Educational Leadership in ECEC

In this episode, we sit down with pedagogical leader Kelly Goodsir to explore the transformative power of intentional inquiry and deep listening in early learning. With over 20 years of experience, Kelly discusses how to reimagine educational leadership, moving away from "habitual" responses toward a relational, purposeful practice. She shares strategies for navigating team tensions and holding space for generative dialogue, ensuring that every decision honours the voices of both children and educators.

Drawing on concepts like Adam Grant’s 'rethinking cycle', Kelly offers practical advice on building a culture of curiosity. She emphasizes the importance of being "awake" to the present moment to ensure leadership remains grounded in meaning rather than just compliance. This conversation is an inspiring call to action for leaders to lead from the inside out, transforming everyday moments into profound learning opportunities.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to Learn Play and Thrive the podcast, the ultimate early learning podcast for educators and leaders in the sector. Let's learn, play, and thrive together.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The Learn Play Thrive podcast was recorded on the land with the dark and young people. We play out respect to the traditional custodians, past, present, and emerging.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Welcome listeners to Learn Play Thrive the podcast. Today we're chatting with the inspirational Kelly Goodson, a pedagogical leader who walks alongside educators, leaders, and organizations, inviting them to pause, reflect, and reimagine the ways they teach, learn, and lead. With over two decades of experience across RTLs on New Zealand and Australia, Kelly's work is grounded in deep listening, intentional inquiry, and purposeful practice. Kelly gently challenges the teams to explore why behind their decisions, transforming everyday moments into meaningful opportunities. And through her writing, speaking, and professional learning, she brings clarity to complexity and supports pedagogical systems that honor both children and educators. Kelly is known for her creative spirit and commitment to inspiring change from the inside out. Welcome, Kelly, to Learn Play Thrive the podcast. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to have you here with us. And I'm very fortunate for our listeners to have your voice because, as I said before, we started recording, it's always one of those things where we can share a message from somebody that we've had a conversation with, but coming from the person themselves is just so much more packful and inspiring for those listening. So let's jump straight in. How do you define the role of educational leadership and why it is so important in early learning settings today, in this time?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Yeah, it's such a big question, that one. And I'm going to try to navigate it with a few ideas. I think that defining the role of educational leadership, in my own words, would be that there is an opportunity to influence pedagogy for those that you work alongside. So it shapes the way people show up in their classrooms every day in terms of their interactions with children and families. And that can really bring about a depth and a sense of purpose in the work around education, the way we position children, learning, and our image of children. And so the role of educational leadership is highly influential to me. And of course, we can lean on our documents like the National Quality Standards and Quality Area 7.2.2. And people can go off and read that for that information. But I also think that one of the important factors about if you're listening and you're an educational leader, one of the things I like to say is you're in this role because of who you are as well, not just because of what you know. And it goes hand in hand. And I think leading pedagogy takes both of those things. It's leadership and being leaderful, but it's also about pedagogy, you know, the art of teaching and learning. So we've got to have that ongoing learning and knowledge and be a researcher as well. So it doesn't mean you have to know everything, but it does mean that you're curious to learn alongside your team and lead them with purpose. So yeah, it's not an easy way to define. And I think there are some certainly some beautiful influences out there in our sector. One of them for me is Anne Palo and Majikata, and their book from Teaching to Thinking is probably one I've read seven times. I have notes all over it. I'm definitely one of those people that like writing in my books, and then sometimes I go back and just feel encouraged by the language and the humanness of the way they speak about work. And one of the quotes they talk about in their book is they say, pedagogical leaders wake a community into a conscious conversation about the values we hold at the center of our shared life. And it's the expression of who we strive to be, who we hope to be. And I think this is a beautiful way to think about the role of an educational leader. How do we wake our people into a conscious conversation about the things that matter? The way that our philosophy comes to life in our day-to-day interactions. What does that look like? And we know it's not always going to be rosy colored rainbows and whale music, right? Like it actually says, I think this conscious conversation will sometimes hold tension. And yeah, that tension is quite an there's an art in that practice to be able to be in relationship with a colleague, know them well, know yourself well, but be able to put something on the table that's going to stretch our thinking, cause something to come into our consciousness, to question, to reposition, to reconsider.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

