Talking About Community Relationships Online Symposium
26 May – 16 June 2025
Our biggest professional learning event of the year - early bird and group discount tickets available now!
REGISTER NOWOverview
Join our biggest professional learning event of the year!
Hear from knowledge leaders as they share insights into fostering meaningful community relationships in early childhood settings.
Designed for and by early childhood professionals, our online symposium offers practical strategies and an inspiring real-world case study to help you foster meaningful relationships within your community.
Released Monday 26 May and closing 16 June, you’ll have a backstage pass to:
- 8 x 20–30-minute flexi-study modules: learn at your own pace, when it suits you
- Expert insights from a lineup of early childhood education experts
- Inspiration from a real-world case study
- 4 PD hours
- Reflection guides to deepen learning outcomes and support peer-learning
Modules
Each module delves into key aspects of community engagement in early childhood, providing you with insights and strategies to enhance your pedagogy, improve practice and strengthen partnerships.
Module 1: Place-based pedagogy
Presenters: KU Learning and Development Team
Place-based pedagogy creates opportunities to become deeply immersed in experiencing the world around us. In ‘place’ we learn about ourselves, our capacities, and responsibilities.
Explore the benefits of an inquiry led, place-based pedagogical framework to support children’s emerging identities in context with family, early childhood service, neighbourhoods and community. Discover impactful examples of place-based pedagogy and shifting community perceptions.
We will invite you to examine your own community for opportunities to develop place-based relationships and offer sound advice for establishing these practices in your own centre community.
Module 2: Pedagogy beyond the gate
Presenter: Karen Anderson, Balnarring Preschool
Exposing children to what is beyond the early childhood service’s gate supports their sense of belonging. This module explores:
- Building children’s knowledge of the surrounding community and environment
- Exposing children to the world around them and its diversity
- Fostering children’s curiosity, excitement and awareness of what lies beyond the gate
Module 3: Voices of families
Presenter: Kelly Goodsir, KGConsulting
Partnerships with families in early childhood services are crucial for building a strong community. This module explores how every family is unique with a diversity of contexts, stories and experiences.
Module 4: A case study - Building strong relationships with your community
Presenter: Jackie Staudinger, KU Macquarie Fields Preschool
This module showcases the story of a service that has established strong relationships within the local community. It highlights:
- How the service has gone about establishing strong relationships within its diverse community
- How these relationships benefit the children and families at the service
Module 5: Diversity in your community
Presenter: FKA Children’s Services
Early childhood services need to draw on the rich cultural influences within their community in order to embrace its history and heritage. This module explores how to seek out and use resources within the community to help foster understandings of diversity.
Module 6: Making connections in your community
Presenter: Karen Hope, Karen Hope Consulting
Children’s wellbeing is a community responsibility. This module explores:
- The benefits of early childhood services forming partnerships in the community
- The possibilities for connections
- How to go about making the connections
Module 7: Talking about relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
Presenter: KU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Team
Throughout this presentation, Aboriginal community members and early childhood educators share their views and experiences of relational pedagogy and why respecting local cultural protocols when establishing connections with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples in local communities is so important.
Listeners will be urged to be upfront, open, and clear about their purpose for connection, giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and Communities the opportunity to determine their level of engagement, the longevity of the relationship and how it progresses.
Module 8: Transition to school
Presenter: Dr Kathryn Hopps
Children’s transition to their first year of school is a major milestone in their lives. Relationships are key to a positive transition. This module explores the importance of a community approach involving the early childhood service, child, family, and school. It also highlights some strategies for building relationships with schools and out of school hours care services.
The line-up
Fran Bastion
KU Learning and Development Team
Fran Bastion
KU Learning and Development Team
Fran’s engagement in the early childhood education sector spans over 30 years.
Fran’s work is currently anchored in the exploration of the role of teacher as researcher, inquiry-based teaching and learning, pedagogical documentation, and the language of the learning environment.
Fiona Harris
KU Learning and Development Team
Fiona Harris
KU Learning and Development Team
Fiona is an experienced early childhood teacher and has taught in several preschool settings over the past 30 years.
Her interest is in sustainability and place-based nature pedagogy, helping children connect in the community. She is also interested in children’s art making and literature and views pedagogy as an ethical discipline.
Karen Anderson
Balnarring Pre-school
Karen Anderson
Balnarring Pre-school
Karen has been an early childhood teacher at Balnarring Pre-school in Victoria since 1984. In 2011, she had the privilege of travelling to Denmark to view nature kindergartens in action. On returning home she was keen to explore what a nature program would like within Balnarring’s beachside context.
