In the late 1970s, a young Sue Cherrington set off to her first work‑experience placement at Johnsonville Kindergarten. She wasn’t aware that that placement would change the trajectory of her life.
At the time, Professor Cherrington had a vague idea that she would like to pursue social work as a career, but the children and teachers she worked with during her one day a week placement quickly changed her mind.
"The teachers were so welcoming, and I found the children incredibly fascinating," she says.
As a result of this experience, Professor Cherrington applied to the kindergarten teacher training programme with the Department of Education. After completing her two-year kindergarten teaching diploma, she began teaching during a time of great change for the field.
These changes included the move, in 1986, of childcare services—from being regulated by the Department of Social Welfare—to being integrated with kindergartens and playcentres within the Department of Education.
"We were the first country in the world to integrate care and education, and it led to so much progress and so many fabulous things, including our integrated approach to training early childhood teachers," she explains.
"There wasn't a teaching qualification that combined kindergarten teaching and childcare when I trained—it wasn't until the late 1980s that we got a three-year integrated diploma which trained people to teach children from birth to five.”
Professor Cherrington returned to study to complete a Higher Diploma and Advanced Diploma of Teaching in the late 1980s, before taking up a role as an early childhood education lecturer at the Wellington College of Education in the early 1990s.
In her role as a lecturer, Professor Cherrington visited student teachers who were finding their placements challenging.
"One of the things that became clear to me, was how some students were easily able to be in tune with the children—they could adjust their interactions in the moment, so they were supporting and adding to the interaction, extending what was happening but not taking over and dominating.
"This inspired me to design an assessment for the students to help them focus on what they were doing and thinking about in the moment of their interactions with children.
"That assessment ended up leading into my PhD."
Professor Cherrington's doctoral thesis, entitled Early childhood teachers’ thinking and reflection within their communities of practice, was completed in 2011.
"One of the outcomes of my study was an understanding that teachers were incredibly detailed in how they would talk about the children—they knew them so, so well,” she says.
"But they were often much more silent about themselves and what they were doing in terms of their intentions and why they did particular things in the moment.”
She built these findings into a framework represented by a whāriki or woven mat.
"I wanted the whāriki to show how teachers weave together two sets of strands,” she explained.
“One set of strands represent what teachers know about their children and their interests, backgrounds, culture, and whānau, and the other set represents teachers’ articulation of their own practices and how their own beliefs and theoretical understandings impact their practices.
"Excellent teaching practice requires that both sets of strands are strong,” she says.
Throughout her academic career, Professor Cherrington’s research has sought to understand early childhood teachers' professional, ethical, and pedagogical practices. Her projects—always undertaken collaboratively with research colleagues and involving early childhood teachers as participants and respondents—have been wide ranging, exploring themes such as teachers' perspectives on ethical and professional practices, to what diversity looks like in early childhood education.
Her most recent projects have focused on how teachers can strengthen their own practices, drawing on a range of tools to help them uncover, reflect on, and deepen their practice.
The complexity of early childhood education work, and the skill that goes into it, is often underestimated, which is something that Professor Cherrington will address in her inaugural lecture.
"I want my audience to get an understanding and an appreciation that early childhood teaching is complex work," she says.
"As a teacher, you're working with a large group of children and always teaching alongside other teachers. Increasingly, teachers are working with children and their whānau, who are very diverse in terms of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and their learning needs. Teachers need to deeply know their children and respond to what they know about those children in the moment of that interaction, all while individualising the curriculum to engage them.
"That means teachers are developing, localising, and individualising a curriculum in their space, in their community, and with this particular group of children, teachers, and families in mind, all as part of their day-to-day work."
Professor Cherrington's inaugural lecture, Unseen complexity: Early childhood teachers’ pedagogical, professional, and ethical practice, will be held on Thursday 8 October from 5.30–6.30 pm in the Hunter Council Chamber, Level 2, Hunter building, Kelburn campus. Register to attend.