It's definitely a skill and an attribute to be able to go for educational leadership to educational leaderfulness, as you mentioned before, being able to adapt to the different personalities of educators, their goals, aspirations, and their personal biases that they bring forward and their passions through a variety of different theorists, but also the age groups that they're working with. So educational leaders are required to look at the whole service that they're working with and be able to have that lens, that bird's eye lens of looking over and looking at what's sitting well with their pedagogical practice, but also having the conversations, as you said, which can be complex in ways of questioning potentially what educators are doing or how they're implementing their practices surrounding their daily routines and flow of their day and what that includes and potentially what that may be excluding in a very sensitive way to ensure that positive outcomes are put forward for the children, the educators and the families and stakeholders that are involved in that community. So I think, as you said, it is a very impactful and important role that the educational leader takes on, but they're also chosen to be there for that very reason. They're thinkers, they're researchers, and they're people who are influential and able to make positive change for their community. So they have a huge role in their services. So, what does enacting the role of the educational leadership look like in practice? And how do you know when your leadership is making real positive impact?

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Another good question. I think one of the things I was just thinking about is the importance of being an educational leader who always positions the educator or the teacher or the team we're working with in a place of understanding and seeing potential. And in that way, we show up to that relationship with curiosity. We don't show up with a sense of knowing what to do. This is right, this is wrong. And certainly for me, the impact of my leadership, I measure it based on people might come up and say to me things like, Oh, I've got this really great idea, Kelly. Can you come and brainstorm with me? Or I've been reading this article and I don't know what I think about it. Like that type of curiosity and engagement with a team member reveals to me that they're thinking and there's ownership over that process of what they're doing and they're seeking out some guidance and support. The other side of the coin of that is often, you know, for years in the role when I was, I would hear people say, Is this right? Like wanting this affirmation for wanting to know if what they were doing was okay. And I think there's an opportunity in there and thinking about how you respond to that as an educational leader. How do you come alongside an educator and a team? And what I've learned over the years is using a coaching model for engaging educators allows you to companion a team member. So we work alongside them in the classroom to be curious about these ideas. So in that sense, there's ownership. You know, Michael Fullen, he talks about ownership cannot be achieved in advance of learning something new. It must come through problem solving, through questioning, through inquiring. So, what better gift do you have as an educational leader than to stand alongside somebody who is questioning something to be close to that practice? So, on a very practical level, for me as an educational leader, I organize my time in a coaching format. So I literally will have a coaching schedule. Before I became a consultant, I worked in a really large team where we had 12 programs across our setting. So, with 12 programs, I worked out how I could spend full days in classrooms alongside a team. So I wasn't going in and out and having hallway conversations, trying to delve deeply into things like critical reflection or, you know, unpack an issue in two minutes and then move on. I knew that I needed to be more present and more involved in order for that change and that transformation to have ownership. So I would spend whole days. So it might be that I'll be with a team for a whole day and then two weeks later or three weeks later, I'm back for a whole day. But what coaching can do is it allows you to establish a pedagogical focus together with a team. So you make that explicit in those coaching days. So it might be that we're exploring transitions because we've been wanting to have a softer approach to the way that we work with children or engage in smaller grouping, and we recognize that transitions is a big part of that.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

