The problem of bias in qualitative research particularly is still debated in methodology texts and there is a lack of agreement on how much researcher influence is acceptable, whether or not it needs to be “controlled,” and how it might be accounted for. Denzin (1994) refers to this as “the interpretive crisis” (p. 501). I chose to make my experiences, opinions, thoughts, and feelings visible and an acknowledged part of the research process through keeping reflective journals and using them in writing up the research. The aim of this paper is to show how reflective journals were used in engaging with the notion of creating transparency in the research process, and explore the impact of critical self-reflection on research design.

In Australia, as elsewhere, many factors have contributed to making the struggle for recognition of the professional status of early childhood difficult and ongoing. Arguably this has led to instabilities surrounding professional identity and how members of the field regard themselves and their work. The development and release of the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF) was perceived by many as an opportunity to raise the status and standing of the early childhood professional within the early childhood field itself and in the wider community. The EYLF positions all those who work directly with children in early childhood settings as 'educators', and sets out the expectations for children's learning and what educators can do to promote that learning. In doing so, the EYLF produces, reproduces and circulates both new and familiar discourses of early childhood education. In this article, the authors draw on research capturing the perceptions of the early childhood practitioners who took part in the trial of the EYLF across Australia in 2009 to investigate whether and how curriculum interventions such as the EYLF have the potential to shape/reshape early childhood professional identity. Utilising the concepts of discourse, subjectivity, power-knowledge and agency, the authors explore the possibilities and dangers of the construction of an early childhood professional identity in and through the EYLF.

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Courses preparing early childhood professionals through institutes of technical and further education utilise competency standards to guide the assessment of students during professional experience. Some universities offering early childhood teacher education courses use the term ‘competencies' in practicum assessment forms and draw on teacher competency standards. This article explores how discourses of competence produced within positivist and liberal humanist discourses shape, guide and direct (govern) tertiary supervisors' beliefs about and understandings of the legitimacy of their professional judgement. Tertiary supervisors take up these discourses and use them as the basis upon which they govern themselves. The author argues that one of the effects of governmentality in this instance is that tertiary supervisors regulate and silence their professional judgement and defer to discourses of scientific rationality when assessing students on practicum placements. They produce assessment strategies that enable them to hide their subjective judgement within what appears to be a logical, rational and objective assessment process and position themselves as the rational, objective assessor, and, at the same time, the fair, responsible tertiary supervisor.

Refugees, 2004) although a thorough review of this literature is beyond the scope of this paper. This study draws primarily on initial teacher education literature about the need for teacher education programs to prepare culturally sensitive and competent pre-service teachers (Allard & Santoro, 2004; Ball, 2000; Milner, 2003). This overview reveals there is little research about the cultural competence of teacher educators, including teachers in early childhood services who play a significant role in the supervision of pre-service teachers during the practicum. The research that has been done reveals an "unrecognised and unconscious ethnocentrism" (Han, 2006, p.28) in communicating with CALD pre-service teachers (Hatton, 1996) and the lack of cultural sensitivity on the part of supervising teachers (Cruickshank, 2004). As researchers and teacher educators, we are not immune from these criticisms and Ortlipp's previous research (Ortlipp, 2005) questioned how equitable the practicum assessment process is for CALD early childhood pre-service teachers. Given the need to increase and retain the numbers of CALD pre-service teachers (Hartsuyker, 2007; Prime, 2001), teacher education programs need to review policies and practices to identify the barriers and supports for CALD pre-service teachers to achieve success (Hobson-Horton & Owens, 2004). Although the present study focuses on early childhood pre-service teachers, it has the potential to contribute insights into practicum supervision and assessment for all pre-service teachers. Previous explorations of the experiences of CALD pre-service teachers With the exception of Ortlipp (2005) and Heald (2006), we were unable to identify empirical studies about CALD early childhood pre-service teachers in Australia or New Zealand. This is despite the small but significant number of pre-service teachers in Australia who do not speak English at home, many from neighbouring Asian countries (Santoro, 1999; Han, 2006). Some authors have expressed concerns about the retention rates for these pre-service teachers and the difficulties they face achieving success (Cruickshank, 2004; Clark & Flores, 2001; Han, 2006). Santoro's (1999) case study of the experiences of two Chinese-born-and-educated pre-service Accepted for publication in the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal in 2012 3 teachers on the practicum in Australian secondary schools suggests that racist discourses in schools impact negatively on student teachers' practicum experience. In one case, it was clear that the preservice teacher's ethnicity impinged negatively on the supervising teacher's assessment. Similarly, Ortlipp (2005) reported on incidents involving early childhood pre-service teachers from CALD backgrounds that highlighted the "potential equity issue of assessors basing their judgments of a student's competence against practicum assessment criteria on their own (often unconscious and unacknowledged) culturally based values" (p.45). Dubetz, Turley, and Erickson's (1997) analysis of their own ref...

This paper explores issues about equity in the early childhood practicum assessment process. In presenting these issues I draw on data from a study which examined how tertiary supervisors understand and practise this assessment process. While the study did not ask any questions specifically about equity, a number of the tertiary supervisors interviewed related stories that raised questions about how equitable practicum assessment is for students from non-English speaking and 'non-mainstream' cultural groups. I begin with an overview of the literature in this area and then present the issues identified as a result of examining the tertiary supervisors' stories and the practicum assessment documents they utilised. The focus is on examples from the data that highlight equity issues and raise questions for discussion and further exploration. The aim is to create awareness of this aspect of practicum assessment and to identify directions for future research in this area The Margaret Trembath Research Fund Scholarship This Scholarship Fund is administered by Early Childhood Australia SA Branch. It is awarded biennially up to a value of $20,000 Applications are invited for the 2007 Margaret Trembath Research Fund Scholarship The scholarship will be awarded to individuals or organisations working or operating in Australia, to support research projects in the general area of the care and education of young children, birth to eight years, and their families. Application forms and details are available from the Secretary, Margaret Trembath Scholarship.

This article presents results from a study that focuses on tertiary supervisors' perspectives on practicum assessment. The discussion of results in this paper is restricted to one of the key themes evident in the datasilence. The different ways of understanding silence according to the literature provides the theoretical framework for an exploration of tertiary supervisors' moments of silence during the assessment process. Examples from focus groups, individual interviews and journals are used to illustrate how two different forms of silence expressed themselves in the data. The postructuralist concepts of discourse, subjectivity and power are used to explore what the silences might mean and what we can learn from them.

FindingS Are reporTed from the third phase of a small exploratory study that aimed to understand how pre-service teachers from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, and those who supervise them in early childhood settings, experience practicum assessment, and the extent to which practicum assessment takes into account pre-service teacher diversity. Discourse analysis (Foucault, 1972), applied to interviews with pre-service teachers and supervising teachers, revealed a persistent 'discourse of denial' of cultural difference on the part of supervising teachers, who nevertheless genuinely attempted to negotiate the inevitable challenges posed by the supervision of CALD pre-service teachers. The paper concludes that supervising teachers were at pains to produce and perpetuate a liberal humanist discourse within which all human beings are 'the same' or should be equal, even as they attempted to recognise CALD pre-service teachers' learning styles and needs.