Developing a culture of learning through reflective practice...
Over the last eighteen months, we have been working with an Aboriginal Education
Consultancy, Koori Kinnections. This partnership began after we successfully obtained a
grant to engage an Aboriginal educator to run an Aboriginal Cultural program at Styles
Street. During this time, we have worked closely with founder Jess Sinnott and her team,
and this year, Jess has joined the working group of our Reconciliation Action Plan.
We sought feedback from Jess and her team on our learning environments to see
if there was anything we could improve on. While they knew we were incorporating
Indigenous perspectives and demonstrating respect for First Nations People within our
practice, Jess felt this was not immediately visible to visitors to our service. To make our
work and respect more visible, Jess suggested we engage the children in hand-printing
artwork using the colours of the Aboriginal flag, purchase more Indigenous resources,
display land maps, incorporate Aboriginal oral and written language within our practice
and engage the children with Aboriginal symbols and artists.
Initially, we felt a little defeated by the feedback that respect was not immediately
visible. As a team, we believe we work really hard on this within our program. So, what
were we to do about this disconnect between what we were confident was happening
but was not being conveyed to others? When Jess initially suggested handprint art
using red, black, and yellow, we appreciated the idea but felt it did not fully align with
our philosophy of engaging the children in a deeper process of art making. After the
meeting, an idea was posed in the Wumbat room to involve the children in creating an
Aboriginal flag artwork with their handprints and have it framed to display respectfully.
This idea seemed like a beautiful, loud, and proud expression of our commitment to
Aboriginal perspectives within Styles Street.
The excitement about this idea was building, and during a staff meeting in April, it
was shared with the team. It was important to engage the team, hear everyone’s
perspective, and critically reflect on the action we were going to take. Team discussions
and debates allow educators to challenge one another and leverage their combined
knowledge and perspectives to enhance their practice (ACECQA, 2016). During this
meeting, it was suggested that we need to go further than simply encouraging the
children to recreate another artist’s or culture’s work – in this case, the Aboriginal
flag. We were challenged to consider using art as a provocation, recognising symbols,
colours, patterns, places, and ideas that might be sparked by reflecting on this artist
and their work. Would jumping in and having children recreate the Aboriginal flag
as initially proposed embody slow pedagogies and value slow knowledge, as we have
learned from Alison Clark (Clark, 2023)? Would it allow time for listening, collaboration,
and creating opportunities to deepen and extend children’s learning about Indigenous
culture? Would it enable children to engage in creative exploration of art materials
and processes, as we learned through professional development at the Museum
of Contemporary Art? This reflective discussion highlighted how challenging it is to
develop a critical perspective of our practice. Talking about new ideas with others
often helps to clarify them, allowing us to come up with a way forward that holds
true to our teaching intentions and incorporates our professional development
and knowledge of new pedagogies.
This team meeting and subsequent reflections allowed us to engage in further
discussion, where we challenged each other to use our collective knowledge and
perspectives to consider how we could visibly demonstrate respect for First Nations
People. Looking at our RAP and the curriculum resources, we decided to engage the
children in an exploration of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags. We aimed
to slowly and collaboratively explore the cultural meanings and significance of the
colours that make up these flags, while staying true to our ambition to engage the
children in slow pedagogy and meaningful creative arts exploration.
Our reflection led us to consider how to visually demonstrate respect for First Nations
People using the same approach we would with any provocation as a starting point
for creative art with our Wumbat children. We were inspired by our professional
development at the MCA, engaging with works of art created by both Indigenous and
non-Indigenous artists, the artist educators who guided us through the gallery, and the
creative exploration of art materials, processes, and ways to visually express ourselves.
Over the course of three months, we immersed ourselves in an exploration of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags. Together with the children, we observed,
discussed, dissected, reflected, revisited, shared, created, and built knowledge about
how symbols and colours can be used to represent meaning. This approach allowed
us to stay true to our goals of practicing slow pedagogy and our desire to engage
the children in creative exploration that is deliberate and meaningful. The children’s
beautiful flag-inspired artworks are loudly and proudly on display in our room and
are a testament to our commitment to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
perspectives within Styles Street and our commitment to developing a culture of
learning through reflective practice.
More detail on our wonderings and the Wumbat’s creative expression of this
thinking can be found in the learning story Colours as cultural symbols on display
in the Wumbat room.
Written in collaboration by Cherie Longden and Natasha Bell
Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority. (2016). Developing a culture of learning through reflective practice.
https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/acecqa/files/QualityInformationSheets/QualityArea1/
Clark, A. (2023). Slow knowledge and the unhurried child : time for slow pedagogies in early childhood education. Routledge.
