Cynthia Hicban

Dr Cynthia Hicban is an academic at the School of Education and Tertiary Access of the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Her work focuses on children’s participation rights, using ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to study social interactions in early childhood education. She has developed the LViIP framework to evaluate children’s rights enactment and advocates for child-led learning approaches.

• PhD in Children's Rights (Queensland University of Technology)
• MLI in Interactional Linguistics (Queensland University of Technology)
• BA in Asian Studies (University of Sydney)

Cynthia’s research explores:

• Children’s voices in educational settings
• Risky play and its developmental benefits
• Mixed-age peer interactions
• Implementation of UNCRC principles

Her recent publications analyze child-agency dynamics in climbing scenarios (2023), friendship formation across age gaps (2025), and LViIP methodology (2024). She collaborates with Maryanne Theobald and Julia Mascadri, using multimodal transcription frameworks to study educator-child interactions.

• Australasian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (AIEMCA)
• International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA)
• Early Childhood Australia
• Organisation Mondiale pour l’Education Prescolaire (OMEP) Australia

As a teacher and mentor, Cynthia bridges academic research with practical applications in early childhood education. She works with the EMCA in ECEC Lab to translate findings into child-safe organizational strategies aligned with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.