Critical reflection as democratic practice: agency, participation and leadership in early childhood education in the digital age

Critical reflection occupies a central position within early childhood education and care (ECEC) quality frameworks. However, within increasingly regulated and digitally mediated environments, critical reflection exists within tensions between professional autonomy, democratic practice, and accountability requirements. This paper examines how critical reflection is enacted within one Australian faith-based early childhood education and care setting and explores the organisational conditions influencing educators' reflective practice. Drawing on a qualitative interpretivist case study informed by grounded theory methods, the study investigates educators' experiences through interviews, observations, reflective processes, and document analysis to examine reflective practice as it occurred within everyday organisational contexts. Findings indicate that critical reflection was enacted as a relational, distributed practice informed through professional dialogue, leadership participation, mentoring relationships and organisational structures with the SCHEMED framework emerging inductively. The paper contributes to ECEC scholarship by positioning critical reflection as a democratic professional practice shaped by relational, organisational and socio-digital conditions.