Category Archives: Teachers

Inspiring richness and diversity in arts practice: An Aboriginal perspective

In the lead up to National Reconciliation Week (27 May–3 June) and in celebration of the 2022 theme ‘Be Brave. Make Change’, we reached out to Aboriginal artist and early childhood professional, Emma Stenhouse to share part of her journey, experiences and wisdom.   Emma describes herself as Indigenous artisan, Ngarrindjeri woman, artist, weaver, printmaker, designer […]

Mythbusting professional love

Professional love, also known in the academic literature as teacherly love or pedagogical love, is a wonderful addition to any early childhood education and care profession, particularly where infants and toddlers are present. Defined by Page (2018) as “a term to comprehend the reciprocal pedagogic relationship which develops in positive interactions between primary caregiver, child […]

Words matter

How do you talk about early childhood education and care? The words we use daily to describe early education matter. Professional language is one way to advocate and begin the changes necessary to support the work we do every day. If we use this professional language every day with children, families and our community—in documentation, […]

Music in early learning

Inspired by the comments on my previous post, I wanted to write about the practical ways in which educators can facilitate teaching of music in early learning settings. There is growing evidence about the numerous benefits of teaching children music. In early learning settings, music can be used as a learning tool to facilitate growth […]

Avoiding burnout together

Through Australia’s bushfires, COVID-19 and a number of other highly stressful events in the past few years, educators, learning communities, families and children have shown resilience and supported each other’s mental health and wellbeing. However, the uncertainty, rapid change and accompanying feelings we might have experienced—anger, grief, loss, shame or the feeling of being overwhelmed, […]

Honouring educators

Each year hundreds of Australians receive Australia Day Honours for the outstanding service and contributions they make to everyday life in Australia. This year, three notable Australians, The Honourable Jay Weatherill, Megan Mitchell and Professor Lester-Irabinna Rigney, were honoured for their contributions to early childhood education. The Honourable Jay Weatherill, AO, received his Officer of […]

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 next. Catherine also mentions early childhood learning theories by Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner, specifically broad learning such as social and cultural. Many parents […]

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