professional contribution is so very important to the smooth production and success of our journal.
As usual, this edition includes much to inform and provoke thought and discussion across a diverse range of topics. The first two articles describe projects aimed at reducing the difficulties often experienced by young Australian Indigenous children when they begin formal schooling, particularly in the areas of numeracy and literacy. We can learn from each.
Warren, Young and deVries report on the outcomes for two young Australian Indigenous children who attended a year of ‘ prep' schooling despite being younger than the official 'prep' entry age. While the cohort in this report is so small, the issues are very big. The paper describes the larger Young Australian Indigenous students' Literacy and Numeracy (YAILN) program of which the children were part, discusses its pedagogical approach and theoretical underpinnings, reports the finding that the two children did enter their ‘formal' prep year with clear gains, and considers the roles both of teachers and older peers in the early learning of these children.
‘Bridging the Gap', a home-book reading program with Indigenous Australian parents to support their young children in learning to read, is described by Freeman and Bocher. Again, the careful design of the project and its ability to engage parents and children alike is instructive, as are the ‘spin-off' benefits for the ongoing work of Aboriginal Education Assistants. The article reports quantitative results collected during the implementation of the program, with improvements in both children's skills and in related areas such as home-school links.
The gross motor proficiency of 5 year old Hong Kong children, and the efficacy of using a gross motor proficiency norm developed in one country with children in another country is the subject of Lam's research. As part of her report Lam discusses numerous characteristics of life and early education in Hong Kong that could impact on different aspects of motor development. From her findings she recommends caution in using an instrument of this types that is valid in one country in another country, and urges further research in the area.
Bortoli and Brown studied the social attention skills of preschool children with an intellectual disability and children with a hearing loss. Their interesting report discusses and examines aspects of attention and its interaction with children's social engagement, and considers differences in opportunities social engagement, preferences for social engagement opportunities, and the effect of cognitive delay. The article also suggest related strategies for teachers.
The long-term effects of all-day kindergarten on children in the United States are the subject of the article by Chang and Singh. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative US data base, the authors analysed reading and maths scores, teacher activities in reading and maths, and children's age, gender and socioeconomic status in three waves from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of first grade. The scale and method of this research are certainly interesting. We note that the average age of children in the youngest wave studied was 5 years and 8 months, an age at which most Australian children are attending school ‘all-day'.
In their project on the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools Baseline Assessment (PIPS – BLA), Wildy and Styles analysed school entry assessment data of random samples of students in four countries. The article reports the authors' detailed examination of the validity and reliability of PIPS-BLA , a ‘formal, objective assessment program' across countries and sexes, and gives their findings regarding the capabilities of students in the same four countries in the year before they start formal schooling. The introduction acknowledges and briefly discusses the unease of some teachers (including early childhood teachers) with national and/or formal assessment programs.
The final article of the edition comes from Smith who surveyed professional musicians about their childhood memories to understand the effects on their lives of instrumental music lessons at a young age. Smith's report is interesting if highly selective. She does caution us about the danger of drawing conclusions only from the stories of very successful musicians, but does make concluding recommendations to parents and early childhood educators.
Margaret Young
Early Childhood Australia National President
Australian Journal of Early Childhood – Volume 33 No 4 December 2008, p. ii.
Don't forget, Australian Journal of Early Childhood is tax deductible for early childhood professionals
You can read more from this issue of the Australian Journal of Early Childhood now.
AJEC is changing its name ...
To reflect its diverse readership and commitment to international early childhood debate,
the Australian Journal of Early Childhood will soon be changing its name to
the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. Follow the link to learn more. |
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