by Dr Susan Wilks and Dr Manjula Waniganayake

Introduction

Early childhood research suggests that the positions of leadership in the field tend to be held by accidental leaders with little or no training (Ebbeck and Waniganayake, 2003; Hayden, 1996; and Rodd, 1998). When graduates are hired as centre directors in their first year of employment, are they ready to perform leadership roles? The creators of the on-line role-play simulation believed it offered an effective way to inject leadership training in pre-service programs.

Leadership in early childhood involves working with other practitioners, parents and external agencies. Our role-play involved each of these stakeholders, giving us access to an appropriate social space to engage students in both the critical thinking and decision-making necessary for becoming effective leaders in early childhood.

Critical thinking skills include one’s ability to analyse and reason, as well as examine, clarify and recognise assumptions and the implications of our thoughts and actions. A critical approach to leadership training involves active reflection, review of practice, and renewal of attitudes. The on-line role-play created a community of inquiry environment (Wilks, 2004) in which participants were expected to respond in a reflective manner. Diverse social and cultural perspectives were injected leading to the need to consider alternate points of view.

Called A Different Lunch, the role-play, nested in a Fablusi platform, involved a professional dilemma that was centred on cultural diversity. In teams of 2-3 players, students (n=60) assumed the identity of one of ten stakeholders and experienced the full impact of exercising the rights and responsibilities that were aligned with their specific roles. These stakeholders included a child, her parents, centre staff, management committee members, a government adviser and a journalist. Over three weeks, in response to the evolving story line, the ‘game’ provided an authentic context for reflective dialogue between stakeholders on issues of concern.

Insights gained from the students’ evaluation of this simulation highlighted both the benefits and challenges of e-learning that combines ‘playing’ (in the tri-fold senses of having fun, play acting and playing with possibilities) with critical thinking, particularly in relation to ethical responsibilities of contemporary early childhood leaders.

Learning from the simulation

A relatively dramatic incident in the scenario of A Different Lunch quickly uncovered unclear and ambiguous attitudes and behaviours by staff at the child care centre. The start-up scenario, distributed to students in the form of a short video on a CD ROM, portrayed an altercation between a member of staff and a parent at a fictional child-care centre. This scenario highlighted cross-cultural communication issues and led to a variety of questions dealing with appropriate behaviour of staff and parents. These issues included the importance of timely action, the need for appropriate policies and procedure to be in place, and the importance of maintaining relationships with other professionals in government and the media.

In playing their roles, the students were required to make decisions concerning diverse concerns, taking into account their stakeholders’ perspective. For instance, how does one balance the needs/interests of the child with the rights of the parents and staff members?

Within this context, two points require clarification. First, the nature and type of issues that arise from the role-play varies between simulations because the participants determine the stakeholders cultural identity and social position. This, to some extent, determines the direction of the storyline in each simulation. Second, there is sufficient complexity and flexibility in the start-up scenario to give rise to a variety of leadership topics and issues, and all of these will not surface during any one simulation. For instance, during the first simulation, gender and power relations in centre management, though touched on by participants, were not fully explored. Food policies and relationships with the media dominated the second simulation, and events resulting from poor communication, the third.

Evaluation

It was deemed important to find out whether the participating students thought the simulation was effective in helping them learn about issues associated with early childhood leadership. An on-line evaluation instrument was used for this purpose. Their responses were collated and analysed. Selected findings are presented and discussed below.

Learning to work effectively with families is one of the fundamental aspects of being a leader in the early childhood field. It was therefore particularly gratifying to find that the students felt that this simulation had facilitated the growth of valuable skills and knowledge pertaining to the development of partnerships with families. 93% believed that the simulation was effective in learning about relationships between parents and professionals (Appendix A, Figure 1, q. 5). Over 77% of students (Appendix A, Figure 1, q. 10) agreed that the simulation had been successful in raising their awareness of cultural diversity issues.

