The Victorian Government’s Best Start, Best Life (BSBL) reforms provide a fantastic opportunity to increase access to high quality early learning and achieve the best learning outcomes for all children. One of the ways to facilitate increased access is to adopt a team-teaching approach, and this is already happening across many ECMS services. More than just solving a logistical problem, team-teaching offers tangible benefits for educators and leads to better outcomes for children.
Team teaching fosters collaborative, strengths-based practice among educators. Grounded in the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), particularly the principle of “Partnerships with Professionals,” team teaching encourages educators to jointly plan, reflect, and respond to children’s learning in real time.
By working together, educators draw on diverse expertise and shared observations, enhancing each child’s experience and ensuring more consistent, responsive teaching. This shared approach aligns with the EYLF’s emphasis on integrated teaching and learning, as well as continuity of learning for children across routines, transitions, and play experiences.
Team-teaching is also a way of solving day-to-day challenges for educators. Madelain Dore and Jamie Brinkley at Bayles Preschool began team teaching for a very practical and simple reason – not having enough cover during lunch breaks. The flexibility has helped with sick leave and professional development needs, while the reduced workload has been especially helpful for Jamie with her responsibilities as Nominated Supervisor.
But their partnership has helped them in many other ways. They get the opportunity to share and test ideas with each other, and Jamie feels it’s helped her grow as an educator:
“That mentoring in the team-teaching role, having a very experienced teacher to bounce ideas off as I increase my practice and learn, has been great.”
Madelain and Jamie lean on each other’s strengths to provide better learning outcomes for the children, and less hours on the floor means they can bring more energy when they’re there.
Madelain sees the results for children:
“The children benefit because they have a consistent team, consistency of care, consistency of education.”
And Jamie adds: ‘the families love it too because they see familiar faces.”
Team teaching supports differentiated instruction, enabling educators to meet children where they are developmentally. It also increases the capacity for intentional teaching, ongoing assessment, and timely adjustments to the program. Through shared responsibilities, educators model respectful relationships and teamwork—an important social-emotional lesson for children themselves.
Importantly, the model also allows children to benefit from a broader range of teaching styles and perspectives. With collaborative planning and communication in place, team teaching creates a more flexible, reflective, and child-centred environment that supports each child to belong, be, and become—hallmarks of ECMS’ vision for lifelong learning.
For Nominated Supervisor Liz Ryan at Somers Parade Kindergarten, team-teaching with Early Childhood Teacher Lisa Richards has given her the opportunity to work much longer than she had expected, while Lisa has gained the benefit of Liz’s wealth of teaching experience. Their collaboration leads not just to consistency for the children, but continuous improvement in teaching and learning, as Lisa points out:
“We have our regular planning day where we can pick up on what's happened one day to the next through our reflections. We share our observations and then work together to come up with our next plan and some creative ways to help every child with their learning.”
Sharing the role has energised both Liz and Lisa, and continues to play out in practical ways, as Liz notes:
“If there is ever a time that we need to speak with parents there’s not just one of us going to the interview, we can go together, support each other.”
Team-teaching has many benefits for educators, but ultimately its worth can be measured in the strong outcomes for children. And Lisa is certain of that:
“Team teaching has been fantastic for the children we work with.”