Yesterday Uni of Melbourne had a high profile Early Childhood academic, Bridie Raban flown in especially for our lecture on Literacy in Early Childhood. She was very reluctant to read the definition of literacy in the national framework as she said it was completely wrong. She even suggested that she'd love to burn the framework.
I saw a fellow early childhood teacher in the lift afterwards and said, "well, what did you think about what she said about burning the framework?" She said that that was our bible. I laughed and said that people at work always ask me, "Can I borrow your bible?" We're taught to base all our practices on the two frameworks.
What we need to remember is that we don't need to take everything in the frameworks as gospel. The concepts and terminology in the frameworks have partially been chosen with political and economic motivations in mind. They were not solely written by academics and professionals in the field. Read widely, test your ideas and theories and look at what other countries are doing and why. Our education system is not the top in the world, so there is still room for improvement.
Being an innovator rather than a follower won't always win you brownie points in a competitive or lethargic environment, but it's the only way to go if you want to be a truly great teacher and leader in your field.
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