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Launch of Essential Connections: A Guide to Young Children’s Learning |
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Minister, distinguished guests and fellow early childhood professionals.
Before I begin - I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this land.
Recently at an issues day, held by the Australian Education Union, the two New Zealand speakers greeted the other participants in Maori.
This is a requirement of the Waitangi Treaty that was signed in 1840, between the British Crown and the Maori chiefs.
Later, when Karen Martin, a Noo- nuck -cal (Noonucal) woman, spoke to the meeting she commented that she had never heard a white Australian speak in an Aboriginal language in the way the New Zealanders had spoken in Maori.
She said too that, for her, real steps would have been made in the process of reconciliation between Aboriginal people and white Australians when this happened.
Afterwards the person representing Early Childhood Australia spoke to her and said that our organisation would like to do this. Karen gave her permission for me, as a representative of Early Childhood Australia, to address you with this word:
Yura is a deep acknowledgement and greeting from my spirit to yours and to the place where we are meeting.
It is a word from the Janidai language of the Noo -nuck - cal people of Kwan da moo ka (North Stradbroke Island)
It is a pleasure to be here, as the National President of the Early Childhood Australia, at the launch of Essential Connections: A Guide to Young Children's Learning.
Congratulations to you Minister for the vision, leadership and commitment to children that has resulted in this really outstanding resource for the early childhood profession in Tasmania.
Congratulations also to the early childhood professionals in the Tasmanian Education Department and in, what was then the Tasmanian Association of Children's Services and is now Early Childhood Australia, for working together to realise that vision and create a resource that will be invaluable not only here in Tasmania, but also to early childhood professionals working in children's services throughout Australia.
I have no doubt that this book will make a major contribution to the way early childhood is thought about and practiced in this country.
The Essential Connections: A Guide to Young Children's Learning is evidence of what can be achieved when the Government and the early childhood profession listen to each other and work together in the interests of young children.
Equally, this book is a wonderful illustration of why it is so important that those who work with young children are well-qualified early childhood professionals.
The work of supporting young children's early growth and learning is clearly work which demands professional knowledge and expertise.
The early relationships (connections) between young children and those who are responsible for their growth and development are formative, rather than peripheral, to the life course of young children and this book demonstrates that very clearly indeed.
Early childhood professionals, here and in the rest of Australia, are indebted to the five teams of practitioners, who undertook the research that provided the "learning markers and learning stories" featured throughout this book.
You have demonstrated wonderfully the discipline, complexity and rigor of the work we do. Thank you.
Essential Connections abound throughout this book.
It clearly references children as active participants in their own development and demonstrates that the most sensitive care and education is that which is aligned with the child's interests, needs, and goals. If children's early experiences are to support rather than diminish their inborn potential this is an essential connection.
Equally important Essential Connections: A Guide to Young Children's Learning recognises early childhood as a continuum from birth to eight years of age in which the foundations for all future growth and learning are laid.
In doing this, the book makes a major contribution to the status and standing of all of those who work with young children in children's services and in the early years of school.
It also makes a real contribution to the realisation of the potential for the development of a stronger sense of profession between those who work with young children in schools and those who do so in children's services.
The Essential Connections will help us to explain to parents what we do and how children learn.
The wonderful explicitness and detail of the links between the learning stories (which is often all that most parents see), the learning markers, the Quality Improvement and Accreditation quality areas and our practice as professionals seen in the "provision for learning sections" will support us in making these explanations to parents.
One of the key markers of a profession is its willingness to put out for public scrutiny the detail of what it does and why.
The Essential Connections: A Guide to Young Children's Learning does this in a way which will make a real contribution to increasing community understanding of the significance of the early years.
The early childhood years are crucial not just as an investment in the future, but also because children are themselves intrinsically valuable.
The Essential Connections illustrates that early relationships matter in lives and futures of young children and because of this society is wise to value those who relate to young children daily.
Ross A. Thompson in an article entitled Development in the First Years of Life says that:
"The irreducible core of the environment during early development is people. Relationships matter. They provide the nurturance that strengthens children's security and well-being, offer the cognitive challenges to exercise young minds, impart many essential catalysts to healthy brain growth, and help young children discover who they are and what they can do."
The Essential Connections: A Guide to Young Children's Learning is evidence this and for this and all of the other reasons I have alluded to here.
Early Childhood Australia is proud to endorse it.
Congratulations to everyone one involved.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 14 June 2007 )
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