Becoming and being a sociably responsible citizen

In this two part webinar series Dr Deborah Harcourt will travel through the first half of a three year project, with a group of ten early childhood settings in Brisbane, who are seeking to enhance the outcomes of the EYLF through a lens of social responsibility. The project is focused on the competence and capability of young children to understand, practice, and enact key elements of social responsibility such as empathy, collaboration, mindfulness and decision-making. We will explore the emergence of the project in 2020 that sought to respond to global events and then transact these concepts into the everyday lives of teaching and learning for children and educators within the organisation. In Part 1, Deborah will provide the backcloth to the project and in Part 2, she will be joined by a small group of Pedagogical Coordinators from the organisation to discuss the practical implications of the project through the lens of their settings.

Dr Deborah Harcourt was the Foundation Professor of Early Childhood at the Australian Catholic University and is now the Executive Director of Asia Pacific Early Childhood Consultants. She has worked in the field of early childhood education for the past 30 years in Australia, Singapore (where she was based for 10 years), China, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, UAE, UK and Sri Lanka. Deborah began her career as a preschool teacher and then moved to the tertiary sector where she has taught at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in teacher education, health sciences and within a school of medicine. Her PhD focused on how children measure the quality of their early childhood settings.  She continues her interest in researching with young children to explore their views and opinions about matters that might concern them in order to uphold the UNCRC in research practice. Deborah is a long-term investigator of the principles of the Reggio Emilia Educational Project, and what they might mean to early childhood education outside of Italy.