I think the key aspect that you've brought up in that conversation is that an educational leader coming into a space and potentially making a suggestion and then leaving the team with that suggestion is not as impactful as staying it and being present to follow it through. Because I think at times, sometimes change can be difficult for some people to take on. But even for children, we need time to work through that. We need to be able to give time for adjustments to be made. And I feel that the fact that you spend time coaching for an entire day rather than being that jumping in and jumping out really shows that support that you have for your team and that active listening skills that you're having for the complexities that can come along with the day. So, as educational leaders, we do often need to hold space for tension and dialogue and differencing perspectives within the teams. What are some strategies that help you cultivate trust and generate conversations in these complex moments? What are some strategies that you would use when you feel that you're getting potentially a little bit of pushback or some points of view that may all be correct, but potentially that active listening component of the team and not being able to ear each other out or understand each other's way of doing?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah. I think emotional intelligence is a really important quality and disposition to be always cultivating and recognizing we're human. So we're also going to have responses and reactions to pedagogical ideas, particularly where there's tension. The opportunity we have as educational leaders is learn learning how to cultivate those relationships while we hold space to listen to one another and recognizing we don't have to come to quick, tidy solutions. It's actually that process of pausing, listening, responding, generating ideas that we trust that process will bring us to something that we can move forward with. And one of the really practical things that I found over the years that I do and have learned to do, and possibly this came out of when I was a validator or an assessor for a number of years, and I had to be in a lot of very intense conversations when you're assessing classroom practice, is you learn to really listen to what the person might be saying underneath their words because it's so critical that you acknowledge frustration, you can acknowledge somebody's feeling of being disheartened. And that doesn't mean you have to come up with a solution right then and there, but we can continue to move forward. That process of humanizing the experience often easily allows people to be present in it. That, of course, from an educational leader, requires a lot of self-regulation sometimes. And learning how to hold back is an important quality. The second thing I do is I build research into any pedagogical tension. And Carla Rinaldi, you know, from the Reggio Amelia approach in philosophy, talks about research shaking up our frame of reference because it really forces us to look at the world with new eyes and it opens us up to what is different and unexpected. So, what I love about putting a reading in front of us is that there's an opportunity to look at alternative views. Sometimes tension can cause us to fast track, you know, want to quickly find a resolution, but actually people often just suppress their real feelings underneath it. So yeah, I think the key really there is being human, acknowledging those emotional intelligence aspects in a conversation, but then bringing in the research, find a reading, a book chapter, an article you've read, and say, I read this. What do you think? Because if you nurture critical reflection in that way over time as a regular tool for engagement, a pedagogical strategy, the tension becomes a welcome gift in a setting. People go, Oh, this is ruffling my feathers a little. I'm not sure what I think about this. Let me sit on that for a minute. Rather than feeling offended by it, because you've gone to the trouble of always nurturing research as a culture of shared perspective.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Professional debate is healthy in our sector. So looking at yourself as an education leader when we're holding space, but also as an educator, being able to let go of your ego and allow for conversations for other people to put things on the table, but acknowledging everybody's voice and placing that down and remembering that people have had different experiences along their career path and not only different experiences, different levels of education. So you've got working towards certificates, you've got certificate three, you've got diplomas, you've got early childhood teachers, you've got masters of education, you've got people that have been certificate three for over 40 years that have that hands-on experience as well. And bringing all that together, sometimes we can lose track of the lessons that we've learned along the way. And as you said, bringing in a reading or a quote or a philosophy or our theories and sharing that with the team and saying in a curious way, as you've mentioned, what do you think about this? Allows for people to let go of their own judgment of how they feel about a certain subject, looking at through the lens of potentially the theory or the paper that you've brought forward and see where that sits within themselves. But I think it's very important for people to go back to their service philosophy and look at how does that fit within our day and what does that look like? And is there anything that we need to amend or adjust to ensure that we're either fitting in with our philosophy or do we need to amend our philosophy as a team and as a service and community?

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, it anchors us. I think the philosophy is really all those rich words and visions and hopes and ideas you have for teaching and learning. So this is our anchor, this is our springboard. So certainly this is the perspective that we want to be building from. And that can take it out of it being personal, you know, as well. So yeah, I think that those are really important qualities.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Some messages that I'm hearing from educators when we're talking about introducing a new theory or sharing information is there's that feeling of bringing more work on or more workload or having to do something extra. And I think as educational leaders, we need to look at it. Is it a perspective of are we adding something to the day or to the way that we're doing, or are we just ensuring that the daily progress, that the daily flow, or the way that we interact, or the way that we document, or the way that we program is ensuring that these aspects are being acknowledged? Because I think there's there is a real, there is a real, I guess, effect when we do look at a range of ways of doing. We've got so many amazing researchers out there. And when we take on all of them all at once, it does can feel overwhelming. But then we take a step back, and for instance, we look at the slow pedagogy approach and we look at what we're um providing the children, we go, okay, yes, we do have this inspiration in place, we do have this inspiration in place. Does that mean that we're fast-pacing what the children are doing, or does it mean that we're intentionally creating environments where the children have the opportunity to engage? And I think that's the balance of ensuring as an educational leader, you always have that in mind when you're talking to educators, when you're trying to, I guess, provide that feedback for educators to go, hey, look, I've noticed this, you're doing fabulously in this. I'm just wondering what this looks like in your daily practice and allowing educators to come to the table and say, actually, this is what that looks like in our current practice. Or yes, I guess if we tweaked this or if we did this a little bit differently, yes, it will still provide children with choice, time, and presence of the educators, but it will still, I guess, allow for whichever theory or whichever practices that you're looking to implement still have meaning and have space instead of adding on. Yeah, I think there's a don't do two things twice.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Honest conversation about this that services need to have. And I'm often having them as well, but it's not at an educator level because I hear educators wanting to write the stories that matter, wanting to be authentic, yet the system that's been designed for them to document or to communicate with families or is too high in frequency. So the reality is you can't have your cake and eat it too, right? So I always kind of reflect on this idea that if you want critical reflection, that real authentic type of critical reflection where true learning and research takes place, you can't fill in a form every week with the same questions and then expect this really deep learning to happen at the end of it. People need time, and therefore, those systems also have to be questioned and often be changed or reimagined to allow for that slow pedagogy. On one hand, we can't say we believe in slow pedagogy, and then you've got, you know, one classroom with 47 enrolled children over a week, and I've got to write a monthly assessment, and I've got to do a daily post, and I've got to all of this. You can't have both of them. And, you know, and that's not even taking into account educator well-being. So, you know, I think there's some important conversations, intentions in that, but I think that leadership and educational leadership has an advocacy in this to bring that reality to the discussion and reimagine our systems that we design that support what teams pay attention to in their roles.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

