Hold Your Hats - We are making some changes on the ChildForum website to make it even better for members! Hopefully you won't notice any disruption as this happens over the coming week.  But we will be taking a little bit of a break in making changes as Sarah Farquhar, ChildForum's National Coordinator is off to the GiftEDnz Conference in Wellington at the end of the week to give a research presentation with Dr Valerie Margrain on gifted education in the early years.

It was a pleasure to see the 6th Annual Summit for Men in ECE Teaching held just over a week ago was a huge success.  It had a Pasifika theme and was held in Whanganui. ChildForum is proud of what the men in ECE have achieved in establishing a recognised representative group and organising annual summits and we look forward to seeing ECMenz continue to grow and evolve. ChildForum is pleased to have given early help by organising the inaugural summit for the purpose of getting men in ECE together for the first time in 2007. Early advocacy papers and articles are available from the ChildForum website.

IN THIS WEEK'S UPDATE: 

1. The ECE Academic Brain Drain in NZ
2. Complaining Nannies 
3. All You Need to Know About Doing Action Research
4. Early Childhood Education Services are Not Babysitting Services.  Yeah Right! 
5. Submitting Research Papers to the NZ Research in Early Childhood Education Journal
6. Physical Space and How to Avoid Stress and Making it Difficult for Children to Learn 
7. 'No Time for Gloom' in the ECE Sector
8. NZ Home-based Conference 

1. The ECE Academic Brain Drain in NZ

This year Janet Moles and Valerie Margain left with their families to take up positions at Australian Universities. These two talented people are among a number of NZers with the very precious qualification of a Ph.D. in early childhood education who have left our shores.

Should we be concerned about the brain drain?  Do you think NZ universities are doing enough to support graduate students into academic and research positions, and could tertiary education institutions be doing more to value and provide attractive employment conditions to their talented ECE staff?  

* READ MORE AND ADD YOUR OPINIONS:   ECE Academic Brain Drain

2. Complaining Nannies 

Nannies are complaining about being asked to do regular safety checks on children's homes and being told to tell parents what  changes to make in their homes or they cannot continue to work for them.  Why is this a problem?

*  READ MORE AND SAY WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS:  Are Nannies and Families Right to Complain about Being Treated in the Same Way as Other Licensed ECE Settings? 

3. All You Need to Know about Doing Action Research

Most ECE practitioners and students are likely to find that they need to look no further than “All You Need to Know About Action Research” for guidance in what to do from the planning through to the completion stage of their practice-based research project.  This book also contains the how and why in covering the history and philosophy underpinning action research and the theoretical challenges.

* READ MORE:  All You Need to Know About Action Research by Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead

4. Early Childhood Education Services are (not) Babysitting Services

Public policy promotes participation in early childhood education as being good for children's development and the early childhood profession sees itself as educators or teachers and not as babysitters. However, for most kiwi parents early childhood education is about having someone to look after your child. Early findings from Auckland University's Growing Up in New Zealand study show the main reason for the use of regular non-parental care was parent study or work commitments.

* READ MORE:  ECE Services are (not) Babysitting Services

5. Submitting Research Papers to the NZ Research in Early Childhood Education Journal

The NZ Research in ECE Journal has a great local and international team of editors this year (click here to find out more).

Manuscripts for this year's 2012 Journal edition are currently out with reviewers or have been reviewed.  If you were intending to submit a manuscript this year but have not done so yet we suggest you contact us right away.  Manuscripts are also being accepted for next year.  For a copy of the guidelines for authors click here.   If you would like to submit a manuscript or would like to offer to be a peer-reviewer please E-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  

6. Physical Space and How to Avoid Stress and Making it Difficult for Children to Learn

This article discusses the minimum amount of space per child in early childhood centres and home-based ECE services, problems with this, what advice you can give to parents, and some research that is available.

* READ MORE:  Space in ECE Services and Avoiding Overcrowding, Stress, and an Environment in Which Learning is Difficult for Children 

7. "No Time for Gloom" in ECE

There is no time for gloom in early childhood education. Demand for early childhood education places continues to grow and more new early childhood centres are opening. 

A ChildForum survey carried out at the end of last year showed that uncertainty amongst early childhood centre and home-based operators was a big issue, and this reflected concerns around that time about the Government's ECE Taskforce recommendations and what else could be happening to funding on top of cutbacks already made. 

But early childhood services are nevertheless getting on with their business and have shown awareness that financial planning needs to take into account changing economic circumstances alongside government funding.

* READ MORE:  "No Time for Gloom" in ECE Teacher-Led Services 

 8. NZ Home-Based ECE Conference

The call for presenters and papers has now opened for this conference to be held Friday 28th to 30th Sept.  For information click here.

Go to our website by clicking here:  www.childforum.com to learn more about children's care, teaching, managing an ECE service, research on early childhood, and education policy.

No responsibility is taken for any errors. If you spot an error please inform us so that it can be corrected.
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Write to: ChildForum, PO Box 58-078, Porirua 5245, NEW ZEALAND