Using technology in teacher education - some continuing conundrums

It was clear from the data that the overwhelming majority of students felt that the simulation was an effective way to learn about leadership issues of relevance to early childhood educators. However, it was also clear that the use of computer mediated communication raised a number of issues that, as teacher educators, we needed to address. In this paper we discuss a few of the more salient issues that the use of this technology raises: risk management; traditional v’s e-learning models; social construction of knowledge; paralinguistic and non-verbal communication; collaborative learning and team building; and access and equity.

1. Risk Management

Initiating and responding to change are integral dimensions of contemporary leadership in the real world. Highly effective transformational leaders work with others to stimulate debate and seek innovative solutions to challenges such as those presented in the scenario. As such, leaders expose themselves and their community to a variety of risks. The leaders’ solutions and innovations in the role-play cannot be guaranteed to succeed in the real world. The consequence of their simulated actions would have flow-on effects for both themselves and their community.

The on-line simulated environment helped eliminate these risks for the purposes of training future early childhood leaders. It enabled students to initiate and respond to the challenges in a safe environment. That is, the consequences of their actions were contained in the simulated world they were playing and had an effect only on other roles. However, these did not translate to risks associated with such actions in the real world.

It is thus important to remind the students to maintain a clear separation between themselves and the roles they are playing. This means that students need to be reminded not to take the consequences of their role’s actions, and other roles, on a personal level, but rather view these consequences at the level of the simulation. Being on-line enabled students to have both physical distance (i.e., not in direct contact) as well as objective distance. That is, each player had sufficient time and space to reflect on and respond appropriately to the actions of others without seeing each other face-to-face as in the real world.
Nevertheless, the high level of emotions displayed when they did meet in the “real world” community conferences held at the end of each simulation showed that identification with roles was strong. As their overseers we were excited by their animated involvement, viewing it as evidence of the success of the role play. However, we needed to spend time defusing and debriefing before ending the community conference. The community conference was integral both to the teaching and learning that occurred through the simulation. It was also the main de-briefing arena where issues were debated and discussed by all involved in the simulation.

The Fablusi platform enabled students to experience a wide range of positive and/or negative behaviours. It also gave us, as teacher educators, the opportunity to moderate the talk and simulated action that emerged throughout the simulation. (The Project’s web site was password protected and moderated by us.) If the students-as-players behaved in inappropriate or unexpected ways during the simulation, such cases could be interceded with during the role-play and highlighted for discussion and debriefing during the community conference.

2. Traditional vs. e-learning

Most students quickly acquired the necessary skills to technically manipulate and direct the role-play, and the evaluations suggested that the change from paper-based tasks to on-line experiences was an easy one. However, as teacher educators, we need to be cognisant that such a change may not be easy for everyone. During the running of the first simulation, by the end of week three it was clear that the level of confidence in using on-line technology had increased significantly.

The two areas that students thought the simulation technology helped them most were a) the organizing and processing of information relevant to their course, and b) presenting their work for assessment as a process of learning. When designing the “package” we determined that all the assessment tasks for the semester would be built around the role-play and, with the exception of the final issues paper, tasks were submitted on-line. A clear majority of students, 85%, agreed that the technology helped them present their work for assessment as a process (Appendix A, Figure 2 q. 24). The relevant government documents and readings they needed to access were either part of the package or web links were provided.

84% of students agreed that the technology helped them process and organize a very large amount of information about the complexities of an early childhood professional’s work (Appendix A, Figure 2 q. 25).
The data indicated that the simulation technology was helpful in a number of ways. Some students believed that it was a “refreshing” approach, as indicated by the comments below:
􀂃 I think that the simulation was a really innovative way of introducing issues to students. I am concerned that many students will be negative about this experience because it was new, but I personally appreciated a new approach to assessment and to learning in general ( Student R, 2002).
• It was refreshing to be taught about leadership and advocacy through the simulation process. There are far too many essay assessments so it was good to be involved in something a bit foreign ( Student B, 2002).
􀂃 It was a very interesting and different way of completing a subject. It was somewhat a release from the previous years work and fantastic to complete towards the end of our course. Congratulations for creating such an experience!!! (Student S, 2002).