Connecting with nature in the nature program has given the children, families and teaching team the opportunity to slow down and appreciate what is around them, thinking about their role in caring for and maintaining the amazing environments that we learn with.
Karen has co-authored the publication ‘Early Years Learning in Australian Natural Environments’ and co-written a chapter in the book Decolonising Australian History Education: Fresh Perspectives from Beyond the ‘History Wars’.
Kelly Goodsir
KG Learning
Kelly Goodsir
KG Learning
Kelly Goodsir founded KG Learning; a professional learning company that focuses on improving pedagogical practice through strategic educational change in early childhood education. She has been formally engaged with the early childhood sector for 20 years across both Australian and New Zealand contexts.
Kelly has dedicated her career to her own and others’ development of pedagogy, learning and educational leadership and believes whole heartedly that through ‘thinking and learning collaboratively’ anything is possible.
Samantha Gould
fka Children’s Services
Samantha Gould
fka Children’s Services
Samantha Gould is a Pedagogy and Practice Consultant at fka Children’s Services (fkaCS) with 18 years of experience in the Early Childhood sector.
Throughout her career, Samantha has taken on diverse roles, including Teacher, Director, Operations Manager, TAFE Teacher, Pedagogy and Practice Consultant and Mentor. Samantha has collaborated with a wide range of early childhood services, from small, community-led, not-for-profit services to large private organisations.
Passionate about ensuring all children and families see themselves reflected in their early learning environments, Samantha brings this dedication to her work with fkaCS. Samantha supports the capacity building of ECEC services by offering professional learning, coaching, mentoring, and the development of resources.
Samantha played a pivotal role in developing the fkaCS Cultural Inclusion Reflective Practice Toolkit, which supports early childhood professionals to develop culturally responsive and respectful pedagogy and practice.
Jackie Staudinger
KU Macquarie Fields Preschool
Jackie Staudinger
KU Macquarie Fields Preschool
Jackie’s experience in the early childhood sector spans over 30 years. Her interest is in inclusive, play-based learning environments that encourage curiosity, social skills and a love for learning.
Jackie’s teaching philosophy is to provide wrap-around support for engaging for child, family, colleagues, and the community.
Karen Hope
Karen Hope Consulting
Karen Hope
Karen Hope Consulting
Karen has been working with young children, writing, and thinking about them for a very long time. She has worked across a broad range of services as a Kindergarten Teacher and Coordinator and more recently as an early childhood consultant, university lecturer and freelance writer.
Karen’s work is strongly influenced by the Reggio Emilia Project and this is reflected in her thinking and writing as a point of reference and inspiration.
Gisella Wilson
KU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Team
Gisella Wilson
KU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Team
Gisella is a proud Wiradjuri woman and experienced early childhood professional.
A campaigner for culturally responsive early learning environments, equitable educational experiences, and reducing the gap in educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, Gisella advocates for local cultural knowledge holders to determine and lead cultural experiences in local communities.
Michelle King
KU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Team
Michelle King
KU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Team
Michelle descends from the Gummipingal Clan of the Worimi Nation and has worked in education for 25 years as a Director, Teacher, Lecturer and Cultural Consultant.
Michelle is a staunch advocate for Localised Relational Pedagogy from a Rights Approach which recognises and respects Aboriginal Peoples’ as the experts of their culture, heritage and knowledges.
Michelle strives to showcase different ways of seeing, doing and thinking that open our mindsets to reflexivity and responsive relearning.
Dr Kathryn Hopps
Be You Consultant, Early Childhood Australia
Dr Kathryn Hopps
Be You Consultant, Early Childhood Australia
Dr Kathryn Hopps is a consultant, researcher and former early childhood and primary school teacher with a background working in a diverse range of education settings.
Her research expertise is in transitions, with her PhD focussed on communication between preschool and school teachers during children’s transitions to primary school.
Kathryn has worked with organisations including Early Childhood Australia, New South Wales Department of Education, Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority, and Emerging Minds to develop transitions resources for educators and families.
Testimonials
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These sessions were fantastic, and my entire team agreed! Brilliant!
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I have implemented so many changes already. A great reminder of things I already knew and new ways of seeing things.
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The presenters were outstanding, made it fun, interesting and gave different perspectives and ideas. I recommended that my colleagues undertake this symposium. Thankyou
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I enjoyed being able to access the webinars over the 3-week period. There was interesting and varied subject matter.
Register for the online symposium today
Tickets are selling fast. Don’t miss your opportunity to participate in KU’s biggest early childhood education learning and development event of the year.
The early bird discount ends 31 March 2025.