Our purpose is to make a sustained impact upon the lives of young Australians through advancing the quality of early learning experiences for all children.  The REEaCh Hub works to translate research findings into real-life solutions so that all young children can realize their potential.

People

• 
   Associate Professor Patricia Eadie
  

   +61 3 90354503
  

   peadie@unimelb.edu.au
  

  Director, REEaCh Hub

  Associate Professor Eadie has led multi-disciplinary research projects in early childhood, with a focus on understanding young children’s developmental pathways from birth through to school and evaluating interventions in a variety of settings. Her research focuses on children’s language and literacy learning, the importance of adult-child interactions and strong communication skills to children’s later developmental outcomes. This work includes a focus on best-practice models of professional learning for early child and early years teachers. The approach enables educators to implement high quality teaching practices that increase intentional teaching and instructional support to maximise all children’s learning and development.

• 
   Professor Nicola Yelland
  

  Nicola Yelland is the Professor of Early Childhood Studies in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. Her teaching and research interests have been related to the use of new technologies in school and community contexts. She has also worked in East Asia and examined the culture and curriculum of early childhood settings. Nicola’s work engages with educational issues with regard to varying social, economic and political conditions and thus requires multidisciplinary perspectives. Recent publications include; Reimagining play with new technologies. In L. Arnott (Ed.) Digital technologies and learning in the early years. (London, UK: SAGE) and Yelland, N.J. & Leung, W.M. Policy into practice in Hong Kong pre-primary kindergartens: the impact of a reform agenda viewing early childhood as the foundation for lifelong learning. International Journal of Early Years. And Arvanitis, E., Yelland, N.J & Kiprianos, P. (2019). Liminal spaces of temporary dwellings: Transitioning to new lives in times of crisis. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. 33:1, 134-144.

• 
   Associate Professor Jane Page OAM
  

  Dr Jane Page is an Associate Professor in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at the University of Melbourne and a Senior Researcher in the REEaCh Hub. Jane has worked in the early childhood field for over thirty years covering a range of roles both as a director and teacher in early childhood services as well as teaching and researching in the University sector. Jane’s research interests include teacher effectiveness, coaching and educational leadership and the application of human rights principles in early childhood settings.

• 
   Dr Ben Deery
  

  Dr Ben Deery is an early career researcher, supervisor, and lecturer in Early Childhood Education and Care at the MGSE, University of Melbourne. He is a registered Clinical Neuropsychologist, with many years’ experience working both clinically and in research-based roles across paediatric and childhood neurodevelopmental disorders. He is also a qualified Early Childhood Educator, has worked as a Consultant Neuropsychologist for Pearson Australia, and has lectured previously in Educational Psychology. Ben's primary areas of research interest are in evidence-based learning interventions for children, childhood learning disorders, and the application of mindfulness, play/games-based interventions, and social-emotional learning in the early years. Ben is currently working on several innovative intervention pilots and proof-of-concept studies, including an ARC funded play-based mindfulness program for young children, use of games to increase positive adult-child interactions and child development, and new methods for assessing young children's mental health and cognitive development. His appointments at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and the Murdoch Children Research Institute reflect his broader interest in collaboration between health and education fields to better support children during the early years.

• 
   Dr Penny Levickis
  

  Dr Penny Levickis is a postdoctoral research fellow in theREEaCh Hub. She was awarded her PhD by the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD was in the field of child language development, specifically examining contributions of parent behaviours to child language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. Her primary areas of research interest are in examining factors that predict variation in language pathways, in particular contributions of adult-child interactions as well as investigating the effectiveness of prevention and intervention for children at risk of developmental language disorder. In her recent work as part of her Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship she explored parents’ experiences of taking part in parent language programmes aimed at enhancing parent-child interaction. Penny’s current research focuses on enhancing the quality of educator-child interactions in early childhood education and care to promote child language development and reduce social inequalities. This is an opportunity to provide enriched language learning opportunities to the most vulnerable children and their families who find engaging directly with early intervention services difficult.