And a really practical way of doing this as an educational leader is pulling all of your forms or all of your ways of documentating forward and then cross-checking them to make sure you're not doing the same thing twice. So, for instance, if you're doing some sort of daily snippet, have you then done that daily snippet and said the same thing somewhere else? Or if you're doing an individual child's observation, are you doing an individual child's observation and then it's that's utilized towards potentially a half-yearly or annual letter to the family or summary, however way you'd like to do it? Is that being utilized or are you doing that same thing twice? What does that look like? Why do why do more when you've already got something sitting there? If you're doing critical reflection and you're doing an individual critical reflection, look at the questions and see have we asked these educators to do this twice? What systems do? Because I think sometimes when we're looking at solutions to something that comes up, we band aid approach it. We go, oh, I can create this checklist or I can create this format for them to do. And all of a sudden, educators have 10 different formats that they're now filling out, where the the actual purpose behind it gets a little Get lost and now they're just busy filling out forms rather than potentially you only need one check-in or one form that can encapsulate all of that messaging.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Loris, what you'd look to see, he calls that prophetic pedagogy, right? When people start predicting everything in advance and we leave out the process of experimentation of children's perspectives, of educator perspectives. And, you know, like you say, we add layers and layers. What I think, though, really is highlighted in this conversation that's so critical in our sector is the role of advocacy. The role of the educational leader is to have a voice on behalf of the team as well. You know, when we come to evaluate systems like documentation or communication with families, we have to have time where we can actually sit down and really pull these things apart in order to make conscious and wise decisions around the influence this has in the way that we work. There's no, I often feel like educators can be so disempowered in this way that they're engaging in a process they don't have the power to change. So back in the day, I used to take white out in my pocket and I used to love talking to educators in rooms about their educational program and the joy I would hear them at talking about children. But then when I looked at their group program or their documentation, it didn't match because there were these two separate functions. So I used to get the white out and I used to white out all the lines on their programs. I said, what if we just wrote that? What if we just put that question on there? And the response was often, are we allowed? And so I say, why don't we start a pilot program? Let's start one act of change, let's put a cycle on it, one term, and then let's review it. So it's not about everybody having to make a change. Let's try one thing. And it started with white out. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

I've had a similar moment with educators and the documentation and the amount of time they're utilizing for observation. And what we were noticing in the observations that were going to the families, beautifully written academic language. However, the story that was being told was the same story that you could see in the photo already. And as we know, there's a variety of ways that we can provide documentation. That photo says so many things about what that child was doing and how they were engaging. Say it's a photo of a child using a truck in their right hand to, you know, roll over paint and create a masterpiece. We don't need to say that the child held the car in the right hand if that's what the photo says. We can skip that part because the photo we can see that where they're at. What we need to bring out from that is the learning and the opportunities and potentially the voices of the children rather than what you can already see, because that's already a documentation.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

