ARC Win for ACU

Announcement from Professor Wayne McKenna, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research).

Yesterday, 31 May, the Minister for Education and Training, Senator the Hon. Simon Birmingham announced an additional $22.2 million to support 61 new collaborative research projects funded under the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Projects scheme.

We are very pleased to report that an ACU team, led by Professor Susan Edwards (LSIA - FEA), has been awarded $156,000 in funding to undertake the project titled ‘A best practice framework for playgroups-in-schools’.

This project aims to identify the processes, practices and/or policies informing productive relationships between families and school-staff. Playgroups-in-schools are a burgeoning field of integrated early childhood service provision. Research shows that playgroup participation benefits parental capabilities about children’s play. High levels of parental knowledge, skills and confidence in providing children with play-experience are known to have a positive development and learning impact for children. An expected outcome from this project will be a best practice framework for playgroups-in-schools, which should directly inform policy and practice in schools via Playgroup Victoria's increased capacity to advise school-leaders on playgroups-in-schools.

We wish to congratulate Professor Susan Edwards, Dr Karen McLean, Ms Catherine Healy, A/Prof Maria Evangelou, A/Prof Michael Henderson, Prof Andrea Nolan, Prof Helen Skouteris, as well as LSIA and the FEA for this outstanding achievement. Congratulations on a well-earned success.