Dr Marg Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in the Early Childhood Education team within the School of Education. Marg has taught across all areas of education: early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary. Marg researches marginalised voices within families and education especially in regional, rural and remote communities. Specifically, she researches ways to support the wellbeing of military, first responder and remote worker families and early childhood educators. Marg is a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Commonwealth Funded Manna Institute.
Marg is the lead researcher for the funded Child and Family Resilience Programs. This team, along with their Steering Committee of stakeholders, has developed award-winning, research-based, free, online, evaluated resources for educators, parents, and support workers to assist young children from Australian military families. Many of these resources are currently being culturally adapted for Canadian families in collaboration with the Canadian Institute of Military Health Research and other partners. Additionally, the team are working with partners to make them suitable for first responder families.
Marg also leads a transnational study called 'Early Childhood Educators work within a highly regulated environment' with colleagues from Denmark, Italy, Georgia and Canada. She is also a co-investigator in a study 'Peer Support Program' with Southern Cross University. The study is piloting a Canadian Peer Mentoring Program in Australia's childcare desert areas and has pilot funding from the Australian Childcare Alliance (Qld Branch).
As a children’s author, Marg has co-created a series of children’s storyooks that are part of the Child and Family Resilience program. The research-based storybooks are designed to assist them with parental separation during deployment, training and relocation and other stresses in service family life. The storybooks contain lived and living experience narratives. They contain practical ways to improve children’s understanding of the transitions that happen in their families and how to not only survive but thrive.
Marg has co-created other storyooks to support children from military families on how to deal with the changes and emotional upheavals when parents return home from deployment with physical and mental health injuries. These bibliotherapy books assist children who are already experiencing these challenges within their families. With partners in Canada and the UK, she is co-creating a storybook about parental moral injury.
In a previous role, she worked as an Educational Partnership Broker, creating partnerships through school, business and community that had a learning outcome for birth to 25-year-olds. She also taught at the New England Conservatorium of Music running early childhood music and movement classes.
Previously Marg ran a music tuition business 'Moree Music' for seven years. This included council early intervention contracts, instrumental tuition, early childhood music, movement and language programs, infants and primary school bands with community involvement.
Marg has taught in adult education colleges, preschools, childcare, infants, primary and high schools in NSW, Tasmania and the Northern Territory in the creative arts and literacy. She is passionate about the effects of movement, dance and music on early childhood development and the impact of wellbeing, family life, nutrition and exercise on children.
Qualifications
Doctor of Philosophy (Examiners: Professor Anne Farrell, Professor Jennifer Sumsion, Associate Professor Wendy Boyd)
Masters Learning Innovation (Early Childhood)
Graduate Certificate of Language Education (ESL)
Graduate Diploma of Education (Music)
Bachelor of Creative Arts (Music)
Teaching Areas
Families, communication and speech development, literacy, digital literacy, critical literacy, health, nutrition and wellbeing, creative arts (especially performing arts at all levels), integrated learning