I believe that
there should never be a standard practice in early childhood education as the society
changes and educators should adjust their practice to suitable to children’s
need. I looked up the Early Childhood
Australia (ECA)web site which is a well-known organization that is
equivalent to the NAEYC organization in the US. It is a user friendly and
resourceful web site with parent resources, publications, professional
development resources and more. I like how they emphasize “ A voice for
children” as their goal. They have their variety of publications for different
audience- teachers, professionals, parents, administrators, such as Every Child
Magazine, ECA Voice Newsletter, Australian Journal of Early Childhood, ECA code
of ethic etc. ECA is also undertaking many projects to support and improve the field of early childhood. They are implementing the Quality Improvement Plans (QIPs) in school especially kindergarten and all day childcare, which is something that the US is putting more focus on now. I like how they have the "Parent Resources" tab on their home page so parents can easily navigate to what they want to know. 
ECA published tons of publications every year, most of their journals share similar topics as the trends and issues that we have in our early childhood education field. They are also promoting
play, adult guidance through play, language development and etc. These are some
topics that caught my attentions:
·
Adult play guidance and children’s play
development;
·
Teaching science through play;
·
Preschool teacher’s language use during dramatic
play;
·
Promoting play for a better future
One of the biggest topics caught my
eyes is the journal on Digital play in the early years: a contextual
response to the problem of integrating technologies and play-based pedagogies
in the early childhood curriculum (Edwards, 2013). There are always pros and cons about using technologies in
the classroom, this article found that with contextual orientation, technology could
better support teachers to engage children in the range of critical thinking
skills.
It is an eye-opener to learn about other country's perspective on early childhood and is interesting to discover Australia has similar education approach to the U.S., with strong focus on children's play and progress.
Reference
Edwards, S. (2013). Digital play
in the early years: a contextual response to the problem of integrating
technologies and play-based pedagogies in the early childhood curriculum. European Early Childhood Education
Research Journal, 21(2).
Hello Yee
ReplyDeleteI tried to look up the research about Australia, but it would not pull up so I am glad to be able to read your blog about Australia. I like the voice of the young child because as we know all too well, we sometimes as adults forget to listen to our children when they have something to add to what we want to learn from them. I also like that they want adults to play guidance of childhood play development and working with them to interact with the children to help them get to the next step in their live. We want to do well by the children, but we forget that we have to teach them the way to play and interact because; at some point and time within our lives someone had to teach us. I have enjoyed reading your blog you found a good bit of important information.
Hi Joyce, great post! I really enjoyed reading about the various resources and studies offered through this website. I enjoyed too the topic of interest you identified as well. I am especially interested in the topics dealing with play and what they call Quality Improvement Plans for kindergarten and childcare programs. I think such plans need to be implemented here particularly for childcare centers. I am encouraged by what I see with the establishment of the Common Core at the school level and hopeful that childcare and preschool centers will one day have their own set of shared standards and expectations. Again, great post!
ReplyDeletelola