Beyond One-Off PD: Connecting Professional Learning, Practice and Research in OSHC

Aug 16
This week, I stood on a stage in Brisbane and graduated with my Graduate Certificate in Research Studies in Business from Griffith University. It was a proud moment, but it also made me reflect on why I have chosen to spend so much of the past few years studying alongside running Learn OSHC, working in the sector and now moving into research.

In December 2025, I also completed a Graduate Certificate in Education – Learning and Leadership at UTS, before continuing into the Master of Education (Learning and Leadership). On paper, these qualifications might look like separate pathways: one focused on learning and leadership, another focused on research. For me, they are very much connected.

They are both part of a bigger question I have been asking for years:

How do we better support the people working in OSHC so that learning actually strengthens practice?

Why I started Learn OSHC

Learn OSHC began because I could see a need for professional development that was designed specifically for the realities of Outside School Hours Care.

OSHC operates within the National Quality Framework, but our context is distinct. We work with school-age children and young people, and our services operate around the school day. Children may arrive tired, energised, hungry, social, overwhelmed or ready to disappear into play with their friends. We work across mixed-age groups, short transitions, long afternoons and busy holiday programs. Educators are constantly making decisions about relationships, play, leisure, agency, inclusion, safety and wellbeing.

Yet professional learning does not always recognise those conditions. I wanted to help educators and leaders interpret the National Quality Framework within the OSHC environment, rather than simply presenting information and expecting people to work out how it applies when they return to their service.

But there was another issue that concerned me just as much. I had seen plenty of professional development where someone attended a session, listened to a presenter, perhaps felt inspired for an hour or two, collected their certificate and then returned to work.
And then…nothing much changed.

Not because the educator did not care, and not because the content was necessarily poor. Often, there was simply no bridge between learning something and using it in practice.

That bridge is where I think much of the real work sits.

Professional development is not the same as professional learning

A workshop, webinar or course can provide information. It can introduce a concept, challenge thinking, build knowledge and give educators new ideas. But attending professional development does not automatically mean that practice will change.
For learning to transfer into the workplace, educators need opportunities to make sense of what they have learned in relation to their own context. They need time and support to connect new knowledge with the children, young people, colleagues, routines and environments they encounter every day.

They need to ask:

What does this look like in our service?

How would this work with our children and young people?

What do we already do well?

What needs to change?

What barriers might get in the way?

Who can help me work through this?

And what happens when I try something and it does not go exactly as planned?

Those questions shifted my thinking about what Learn OSHC needed to become. I did not only want to develop content about OSHC. I wanted to understand much more about how adults learn, how workplace learning happens and how professional learning can be designed so that it has a better chance of influencing practice.

That is what led me into postgraduate study in Learning and Leadership.

Learning how to design learning

Completing my Graduate Certificate in Education – Learning and Leadership, and now continuing into the Master of Education, has allowed me to look at professional development from another perspective.

Not simply:

What information do educators need?

But:

How should this learning be designed?

That question opens up a much broader conversation. What should happen before the learning? What should happen during it? How do we help people connect new knowledge with their previous experience? How do we support reflection? How can learning activities mirror the decisions people actually need to make in their workplace?

And perhaps most importantly:

What needs to happen after the formal learning experience ends?

That last question has become increasingly important to me because, if we want professional learning to influence practice, then a course cannot always be the end point. Sometimes it needs to be the beginning of a process.

That process might involve discussion with colleagues, observation, practice, mentoring, reflection, feedback or revisiting an idea after trying it in a real situation. This is particularly important in OSHC, where so much professional knowledge is enacted through judgement. An educator can understand a concept in theory, but applying it while supporting a group of children in a complex social situation is something different.

That is workplace learning.

Setting educators up to succeed

One of the beliefs that has become increasingly central to my work is that quality is built through people.

Services can have policies, procedures, frameworks, plans and systems, and all of those things matter. But children and young people experience quality through people. They experience it through the educator who notices they are having a difficult afternoon; the educator who knows when to join play and when to step back; the person who creates an environment where a young person feels that they belong; the Educational Leader who helps an educator think differently about a situation; the coordinator who makes time for reflection; and the team who talk about practice instead of simply getting through the afternoon.

If we want strong practice, we need to create the conditions in which educators can develop that capability.
For me, this begins long before we send someone to a professional development session. It begins with onboarding and induction.

Do new educators understand the purpose of OSHC?

