The Learning Square

Finding Our Way in ECE

The 'talking points for teams' at the end of each chapter of the book 'Finding Our Way' are intended to support dialogue among colleagues as they reflect on the ideas explored in a chapter. The questions are not designed to generate consensus or uncover a single "right" answer. Rather, they invite teams to make their thinking visible, explore different perspectives, and consider how beliefs and values are expressed through practice. Fiona Zinn Consulting Finding Our Way in ECE

1. How do your individual beliefs about children’s identities, rights, and cultures shape the environment you create as a team?
2. What strategies can you implement together to strengthen the relationships among children, families, and educators to enhance a sense of belonging?
3. How do you facilitate a collaborative learning process that encourages children, families, and educators to co-construct meaning together?
4. How do you recognize and support play as a vital aspect of children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development?
5. In what ways does play provide children with opportunities for agency and inquiry, and how can you enhance this experience as a team?

Beside navigational points, each chapter in Finding Our Way offers with 'Lenses for Leaders', designed to support leaders in engaging with the navigational points of the chapter. They serve as invitations to pause, reflect, and consider the conditions that support a culture of inquiry among adults and children alike.

They questions encourage leaders to think about how to cultivate an inquisitive discourse, to keep the competent child in mind during conversations and to examine how structures, decisions, and practices either support or constrain children's agency, play, and learning.

Fiona Zinn Consulting and I invite you to engage with these questions alongside your team, using them as starting points for dialogue, reflection, and action. There are no final answers. Like wayfinders, we return to these questions again and again, allowing them to help us navigate the evolving landscape of our shared work. Finding Our Way in ECE

- How can you create a climate of curious dialogue about the different perspectives on learning, play, and development that members of your team bring to their collective practice?
- How can you ensure that you and members of your team consistently view children through a lens that honours their identity, rights, culture, and individuality?
- How can you cultivate a culture within the school where play is recognized as a space for agency, inquiry, and meaning-making among children?

Chapter 3 of Finding Our Way: Developing a Shared Pedagogy invites us to explore the rich intersections of play, learning, and development.
Too often, these ideas are discussed separately. Yet in the lives of young children they are deeply intertwined. Through play, children make sense of their experiences, build relationships, develop theories about the world, negotiate identities, solve problems, communicate ideas, and imagine possibilities. Play is not separate from learning and development — it is one of the primary ways through which they unfold.
In this chapter, Fiona Zinn Consulting and I explore how our identity of the child influences the ways we understand play and how contemporary perspectives on learning and development challenge us to move beyond linear and predictable views of growth. We consider the importance of relationships, culture, context, agency, and meaning-making in shaping children's experiences.

At the end of each chapter, we offer Navigational Points - big ideas that teams can return to as they reflect on their own perspectives and consider practices that are congruent with these understandings.
Navigational Points
1 The educator’s view of children, their identity, rights, culture, and individuality, shapes the environment and children’s experiences.
2 Children’s growth is rooted in social and cultural contexts; relationships play a central role in shaping their development and sense of belonging.
3 Learning is a co-constructed, multidirectional process where children, families, and educators collaborate, share diverse perspectives, and reflect together.
4 Play serves as a fluid space for agency and inquiry. Through play, children actively engage with others, make choices, negotiate, communicate, and create meaning from their experiences, enriching their understanding of themselves and their surroundings.
5 Play is central to children’s development, promoting problem solving, self-regulation, empathy, and active engagement with others.
6 Play encourages children to think creatively and critically, allowing them to experiment with ideas, solve problems, and use symbolic representations to communicate complex concepts. It builds their metacognitive skills and nurtures their ability to engage deeply with the world around them.

As we continue finding our way together, we invite you to consider: Which of these navigational points resonates most strongly with your current practice? And where might there be opportunities for further reflection and growth? Finding Our Way in ECE

Some news to share...
After several wonderful years of working alongside schools around the world as an independent consultant, I am delighted to be returning to school-based practice as an Instructional Coach in the Early Learning Center at Singapore American School.
I am excited to once again be part of the daily rhythms of school life - working alongside colleagues, children, and families as we explore questions of teaching, learning, play, inquiry, and belonging together.
While this marks a new chapter, it also feels like coming home. I am looking forward to joining a community that values collaboration, reflection, and a strong image of children as capable, curious, and full of potential.
Here's to new relationships, new learning, and the journey ahead.

Big idea for a Saturday ….

Fiona Zinn Consulting Fiona Zinn and I would love to welcome you into our growing community around Finding Our Way in ECE

Through our newsletter, we share reflections, stories from practice and updates from our ongoing journey exploring shared pedagogy, documentation, leadership, and inquiry.

In June, we’ll be sharing one of the reflective tools from the book - a process designed to support teams in exploring the stories that shape their narrative identity as educators.

We would love for you to join us.
Sign up here: https://www.findingourwayece.com/

As we come to the end of a journey that began in August last year, I find myself reflecting with deep gratitude on what this team has undertaken together over the past year.
What began as an investigation into documentation gradually became something much bigger — a shared exploration of listening, interpretation, reflection, relationships, inquiry, concepts, intentionality, and the role documentation can play in shaping a relational pedagogy.
Over time, I watched the team shift from seeing documentation as a way of recording learning toward understanding it as a powerful pedagogical tool: one that helps make thinking visible, supports collaboration, invites deeper reflection among children and educators, and keeps children’s curiosity and meaning making at the centre of our work.
There has been a growing attentiveness in the way educators spoke about slowing down, listening more carefully, wondering alongside children, analysing together, and using concepts as lenses for planning what to document. These are significant shifts. They require openness, trust, vulnerability, and a willingness to rethink familiar habits and practices.
What stayed with me most throughout this year was the way this team brought both their hearts and minds to the journey. The care, curiosity, honesty, and commitment that educators showed toward one another and toward children made this work deeply meaningful.
Thank you for the conversations, the questioning, the moments of uncertainty, the laughter, the documentation traces, and the courage to keep thinking together.
Real pedagogical change is never immediate or linear. It grows slowly through relationships, dialogue, reflection, and shared commitment. This team embraced that work with generosity and thoughtfulness, and it has been a privilege to walk alongside them.
I leave this journey feeling hopeful about what becomes possible when educators create space to truly think together.

In Chapter 2 of Finding Our Way: Developing a Shared Pedagogy, Fiona Zinn Consulting and I explore the vitality of children: their energy, curiosity, imagination, and drive to understand the world that shapes how they make meaning, form relationships, and engage with their surroundings.

This identity of the child matters as it transforms our decision-making. It influences the environments we design, the relationships we nurture, the time we offer, and the possibilities we create for play and learning.
Recognising children as competent learners invites educators to embrace responsive and relational approaches grounded in dialogue, collaboration, and deep listening.

Children deserve environments that are responsive, and relational - places that honour their ideas, theories, identities, and ways of being in the world. Finding Our Way in ECE