So sometimes less is more. So again, this raises an issue because sometimes what we hear in settings is everyone must document. So everybody must come to documentation. And that might look like in some settings everyone's got a right assessment. But does everybody know how to notice learning? I know certainly when I first graduated, I needed time to learn how to notice how children transferred one idea to another or use scientific language in their play, or I needed time to learn to know what that looked like. To be thrust into having to write assessment before I'm really understanding what I'm noticing is fast tracking and oversimplifying learning. So sometimes these cultures can happen where they come out of good intention, and we might be saying everybody's got to come to documentation. What I prefer to say is let's listen first to children. And I'd love to hear what you hear with children. So it's simply a notebook. Here's a notebook. And when we meet and talk, I just want you to bring your notebook with you. And I want you to just tell me what delights you. What did you find intriguing or unexpected about children? Because I want to elevate that listening is where it all starts. And it's from that place we can begin to unpack some of that curriculum, some of the levels and layers of learning that is not just about the skill, it's about the knowledges children bring. It's about the dispositional, the conceptual ideas, etc. But for some people, they're still learning to build that into their awareness and their observation. So it's a tripping hazard if we say, here, come and write a learning story, and yet I'm not really sure what I'm observing.

SPEAKER_02 28:03

And I guess the follow-on from getting to that stage of being able to bring that language and that thought process out is then asking the question, and what did you do with that? Yeah. What did you do with that knowledge where you knew about that child or you knew about what they were working on? You knew what excited them. What did it then do to support that excitement or to support that curiosity with that child? Is it something that you know you sat in space with them and encouraged that conversation? Or did you bring something out to did you bring out a provocation to extend that thinking in a way that could potentially encourage that scientific thought or which direction they're going in? But what did you do with that once you looked at that? And I guess that's the layering of an observational cycle. Well, thank you. I always go over my times with these beautiful conversations. So we always finish our podcast chats with the following takeaway messages. So one theory-based, one practical, and one inspiring. What would be your theory-based takeaway for us today?

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yeah, I think in this idea of curiosity, I'm going to share the theory of Adam Grant's work. And he has a book called Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. And he has this wonderful cycle of rethinking. And he explains that if we're able to recognize our own shortcomings, it opens a door to doubt. And whilst this can feel a little bit unstable or uncertain, it's actually the place we begin to question our current understandings. And that's when we become curious. So doubt leads to curiosity. There's an important quality there. From curiosity, we begin to search for information that might help us to contextualize that experience in a new way. And that search leads us to new discoveries. And from this place of discovery, we experience humility, this reminder that we've always got things to learn. So I love that I've nearly been in the sector for 30 years and I still trip up and think, oh, what's that about? How can I search something out to better understand it? So I feel like Adam Grant's cycle of rethinking is such a gift to lean into the doubt and the educational leader lean into it with others when people have doubt and build that curiosity. And practical, what would be your practical takeaway? Look, I'm all about the coaching. I think the practical part is get organized. Gillian Rod in her book Leading Change in the Early Year Setting, she talks about the importance of having an overall strategy for leading change and pedagogy. So if you're leading a team of people, it's important to have a big idea, have some ideas of where you're heading, and then have a practical strategy on how you're approaching that. For me, there's a lot around coaching and block time with people. So I'm not being a paperbag in the wind and getting caught up in every great idea that comes along because I love a great idea, but I also think it's important to anchor into something and sustain it over time. Absolutely. And inspiring, inspire us. Yeah, oh look, if I was to inspire, I'm gonna, you know, channel Anne Palow and her beautiful way of expressing. And she says, and again, the book from teaching to thinking, she says when educators are stirred into awareness of new possibilities, they begin right then to change. It's right in that moment of being wide awake and greatly interested. It's a tender moment and it's unsettling and it sets the course for transformation to come. So the real gift in educational leadership is creating space and time to marvel alongside children, to express that wonder and that curiosity with other educators, to be fully present in the moment, and it trust that educators will be stirred into that beautiful awareness of new possibilities.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Kelly. I really appreciate you coming on and spending your time with us and sharing your knowledge. It's been absolutely delightful, and yeah, I'm really looking forward to sharing this with our listeners. Pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Learn Play Thrive the podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fill your journey in early childhood education. Remember the key to fostering learning, promoting play, and empowering young minds lies within your dedication and creativity. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, rate, or review our podcast on your favorite platform. Your feedback helps us to continue to deliver content that resonates with you. And don't forget to visit us at our website at learnplaythrive.com.au for additional resources, blog posts, and professional development opportunities. Until next time, keep learning, keep playing, and keep thriving. We'll see you in the next episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast.