Associate Professor Victoria Whitington

Adjunct Associate Professor UniSA Education Futures

mob +61419097099
email Victoria.Whitington@unisa.edu.au

Alternative contact

Available for media comment
Research Degree Supervisor

About me

Re-imagining Early Childhood
Gowrie SA Chair of Board
Adjunct: UniSA Education Futures
Presiding Member, SA's Child Development Council

Victoria Whitington is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Education Futures at the University of South Australia, and an adjunct senior member of the UniSA Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion. She worked for many years teaching and researching in the early childhood field, and has been Lady Gowrie Child Centre Board Chair since 2000. She is currently South Australia's Presiding Member of the the Child Development Council.

UniSA Education Futures

Focused on developing education professionals, UniSA Education Futures contributes to innovation in education practice through quality teaching, learning and research excellence.

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About me

Whitington’s research has three major elements. (1) children’s wellbeing, particularly children who live in low SES circumstances, including Aboriginal, diverse and refugee communities. She has an ongoing partnership with Communities for Children, the Salvation Army and the Schools Ministry Group that has involved a series of funded projects to develop ‘The Wellbeing Classroom’, an approach now employed in over 50 classrooms across the state, and recently comprised an evaluation of a whole school wellbeing approach, with accompanying publications, reports and refereed journal papers. (2) Whitington has conducted research concerned with creating rich learning environments for young children via educator inquiry to reimagine early childhood, and has collaborated with external teams to progress state government and cross-state funded projects in this area, as well as publishing with partners, and research students. (3) Whitington has worked on early childhood workforce issues arising from the 2007 Australian National Quality Agenda These funded projects arose as part of the implementation of the federal and state government policies regarding improving workforce qualifications, and the pathways to them, including in-service programs for those in the early childhood field to become four year degree teacher qualified.

In sum, Whitington’s research, which has been published in key national and international journals has made a substantial contribution to how educators, teachers and education settings support children’s wellbeing, to supporting how teachers and educators reimagine early years learning environments, and to workforce planning policy implementation.

Research

Research focus

Education Systems
Education
Psychology
Specialist Studies in Education
Birth-8 Years

Highlights

Children developing in context intellectually, socially and emotionally, children's development in long day childcare, culture and early childhood education, early childhood education workforce development in VET and Higher Education, learning and teaching in Higher Education.

Research

Outputs

Research outputs for the last seven years are shown below. Some long-standing staff members may have older outputs included. To see earlier years visit ORCID, ResearcherID or Scopus

Open access indicates that an output is open access.

Highlights

Year	Output
2020	Sisson, JH, Whitington, V & Shin, AM 2020, ''Teaching culture through culture': a case study of culturally responsive pedagogies in an Australian early childhood/primary context', Journal of Research in Childhood Education, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 108-126. Open access 12 7 4
2018	Sisson, JH, Whitington, V & Shin, A-M 2018, An investigation on of the re-imagining of early childhood education in South Australia, University of South Australia, Australia. Open access
2017	Whitington, V & McInnes, E 2017, 'Developing a 'classroom as community' approach to supporting young children's wellbeing', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 22-29. Open access 2 4
2015	McInnes, E, Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2015, 'Embedding wellbeing and creating community in classrooms', in K Brettig (ed.), Building stronger communities with children and families, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, ch. 7, pp. 104-127.
2009	Floyd, IE & Whitington, V 2009, 'Creating intersubjectivity during socio-dramatic play at an Australian kindergarten', Early Child Development and Care, vol. 179, no. 2, pp. 143-156. 35 25

Books

Year	Output
2017	Sisson, J & Whitington, V 2017, Pedagogical documentation: a South Australian perspective: a resource for early education and care educator teams, Gowrie SA, Australia. Open access

Chapters

Year	Output
2020	McInnes, E, Whitington, V, Diamond, A & Neill, B 2020, 'Embedding wellbeing and creating community in classrooms', in K Brettig (ed.), Building Stronger Communities with Children and Families, 2nd ed., Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, ch. 7, pp. 123-149. Open access
2016	McInnes, E, Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2016, 'Developing trauma-informed pedagogy in a classroom with 6-8 children', in D Schaub & E McInnes (eds), Trauma and meaning making, Inter-Disciplinary Press, UK, ch. 10, pp. 209-231.
2015	McInnes, E, Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2015, 'Embedding wellbeing and creating community in classrooms', in K Brettig (ed.), Building stronger communities with children and families, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, ch. 7, pp. 104-127.
2014	McInnes, EM, Diamond, AK & Whitington, V 2014, 'Developing Trauma-Informed Pedagogy in a Year 2-3 Classroom', in M Callaghan (ed.), How Trauma Resonates: Art, Literature and Theoretical practice, 1, Inter-Disciplinary Press, UK, pp. 127-138.