Do they understand what quality looks like in school-age care?

Do they understand the National Quality Framework in relation to the work they are doing every afternoon?

Do they understand their role in supporting children's agency, play, leisure, relationships and wellbeing?

From there, there needs to be ongoing professional learning. Not simply when something goes wrong, and not simply because a compliance requirement says training must occur, but because professional capability develops over time.
Critically, educators also need people around them who can help them make sense of their practice.

The importance of Educational Leadership

This is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in the role of the Educational Leader.

A skilled and knowledgeable Educational Leader has the potential to create an important connection between professional learning and everyday practice. They can help educators reflect, ask questions, observe what is happening and make practice visible. They can support educators to connect theory, frameworks and professional learning with the actual children, families, environments and situations in front of them.

They can help an educator move from:

“I attended training about this.”

to:

“I understand what this means for my practice.”

That distinction matters because professional learning is unlikely to become embedded simply because someone has been exposed to information. People often need opportunities to discuss, try, reflect, adjust and try again.

That is where mentoring and educational leadership can become incredibly powerful.

Capability, quality and retention are connected

There is also another part of this conversation that I think we need to pay more attention to in OSHC.

When we talk about workforce retention, we often focus on recruitment, pay, conditions and staffing shortages. Those issues matter enormously, but I also think there is a capability and support dimension.

Imagine being employed in a role where you are expected to manage complex relationships, understand regulatory responsibilities, support children's wellbeing, contribute to educational programming, respond to behaviour, work with families, supervise environments and make constant professional judgements — but you have never really been taught how.

That is an incredibly difficult position to place someone in.

If educators are properly inducted, given meaningful professional learning and supported by knowledgeable leaders, they are more likely to understand their role. They have greater opportunity to develop confidence, they know where to go when they are unsure, and they can see themselves improving.

They are being set up to succeed.

I believe that matters for quality, but I also believe it matters for whether people can imagine staying in the sector. Professional learning cannot solve every workforce problem, but creating workplaces where people feel capable, supported and able to grow is an important part of the picture.

Why research became the next step

As Learn OSHC developed, another question became increasingly important to me:

If I wanted to contribute to the sector through professional learning, how could I also contribute to the knowledge base that informs that learning?

OSHC remains an area where there is still much more to understand. We need research that takes the context of school-age care seriously. We need research that helps us understand the people doing this work, the environments in which they work and the systems that shape their practice.

That is why I completed the Graduate Certificate in Research Studies. It gave me the research preparation I needed to move into doctoral study and begin developing another layer of capability: not only interpreting existing knowledge for the sector, but contributing to the generation of new knowledge.

I have now begun my PhD at Griffith University, and while that marks a new chapter, it does not feel separate from Learn OSHC. Quite the opposite.

For me, the different parts of my work increasingly sit within the same cycle:

practice → professional learning → research → back to practice.

My years in OSHC shape the questions I ask. My study in learning and leadership shapes how I think about professional development. Research helps me examine assumptions and contribute evidence. And all of that can then inform how I support educators and leaders through Learn OSHC.

Moving beyond one-off PD

I do not think one-off professional development is inherently bad. Sometimes a short workshop, webinar or presentation is exactly what someone needs. It might introduce a new concept, give an educator language for something they have already been noticing, or spark reflection.

But we should be cautious about expecting a single learning event to carry the full responsibility for practice change.

If we want stronger practice, perhaps we need to think beyond the course itself.

What happens during induction?

What support exists afterwards?

Who is mentoring the educator?

What opportunities do they have to reflect?

Can they practise what they have learned?

Are leaders reinforcing the learning?

Does the workplace make it possible to implement?

Those questions are becoming increasingly central to how I think about Learn OSHC and professional learning more broadly. Because my goal has never been simply to create more training. It is to contribute to better learning, stronger capability and meaningful changes in practice.

And ultimately, that is not really about professional development at all. It is about the experiences children and young people have when they walk through the door of an OSHC service.

When educators are knowledgeable, confident and supported, children benefit. When Educational Leaders have the capability to mentor others, teams benefit. When workplaces invest in people's development rather than simply expecting them to perform, services benefit. And when we connect research, learning and practice rather than treating them as separate worlds, I believe the whole sector has the potential to benefit.

Standing at graduation this week, that was what I found myself thinking about.

The qualifications matter.

But what matters more to me is what I can do with what I have learned.

And that is the part of the journey I am most excited about.