• 
   Dr Sue Mentha
  

  Dr Sue Mentha is a lecturer at MGSE. Her interests are in human rights, visibility of existence and unpacking coloniality in education and research to make spaces for co-production and enacted voice so that all Australians have ownership of the education and research they participate in. Sue’s current project is in co-designing Professional Learning trajectories for Working with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and knowledge and perspectives in the classroom. She is also working on a visible mapping of the UNCRC and UNDRIP with early years learning frameworks to raise the visibility of these responsibilities in education.

• 
   Dr Amelia Church
  

  Amelia is a conversation analyst who studies children’s knowledge-in-interaction. Her current research focuses on participation frameworks in early childhood settings – in particular teacher responsivity – and using the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) for professional development.

• 
   Dr Edith Nicolas
  

  Dr Edith Nicolas is an Early Childhood Educator and a Linguist. She currently coordinates the Clinical Teaching Practice subjects on the Master of Teaching (Early Childhood). Edith’s research is in early childhood language development and bilingualism. She has recently been involved in the Early Childhood Language Program project, researching best evidence practice and developing course material to support the implementation of the program in preschool settings across Victoria. She had previously developed her own French language program incorporating play-based pedagogies to support young children’s second language acquisition.

• 
   Dr Jeanne Marie Iorio
  

  Jeanne Marie Iorio, EdD is a Senior Lecturer in early childhood education. Her research, teaching, and writing focuses on disrupting and rethinking accepted educational practices in early childhood and higher education. This work includes rethinking quality as meaning-making; children’s relations with place, more-than-human and materials; pedagogical documentation and research methods; and pedagogies originating from the municipal infant-toddler centres and preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her research project ‘Out and About’ with Dr Catherine Hamm (La Trobe University) is part of an international research collective (www.commonworlds.net) and seeks to understand and document teaching pedagogies that support children and educators in building deep relationships with place and the more-than-human. ‘Children as Capable’ (also with Dr Catherine Hamm) considers the teaching practices utilised to enact the image of the child as capable throughout the daily ordinary moments in a classroom.

• 
   Catriona Elek
  

  Catriona Elek is a Research Fellow at the REEaCh Hub. Catriona joins us with a background in adult education and over 20 years’ experience in project management, evaluation research and social service delivery. She has worked in early childhood, health and community services – in Sydney, Alice Springs and Melbourne. She is also experienced in facilitating quality professional learning experiences, most recently in relation to early literacy and working in partnership with families. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education investigating coaching for early childhood educators.

• 
   Lisa Murray
  

  Lisa Murray is a Research Fellow at the REEaCh Hub. Lisa completed her Master of Teaching at the University of Melbourne and has a background in primary art education. She has broad project management and research experience having worked across a range of projects relating to educational policy, research and practice. Lisa has experience of coordinating early childhood education research studies including a national longitudinal study and more recently a linkage study with Indigenous children in remote Northern Territory communities.

2019

Why ECE is everyone’s business. Pursuit article, published 31 May

An Abecedarian Approach with Aboriginal Families and Their Young Children in Australia: Playgroup Participation and Developmental Outcomes. Page, J., Cock, ML., Murray, L., Eadie, T., Niklas, F., Scull, J., Sparling, J. (2019)

Quality of Interactions by Early Childhood Educators Following a Language-Specific Professional Learning Program. Eadie, P., Stark, H., Niklas, F. (2019)

Coaching for continuous improvement in collaborative, interdisciplinary early childhood teams. Page, J., Eadie, E. (2019)

Season 2 Ep 5: Talking Teaching considers the growing national momentum for pre-school for three year old children

Issue Number 02 | AUGUST 2019 | REEaCh Research Brief: Summarising findings and their implications for early childhood programs and practices (PDF, 407Kb)

Issue Number 01 | AUGUST 2019 | REEaCh Research Brief: Summarising findings and their implications for early childhood programs and practices (PDF, 382Kb)