From these and other comments made by students participating in the simulation we can infer that the novelty factor may have been influential in the perception of the usefulness of this method of learning. The excitement and exuberence with which students embraced this ‘novel’ learning experience cannot be discarded as unimportant and/or insignificant. Motivated students are always more likely to learn than unmotivated ones.

3. Social Construction of Knowledge

Self-knowledge arises in collaboration with others as it allows for the better exploration of ideas, beliefs, values, problems and solutions. Collaboration and interaction, as has been argued by social constructivists (Linser and Ip, 2002), not only facilitates learning, but also constitutes the essential context in the production of knowledge and learning. However, even at the best of times, expressing opinions about values is not easy, and asking students to consider rights and ethics, for instance, requires them to be engaged “in the kinds of discussions they seem to want to avoid” (Wilks, 1993: 1).

The design of the role-play simulation was fashioned and operationalised along three levels of interaction: between roles, between students playing a particular role as a team, and between students and us, as their educators. Playing a role that is characterised as having these ideas, beliefs, values etc., enabled students to explore relationships without the emotional difficulties associated with holding them as individuals.
At the level of playing the role as a team, a variety of beliefs and values could then be discussed among team members. In ‘going public’, students were required to come to some agreement on how to manage diverse beliefs and values held by team members by presenting it through a single role.

Finally, at the level of student interaction with us, the findings from the first simulation showed a gradual movement away from wanting technical assistance, to an interest in reflecting on critical issues for early childhood educators.

The data revealed that the use of this tiered communication technology facilitated active interaction between students as well as between both teacher educators and peers. 69% of the participants believed that the technology was instrumental in enabling more interaction with both peers and teachers (Appendix A, Figure 2 q.21 & 23). Accordingly, it would be fair to say that the simulation enabled “the affirmation of self (that) comes from working with others in a group; through the collective exploration of new ideas and the reworking of old ones” (Cox, 1995: 5).

4. Paralinguistic and non-verbal communication

Leadership, however, does not only arise through interactions with others. Its development and survival is dependant on relationships and shared meanings derived through contact and communication with others. Given that on-line communication is not conducted in direct physical proximity with peers or teachers, the paralinguistic and non-verbal dimension of communication cannot be easily transferred through the simulation as they do in normal face-to-face interaction. Does this mean that by embracing on-line technology as an instrument or platform for knowledge creation and transmission we are ‘dehumanising’ teaching and learning? And to what extent does the absence of tactile and temporal stimuli generated through physical contact between human-beings impact on the teaching/learning that happens in simulations such as ours?

Though we can create environments that simulate reality, features such as the warmth or coldness that could result from a human embrace, or the glare of eyes indicating anger, cannot be fully realised by engaging in a computer mediated role-play. We realised the need for strategies such as scripting action cues like in a written play, to be used by students in the simulation. For example a stakeholder in role might write “ I don’t think so [* said while walking out and slamming the door. *]” can, to some extent, overcome this difficulty. But these cues can never reproduce the full gamut of what goes on at the spontaneous paralinguistic level.

Communication and learning incorporating non-verbal signals or body language can therefore be lost in a technologically powered simulation. On the other hand, the lack of paralinguistic and non-verbal clues might mean the role play proceeds on rational and formal communication levels. This should be more conducive to producing more reasoned understanding and the associated learning outcomes. To this extent, this on-line simulation may be described as an effective training tool for leadership development.

5. Collaborative learning and team building

In the design of the simulation, students were assigned to work on their roles in teams. We anticipated that this would help with their workload and, more importantly, we thought that, as teams, they would be able to develop their ideas and reflect on the scenario more effectively than they would have as individuals. Moreover, learning to work in small groups and as a whole team within a small business unit or organisation is an integral aspect of the employment environments of early childhood educators. Most childcare centres in Australia for instance, may employ about 10-15 staff with each playroom consisting of two-to-four staff. In other words, the simulation teams were fashioned according to early childhood staff teams found in the real world.

In the student evaluations of their experience, our expectation that working in small teams would help in coping with the amount of work involved, proved to be wrong. Approximately the same number of students thought that it was useful in coping with the workload (54%) as those who thought that it was not (46%) (Appendix, Figure 3 q. 11).

