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Demonstrator sites

Apr 09, 2026

Early Childhood students and lecturers in class

As part of our ongoing commitment to evidence-informed practice, the Centre of Excellence in Early Childhood Education and Care is strengthening and formalising an evaluation approach that has underpinned our ways of working since inception – the use of demonstrator sites.  

First introduced during our recent career development pilots, including Effective Mentoring for Early Childhood Education and Care and Introduction to Autism for Early Childhood Educators, demonstrator sites form structured partnerships with early childhood services. These partnerships offer rich, real-world insights that enable the Centre of Excellence to refine resources, inform course content, and highlight key elements of learning products that truly support educators in practice.

Looking ahead, demonstrator sites will be embedded as a core component of evaluation across our future initiatives.

 

Two types of sites will support this approach: 

  • Demonstrator sites will act as long term collaborators over a 24-month period, contributing to iterative development and continuous feedback across multiple initiatives.  These will be balanced with control sites, which will not participate in pilots and will provide essential baseline data for comparison.
  • Pilot sites will have the opportunity to opt-in to one initiative pilot aligned with their interests and capacity. These too will be balanced with control sites, which will not participate in pilots and will provide essential baseline data for comparison.  

The Centre of Excellence team regularly engages with early learning sites across the country. Through ongoing conversations with Directors and Centre Leaders, we identify services that are ready, capable, and willing to support our work through piloting commitments. Selected sites will include a mix of TAFE SA childcare centres, national TAFE partners, and other early childhood education and care services from across Australia.

By involving the sector directly in the development and evaluation of our work, we ensure every product we deliver is grounded in real-world experience and designed to meet the needs of educators and learners. 

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which TAFE SA stands.


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