Journal Articles

Year	Output
2025	AL-Siyabi, M, Sisson, J, Whitington, V, Memon, N & Harris, P 2025, 'Educators co-constructing religiously responsive pedagogies with Muslim children and families', Journal of Research in Childhood Education, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 384-397.
2024	McInnes, E, Whitington, V, Neill, B & Farndale, A 2024, 'Professional learning supporting multilingual children's social and emotional development in diverse Australian early childhood education and care settings', Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 53, pp. 779-790. Open access 1 1 53
2024	Sisson, JH, Lash, M, Shin, A-M & Whitington, V 2024, 'Co-constructed leadership in early childhood education', International Journal of Leadership in Education, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 797-819. Open access 6 6
2024	Whitington, V, Sisson, J & Shin, A-M 2024, 'Enacting everyday democratic pedagogies in a birth-five early years setting', The Australian Educational Researcher, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 1795-1811. Open access
2022	Sisson, JH, Shin, A-M & Whitington, V 2022, 'Re-imagining family engagement as a two-way street', The Australian Educational Researcher, 49, pp. 211-228. Open access 9 4 3
2022	Sisson, JH, Whitington, V, Shin, A-M, Thiel, JJ & Comber, B 2022, 'Communing to re-imagine figured worlds', Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 32-47. Open access 3 3
2020	Sisson, JH, Whitington, V & Shin, AM 2020, ''Teaching culture through culture': a case study of culturally responsive pedagogies in an Australian early childhood/primary context', Journal of Research in Childhood Education, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 108-126. Open access 12 7 4
2017	McInnes, E, Whitington, V, Colmer, K, Sisson, J & Scales, M 2017, 'A multi-dimensional approach to pedagogical development in long day care centres', New Zealand-International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 46-58. Open access
2017	Whitington, V & McInnes, E 2017, 'Developing a 'classroom as community' approach to supporting young children's wellbeing', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 22-29. Open access 2 4
2015	Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2015, 'Studying early brain development: Educators' reports about their learning and its applications to early childhood policies and practices', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 11-19. Open access 7
2015	Scrafton, E & Whitington, V 2015, 'The accessibility of socio-dramatic play to culturally and linguistically diverse Australian preschoolers', European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 213-228. 3 4
2015	Whitington, V 2015, 'A self-study of listening to student voice in two university early childhood degree programs', Journal of Educational Enquiry, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 65-76. Open access 1
2014	Roppola, TA & Whitington, V 2014, 'Pedagogies that engage five to eight year old children's imagination and creativity at school', Journal of Educational Enquiry, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 67-81. 3
2014	Shallow, ND & Whitington, V 2014, 'The wellbeing of refugee children in an early childhood education context: connections and dilemmas', Journal of Educational Enquiry, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 18-34. Open access 9
2014	Whitington, V, Shore, S & Thompson, C 2014, 'Time to ponder: professional learning in early childhood education', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 39 no. 1, pp. 65-72. 7 5
2013	Rutherford, L & Whitington, V 2013, 'A comparison of segregated and integrated infant and toddler programs in one childcare centre', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 41-49.
2009	Floyd, IE & Whitington, V 2009, 'Creating intersubjectivity during socio-dramatic play at an Australian kindergarten', Early Child Development and Care, vol. 179, no. 2, pp. 143-156. 35 25
2009	Whitington, V, Ebbeck, MA, Diamond, AK & Yim, HY 2009, 'A pathway to enhancing professionalism: building a bridge between TAFE and university early childhood qualifications', Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 27-35. 7 6
2008	Glover, A, Stephenson, EA, Singin, D & Whitington, V 2008, 'Tertiary teaching and learning in Papua New Guinea - building effective intercultural learning and teaching relationships', Journal of Educational Enquiry, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 36-49. Open access 1

