Posts

Kindergarten funding, time for an ongoing commitment

Kindergarten funding, time for an ongoing commitment

Since 2013 children across Australia have been attending kindergarten for 15 hours each week. For eight years they have been the beneficiaries of a funding partnership between the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments. These children…
Five reasons your service should support a trainee early childhood educator

Five reasons your service should support a trainee early childhood educator

As Australia’s early learning sector continues to grow, its benefit to young children as well as to future prospects of the Australian economy are increasingly being recognised, both by the government and the general community. Despite…
Five tips for leading professional learning

Five tips for leading professional learning

There’s no doubt that professional learning is essential for educators. It provides opportunities to share, network, set and achieve goals within the early education space, and it is inherently linked to quality outcomes for children. But…
Fostering girls’ interest in STEM

Fostering girls’ interest in STEM

Science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Over the past decades, the global community has made a lot of effort in inspiring…
Peter Moss at Early Childhood Australia’s National Conference in 2019 in Hobart.

Seizing the moment: Telling a new story for early childhood

We have heard so many times in the last year that we are experiencing unprecedented times, and indeed we are. This quote from Monbiot (2017, p. 1), highlighted in the concluding chapter of Claire Cameron and Peter Moss’s new book, aptly outlines…
The time to welcome students back to early childhood services is now!

The time to welcome students back to early childhood services is now!

Catharine Hydon and Kerrie O’Neill share nine compelling reasons why now is the time for students studying early childhood education and care to be in services doing placement. It’s been bubbling for months but do you realise the…
Imagination at the heart of cognitive development

Imagination at the heart of cognitive development

Michelle Carrick shares some of her experiences and observations of being an early childhood teacher for over 20 years. The focus in this piece is on research that underlines the importance of play and imagination as being critical components…
The values we lay in outdoor play

The values we lay in outdoor play

‘The outdoor environment is suited to meeting children’s needs for all types of play, and builds on their firsthand experiences.’ Claire Warden shares the value of indoor and outdoor play through 10 visions and values collated from different…
2020—the year that wasn’t…

2020—the year that wasn’t…

Has 2020 had an impact on children’s learning? Catherine Beckingham, an early childhood teacher from Melbourne talks about the interruption of children’s learning this year, what they’ve learned from spending time at home and what’s…
Sadie_RPEC_2020

Pre-service teacher placement in the time of COVID-19

Pre-service teacher placement in the time of COVID-19: The Remote Placement in Early Childhood at Victoria University (RPEC@VU) model DR CAROLINE SCOTT is an early childhood lecturer at Victoria University (VU) and shares how the development…
Swings

A testing challenge for early childhood

Do cross-national assessments of young children confirm what we already know or is it worse: are they ‘robbing meaning from individual histories’? Peter Moss—international keynote at ECA’s 2019 national conference—and Mathias Urban explore…
WA-Chrisitine-Legg-blog

Early learning matters for babies, but what do they even do?

‘Early learning matters for babies because babies are learning All. The. Time.’ DR. ANDI SALAMON highlights the importance of early education for babies and the complexities behind it. I recently sat down in a room with seven babies…