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Supervision in an Early Childhood Setting
CAECE > College for Australian Early Childhood Educators
Why do we supervise? Is it to prevent accidents? To engage and to develop relationships? To learn about the children? The answer to these questions is yes. We supervise for all these reasons.
We must abide by legal requirements that form the foundation of why we supervise. These include regulations Regulation 115, Premises designed to facilitate supervision; Regulation 122, Educators must be working directly with children to be included in ratios and; 168, Education and care services must have policies and procedures. Furthermore, we have NQS Quality Area 2 that focuses on supervision and incident and emergency management. Element 2.2.1 supervision. At all times, reasonable precautions and adequate supervision protect children from harm and hazard. This means ensuring supervision plans are in place, everyone knows where they should be. Everyone knows what is expected of them. Reasonable precautions are taking steps to prevent accidents and incidents and not reacting to them. We can’t control every aspect of the day, and we need to encourage and allow children to take acceptable risks. Element 2.2.2 incident and emergency management. Plans to effectively manage incidents and emergencies are developed in consultation with relevant authorities, practised and implemented. How often do you practice emergencies? Not just evacuation and lockdown drills but injured or missing child drills? It’s not just about legal requirements; what about relationships, connections, building capability, scaffolding and engaging with the children?
1. Secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships
Educators who are attuned to children’s thoughts and feelings support the development of a strong sense of well-being. They positively interact with the young child in their learning. Educators who prioritise nurturing relationships and providing children with consistent emotional support can assist children in developing the skills and understandings they need to interact positively with others. They also help children to learn about their responsibilities to others, appreciate their connectedness and interdependence as learners, and to value collaboration and teamwork.
2. High expecations and equity
Educators recognise and respond to barriers to children achieving educational success. In response, they challenge practices that contribute to inequities and make curriculum decisions that promote the inclusion and participation of all children.
PRACTICE
1. Holistic approaches
When early childhood educators take a holistic approach, they pay attention to children’s physical, personal, social, emotional and spiritual well-being as well as cognitive aspects of learning.
2. Responsiveness to children
Educators are responsive to all children’s strengths, abilities and interests. They value and build on children’s strengths, skills and knowledge to ensure their motivation and engagement in learning. Educators are also responsive to children’s ideas and play, which form an essential basis for curriculum decision-making. In response to children’s evolving ideas and interests, educators assess, anticipate and extend children’s learning via openended questioning, providing feedback, challenging their thinking and guiding their learning. They use spontaneous ‘teachable moments’ to scaffold children’s learning.
3. Learning through play
Early childhood educators play many roles with children and use various strategies to support learning. They engage in sustained shared conversations with children to extend their thinking. They provide a balance between child-led, child-initiated educatorsupported learning. They create learning environments encouraging children to explore, solve problems, and create and construct. Educators interact with babies and children to build attachment. They use routines and play experiences to do this. They also recognise spontaneous teachable moments as they occur and use them to build on children’s learning. Early childhood educators work with young children to promote and model positive ways to relate to others. They actively support the inclusion of all children in play, help children to recognise when play is unfair
and offer constructive ways to build a caring, fair and inclusive learning community.
4. Intentional teaching
Educators who engage in intentional teaching recognise that learning occurs in social contexts and that interactions and conversations are vitally important for learning.
5. Learning Environments
Indoor and outdoor environments support all aspects of children’s learning and invite conversations between children, early childhood educators, families and the broader community. They promote opportunities for sustained shared thinking and collaborative learning.
Effective supervision strategies:
Active supervision is about being a part of the interactions with children- being actively involved in the supervision. Move to where the children are, and watch for signs of distress where you may need to intervene. This could be crying, screaming, arguing, raised voices, whining or just a change in the conversation tone.
It is not always negative; children may need support and scaffolding to further their learning. Look for areas to challenge children and support their learning and development. Active supervision is
• Ensuring everyone knows where they need to be • Identifying high-risk areas and having strategies to manage these areas • Flexible for the needs of the children
• Engaging with the children • Actively listening for sounds of distress, changes in tone, volume or content of conversations and interactions between children Communication is KEY!
You need to communicate when:
