MIC’s Dr Mary Moloney has recently returned from a research trip to the Centre for the Study of Childcare Employment (CSCCE) at the University of California, Berkeley. While there Dr Moloney developed a prototype to track and measure aspects of professional practice in the Early Childhood Care and Education sector in Ireland which is due to be piloted later this year.
Dr Moloney, Lecturer in the Department of Reflective Pedagogy and Early Childhood Studies at MIC, was invited by Dr Marcy Whitebook, the founder of (CSCCE) and her team to adapt SEQUAL. SEQUAL – Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning – is a multi-purpose tool for examining and improving environments in which Early Childhood educators work and learn. SEQUAL uses an online survey to apply their knowledge and skills, and improve their practice. It examines policies, practices, and relationships that support quality care, instruction and professional growth across five domains: teaching supports, learning community, job crafting, adult well-being, and programme leadership. SEQUAL was originally designed for use in the US, however there is growing interest in using the tool internationally. Australia has plans to use it, and discussion with representatives from Austria, Germany and Switzerland are in process.
While in Berkeley Dr Moloney’s research focused on developing a Universal SEQUAL tool to track and measure aspects of professional practice in the Early Childhood Care and Education Sector in Ireland, this is due to be piloted in Ireland later this year. Dr Moloney also co-authored a guide to amending SEQUAL for international use with Dr Whitebook and Dr Leah Austin. Titled Using SEQUAL Internationally: Benefits and Process (why and how), the guide explains the four step process involved in adapting SEQAUL for international use. These are: reviewing the SEQUAL tool within the appropriate European/International ECEC quality context; locating the SEQUAL tool within an individual country context; determining the relevance of the domains, concepts, questions and language within the SEQUAL tool for a different cultural context and fourthly identifying possible amendments to concepts, questions and languages.
According to Dr Moloney: “Berkeley was an amazing experience. I am incredibly privileged to have had an opportunity to work at the prestigious institution, and to work alongside and learn from leaders in the field of Early Childhood Care and Education. Not only that, I undertook visits to ten early childhood settings, including Head Start and Kindergarten classes in elementary schools where I interviewed managers, head teachers and other early childhood staff. This is the best professional development experience of my professional career to date, and I am incredibly excited to share my research with colleagues and students at Mary Immaculate College.”
Continuing she said: “As European Convenor of the Professionalization Sub-group of the European Early Childhood Care and Education Association, I look forward to sharing my research at the EECRA conference in Greece in September, the NZ Summit for Early Childhood Managers and Educators in May, and to piloting the Irish SEQUAL study and planning with international partners for an international SEQUAL in 2020.”
