I have included a screenshot of various social media teaching groups I am a part of as my evidence of working toward achievement in this Standard.  I am part of several Early Childhood Education and Care Facebook pages, some specific to Adelaide and others for educators and teachers across Australia. These pages provide an opportunity to connect with and communicate with other teachers, share information and learn from peers (Staudt Willet, 2023). It has been trial and error to find good-quality pages, as some pages do not present themselves and teachers professionally and respectfully and are best to be avoided. Some of the pages have also been specific to units of learning and have become inactive once the unit has finished. Social media sites such as Facebook allow for opportunities of collaboration and can create a virtual community for like-minded people, however there are challenges such as conflicting and out-dated advice and negative behaviour and discussions (Howell, 2013; Staudt Willet, 2023).

As my evidence against this Standard, I have included an excerpt from the Mentor Assessment form from Professional Experience 3, completed by my mentor Giang Nguyen. My third professional experience occurred at Parks Children’s Centre.

In this excerpt Giang (personal communication, May 24, 2024) comments on my networking with other educators and teacher during a professional training day. Professional development training can act as networking opportunities for early career teachers (Mansfield, 2020). Attending this training created an opportunity for me to meet and network with early childhood teachers and educators working across the Inner West and Torrens area, which was extremely beneficial to me as this is the area I live and work in. I was able to engage in dialogue with other educators and teachers about their practices and the places they worked.

My professional teaching network is quite small, and I will need to grow it and make connections with the wider community to broaden my knowledge and improve my practice. I will further develop this Standard by taking steps to grow my professional network. I will do this by attending preservice and graduate teacher networking meetings and events such as The Educators Ball hosted by Educators SA (https://events.humanitix.com/educators-ball-2025?hxchl=hex-pfl) and joining the MentorEd SA program (https://educators-sa.sa.edu.au/early-career-educator-hub/educators-sa-mentoring-program/). As I begin my career as a teacher, I am hopeful I will be able to extend my professional networks through attending conferences, professional development training and mentoring programs (Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership, 2014).

Howell, J. (2013). Teaching with ICT: Digital pedagogies for collaboration and creativity. Oxford Press.

Mansfield, C. (2020). Cultivating teacher resilience: International approaches, applications and impact. Springer. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/curtin/detail.action?docID=6297574

Staudt Willet, K.B. (2024) Early career teachers’ expansion of professional learning networks with social media. Professional Development in Education, 50(2), 386-402. http://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2023.2178481