Transdisciplinary practice: The path to renewable energy in early childhood education and care in Australia

Abstract

Transdisciplinary practice: The path to renewable energy in early childhood education and care in Australia

Current practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Australia exists across the health, education and community services sectors. Within these sectors silos of practice exist that tend to break down opportunities for knowledge exchange and also often maximise duplication of services and costs. Moreover, lack of knowledge exchange means that new ideas and approaches in particular sectors are often not understood in others, thereby increasing protectiveness of individual knowledge bases and fostering suspicion that decisions about particular practice approaches are not evidence based. Such factors undermine, rather than enhance possibilities for knowledge sharing and exchange, break down possibilities for successful integration of services and also result in less inclusive practices in work with young children and their families. Furthermore, these factors can be demoralising for ECEC professionals who may be unable to encourage inclusion of contemporary ECEC knowledge and practices, particularly in settings where more dominate knowledge bases, such as those underpinned by medical models, are situated. This paper seeks to address such tensions, arguing that new understandings are necessary in order for ECEC professionals to successfully advocate for their knowledge base in Australia. The authors of this paper use a bricolage of theory and literature to argue that transdisciplinarity presents a possible enabling framework in these instances.