Conferences

Year	Output
2019	McInnes, E, Whitington, V & Neill, B 2019, 'A 'classroom as community' approach to supporting student well-being and reducing bullying in primary schools', 9th International Conference The Future of Education, Filodiritto, pp. 1-5.
2013	McInnes, E, Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2013, 'An inclusive classroom-based approach to improving student well-being', in J White (ed.), Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference 2013, Australian Association for Research in Education, pp. 1-13. Open access
2012	McInnes, E, Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2012, 'Supporting children's well-being in a year 2/3 classroom', 13th International Mental Health Conference POSITIVE CHANGE: Investing in Mental Health, AST Management, pp. 20-25. Open access
2010	Whitington, V & Thompson, C 2010, ''It was all too much' the vulnerability of vocational education entrants in their first year of Bachelor of Early Childhood Education Studies', in J Thomas (ed.), 13th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference 2010, QUT Publications, pp. 1-10. Open access

Reports

Year	Output
2023	McInnes, E, Whitington, V, Neill, B & Farndale, A 2023, Wellbeing and emotional literacy in diverse early childhood services, University of South Australia, Australia. Open access
2020	McInnes, E, Whitington, V & Neill, B 2020, The wellbeing classroom as a whole school approach: impact evaluation, University of South Australia, Australia. Open access
2018	Sisson, JH, Whitington, V & Shin, A-M 2018, An investigation on of the re-imagining of early childhood education in South Australia, University of South Australia, Australia. Open access
2014	McInnes, E, Diamond, A & Whitington, V 2014, The wellbeing classroom: embedding wellbeing, creating community report, Communities for Children Salisbury, the Salvation Army and the Schools Ministry Group, Australia. Open access
2014	Whitington, V 2014, Agency in the early years, AECA - Australian Early Childhood Association Inc, Australia.
2013	Diamond, A, McInnes, E & Whitington, V 2013, Family services in suburbs; do they make a difference in children's development? What 2009 and 2012 Australian Early Development Index results reveal about the efficacy of Salisbury Communities for children., Salisbury Communities for Children, Australia. Open access

External engagement & recognition

Collaborations

External engagement & recognition

Collaborations

Organisation	Country
Charles Darwin University	AUSTRALIA
Flinders University	AUSTRALIA
Gowrie SA	AUSTRALIA
Kent State University	UNITED STATES
Private Individual	UNITED KINGDOM
University of Georgia	UNITED STATES
University of South Australia	AUSTRALIA

External engagement & recognition

Engagement/recognition	Year
Invited panellist Media Centre for Education Research Australia	2019
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2017
Member Early Childhood Australia	2017
Member European Early Childhood Education Research Association	2017
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2016
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2015
Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee Education and Early Childhood Services Registration and Standards Board of SA	2015
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2014
Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee Education and Early Childhood Services Registration and Standards Board of SA	2014
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2013
Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee Education and Early Childhood Services Registration and Standards Board of SA	2013
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2012
Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee Education and Early Childhood Services Registration and Standards Board of SA	2012
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2011
Chair Lady Gowrie Child Centre - Gowrie Board	2010
Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning Office for Learning and Teaching, Department of Education and Training, Australian Government	2010

Teaching & student supervision

Highlights

Children's cognitive, social and emotional development, learning, early brain development, research with young children,culture and development, professional pathways and learning for early childhood educators,the impact of stress and trauma on children's capacity to learn and participate in group settings.

Teaching & student supervision

Research degree supervision

Supervisions from 2010 shown

Thesis title	Student status
An exploration of the knowledge and skills teachers require to support the wellbeing of children 5-8 years who are exposed to extreme events	Current
Managing life in two homes: what are the routines, relationships and experience of primary school children from separated homes and their parents and teachers within the school environment	Current
Fostering children¿s capacity for empathic reasoning: the role of community of inquiry in an empathic pedagogy	Completed
It's not just low wages and status : retention issues facing Australian childcare services	Completed
Religiously responsive pedagogies in an Australian preschool: a narrative inquiry based on Muslim parents' and non-Muslim educators' perspectives and experiences	Completed
Toddler educator identity and enactment of social and emotional learning: a narrative inquiry	Completed
What does respect for children mean in light of children's rights? perspectives of preschool children's parents and educators in an early childhood program in South Australia	Completed

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Associate Professor Victoria Whitington

Alternative contact

Alternative contact details

About me

About me

UniSA Education Futures

About me

Professional Associations

Experience

Qualifications

Research

Research focus

Highlights

Projects

Outputs

Highlights

Books

Chapters

Journal Articles

Conferences

Reports

Current research & highlights

External engagement & recognition

Collaborations

Collaborations

External engagement & recognition

Invited panellist

Chair

Member

Member

Chair

Chair

Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee

Chair

Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee

Chair

Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee

Chair

Member, Approvals, Registration and Regulation Committee

Chair

Chair

Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning

Teaching & student supervision

Highlights

Courses and programs

Research degree supervision

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