Educational Leaders conference to provide insight and inspiration in Victoria

The Victorian Department of Education will bring together educational leaders, both in person and online, to network, learn and gain further insights about best practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC) at the Best Start, Best Life: 2025 Educational Leaders Conference.

The conference, to be held Friday 28 March 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, is a free professional learning event available to all educational leaders working in a Victorian funded kindergarten service. 

Conference participants will hear from local and international experts about practical, evidence-based approaches to support their role in leading early childhood pedagogy and practice. It is also an opportunity to network and connect with other educational leaders.  

Running from 9 am – 5 pm, the conference is dedicated to supporting educational leaders to guide the delivery of two years of high-quality play-based learning for Victorian children as part of the Best Start, Best Life reforms.

In-person and online registrations are now open for the conference, which will present the latest evidence in neuroscience research as part of the 2025 conference theme Brain development and the criticality of the early years.

Keynote presentations

Two keynote presentations will show how the early years of development establish the basic structures of the brain and how teaching teams can capitalise on this limited window of time to positively impact children’s cognitive development. 

The first keynote speaker, Professor John Spencer, a Psychology Professor from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, will cover the processes of early brain development and how experiences shape brain structure and function. 

Professor Spencer will discuss how caregivers and teaching teams can directly enhance children’s self-regulatory skills and provide guidance on how educators can significantly influence brain development trajectories.

The second keynote speaker is Professor Deborah Phillips, a Professor of Psychology from Georgetown University and the Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Children, United States of America. Professor Phillip’s research on the impact of early childhood education has received substantial funding, and she has earned several prestigious awards, including the 2022 Nicholas Hobbs Award from the American Psychological Society.

Professor Phillips’ presentation will explore how stress affects young children’s brains and behaviour, the benefits of Victorian children receiving two-years of funded kindergarten, and the importance of play in learning. She will explore the critical role of early childhood teaching teams in fostering playful learning. 

Informative workshops

The day will also offer workshop sessions to strengthen intentional teaching skills, provide practical guidance on how those skills can be used to build subject matter expertise, and encourage intentional language and literacy development.

Workshop presentations will be delivered by The Australian Council of Education Research (ACER) who are working with the Victorian Department of Education to develop an intentional teaching professional learning program that will be released in mid 2025. 

ACER will deliver 2 workshops based on this forthcoming professional learning program, focusing on how educational leaders can use the theory and research of intentional teaching and support their teaching teams to translate it into everyday teaching practice. 

Workshop 1: Intentional Teaching in Early Childhood Education: Theory to Practice will unpack the concept of intentional teaching, address common misconceptions, and explore its theoretical foundations. It will also explore how intentional teaching complements and enriches playful learning experiences and supports children’s holistic learning in line with the learning progressions. 

Finally, the workshop will consider how teaching teams negotiate the integrated teaching approaches of child-led, adult-led, and guided play to facilitate rich, interactive learning experiences with and for children. 

Workshop 2: Supporting Children’s Language and Literacy Development through Intentional Teaching will provide an evidence-based understanding of children’s early language development to support teaching teams to plan purposeful, playful experiences to foster children’s literacy development, communication, emotional wellbeing, and learning across domains. 

The workshop will highlight key concepts from the latest research on early language development, and show how teaching teams can frame day-to-day, playful interactions as opportunities to intentionally foster children’s language growth. 

Backfill arrangements 

Approved providers of educational leaders attending the conference (in-person or online) may be eligible to claim a backfill contribution. 

Approved providers of educational leaders travelling more than 150 km to attend the conference in-person may also be eligible to claim a $300 travel subsidy contribution.

For more information about the backfill and travel subsidy contributions, email: [email protected]

Further information, registration and support

To register for the conference please visit Best Start, Best Life: 2025 Educational Leaders Conference Registrations | eventfrog.eventsair.com.

Further information about the conference is available on the Department of Education website Best Start, Best Life: 2025 Educational Leaders Conference | vic.gov.au or by emailing [email protected].