Developing a shared pedagogy takes courage, and it begins with coming together. If your team’s competing priorities, unclear direction, or fragmented practices have left you feeling stuck, you know that creating a shared vision isn’t always easy. But when you lean into the complexity, build trust, and shape a collective purpose, you create the conditions for bold thinking, genuine collaboration, and a culture where everyone can thrive.
In Finding Our Way: Developing a Shared Pedagogy Anne van Dam and Fiona Zinn offer a compelling and practical resource for professional learning communities, thoughtfully interwoven with materials that support shared reflection, collaborative dialogue, and intentional pedagogical mapping.
Rather than suggesting a prescriptive framework or formal code, this book provides a constellation of strategies and provocations that invite educators to orient themselves within the evolving landscape of early childhood education. It champions an approach that is collectively personalised, politically conscious, reflexively adaptive, and grounded in the enduring power of joyful curiosity.
Designed to inspire, challenge, and sustain professional growth, Finding Our Way: Developing a Shared Pedagogy affirms the complexity of teaching and learning, encouraging educators to navigate their own unique and meaningful pathways—together.
The book explores:
How can leaders and educators cultivate an approach to teaching and learning that truly belongs to the team, one that reflects your shared values, honours your context, and evolves as you do?
How do you build a shared pedagogy that honours both collective purpose and individual agency?
What does it take to cultivate a culture where reflection, curiosity, and democratic practice genuinely shape everyday teaching and learning?
“What an incredible resource you have created for leaders, advocating for an energised and deeply empowered way of leading educators and creating a community underpinned by collaborative practice and shared values. I believe readers will finish your book with more questions than answers; it requires a depth of sophisticated thinking and an ongoing process of learning that never ends”
— Kate Mount, Chairperson of Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange (REAIE)“This is, without doubt, the best book about education I have read in a very long time. Every page of this book reverberates with the deep wisdom that can only come from the authors’ many decades of research and true, lived experience working with children, their families and educators around the world.”
— Kath Murdoch: Education Consultant and Author“I really appreciate the way you sit complexity and everyday realities alongside a hopeful and realistic pathway forward. It feels deeply aligned with what many of us strive for in our relational work. Your weaving of self-reflection and pedagogical growth is thoughtful and accessible, reminding us that growth is always available to us, both individually and collectively. ”
- Kirsty Liljegren: Educational Consultant“This work is a shining light on the humanness and relational nature of the varied, joyful and often complex layers associated with learning and teaching with others. Through the metaphor of constellations, this book invites readers to intentionally explore the responsibilities and opportunities of teachers and leaders for a participatory education and responsive leadership. ”
- Leanne Mits, OAM: Early Childhood Teacher, REAIE Board Member