The quality agenda: governance and regulation of preschool teachers' work

The increased regulation of teachers’ work is a global phenomenon across education sectors. In Australia the governance of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) embeds international priorities for quality improvement in educational programs. The implementation of a National Quality Framework (NQF) for the assessment of ECEC services has mobilised the production of a suite of regulatory texts. The regulation of teachers’ work is legitimised through the discourse of quality embedded in policy guidelines. Drawing on interview data from preschool teachers, this paper employs Institutional Ethnography (IE) to investigate teachers’ accounts of producing a Quality Improvement Plan. As teachers operationalise the expectations of quality assurance in the NQF, their work is oriented to gathering evidence of an approved quality of practice. Our findings indicate a shift in professional focus to increased documentation of ‘quality of practice’, goal setting and evidence of the collaborative construction of Quality Improvement Plans