However, our second assumption, that the simulation would help students to develop their ideas, was borne out by the results. The majority (77%) thought that playing the roles as a team was useful in that it enabled them to develop ideas with their partners and that this was the major advantage in working as a team (Appendix A, Figure 3 q. 12).

On the other hand, when asked about the disadvantages of working as teams, many described the usual problems associated with group work:

• Hard getting everyone to do their fair share. Also relying on people to complete tasks (Student D, 2002).
• There is always one or two people doing all the work in the team, whilst the other team members do little or no work at all (Student R, 2002).
• You are relying on other people to pull their weight in order to play effectively and it is often too late when you find out they haven’t done what they said they’d do (Student T, 2002).

There is thus a real danger that without appropriate monitoring of team interactions, the technology may encourage isolation and non-collaborative input, as the simulation technology itself does not require any physical face-to-face meeting amongst participants. Our students, however, generally met face to face at least twice a week. It became obvious that the moderators needed to monitor and reflect on the nature of strategies used by students to maintain communication and interactions during the simulation.

6. Access and Equity

There is potential danger in embracing computer mediated technology to promote thinking skills without due consideration to its limitations as a teaching and learning tool. External factors of availability and access to appropriate technology hampered students’ participation in the simulation as reflected in the following comments:

• Because of practicum and not being at uni it was hard to access the computer and I don’t have the Net at home and the simulation didn’t really flow as I could see it would if there was regular access to the Net (Student D, 2002).
• In our group, one of our players has no access to internet at home and therefore could not play when not at University. In writing emails we completed these individually, and at times input was completed from only a few of the team members (Student M, 2002).

Access limitations of the technology can thus hinder learning rather than enhancing it. One must be mindful of the extent to which we enforce and become dependent on technologically driven solutions as a way of teaching and learning. The digital divide is one way of describing poverty today. Failure to address not only the skills and resource implications, but also attitudes and beliefs about using technology, cuts across equity considerations, and can result in disempowering both teachers and learners.

Conclusion

Practitioners with exceptional skills and qualities representing leadership are needed in any field. On-line technology has the potential to enhance the development of leadership skills. Whilst the students’ evaluations reflected a high level of satisfaction in terms of understanding the divergent roles and responsibilities of early childhood practitioners, it is difficult to assess the extent to which this learning will be maintained in the long-term. This highlights the need for research that explores the long-term implications of technology based teaching and learning systematically.

As teacher educators we need to ensure that we are not simply being seduced by technology, but are providing an education that is appropriate for the new era of e-world learning. This includes being mindful that whilst the wonder of technology is its capacity to create interactive environments that help spread ideas and information, the promotion of compassion and wisdom are also essential for human survival in an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing world.

References

Cox, E. (1995) Civil Society. The Boyer Lectures. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Ebbeck, M. & Waniganayake, M. (2003) Early Childhood Professionals: Leading today and tomorrow. Sydney: MacLennan &Petty.
Hayden, J. (1996) Management of Early Childhood Services. An Australian Perspective. Sydney: Social Science Press.
Rodd, J. (1998) Leadership in Early Childhood. The Pathway to Professionalism. Melbourne: Allen and Unwin.
Linser, R. & Ip, A. (2002) “Beyond the Current E-Learning paradigm: Applications of Role Play Simulations (RPS) - case studies” E-Learn 2002, AACE Conference, Montreal, Canada, Oct. 15-19. (http://www.ausis.org/SimPlay/papers/E-Learning.html)
Waniganayake, M. (2002) “Leadership Training: With training can anyone become a leader?” in Cross-cultural perspectives on Leadership. V. Nivala & E.Hujala (eds), ACTA Universitatis Ouluensis, Scientie Rerum Socialium, E57, Oulu: Oulu University Press.
Wilks, S. (2004) Designing a Thinking Curriculum. South Melbourne, Vic.: Australian Academy of the Arts.
Wilks S.E. (1993) ‘Values in the Classroom’, Education Quarterly Australia, Spring 1993, Curriculum Corporation Melbourne. Available on-line: (http://ausis.com.au/polsim/adc/rsrc/article2.html)