You are an educator in an early childhood service with children aged 0-5 years. The children and families in your setting are diverse and as a result you need to ensure your curriculum and pedagogical practice is reflective and inclusive of this diversity. Currently you have 30 children attending across the week, and the additional needs situational context is:
Your report must address how you are going to work with your team, other professionals and families to develop an inclusive educational setting and curriculum that will facilitate, extend and enrich learning for all. It must also consider current government funding; the National Quality Standards; the importance of plans for the service and individual children, behaviour management plans; pedagogical practices; curriculum development; and environment provision.
Length: 2500 words
INCLUSIVE PRACTICES AND PRINCIPLES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
Executive summary
Pedagogy can be defined as a set of instructional procedures and techniques that helps in facilitating learning. A dynamic architecture is needed in order to provide a good learning experience to the children. In this report, Victorian Framework’s Learning and Development Outcomes has been demonstrated for highlighting the diverse needs of the children. The project is divided into four main parts. The first part deals with identifying the current funding and National Quality Standards. The second part deals with outlining the professional and support services required to make partnerships with. The third part deals with completing TAFE NSW inclusive practice and principles strategic plan. The fourth part helps in describing the pedagogical skills and practices required for teaching in the learning environment.
Part 1: National Quality Standards and current funding
Inclusion Development Fund provides the required funding for early childhood education programs. This government funding helps educators to facilitate a better learning process for all the children. Health Medicare Safety Net (MSN) and Early Childhood Intervention Services (ECIS) provide funding in order to develop the infrastructure of childhood education programs undertaken by the Australian government. School system policies use funding to provide professional support and training. This, as a result, provides a better environment for both educators and children during their learning sessions. Furthermore, this also enables schools or education services to recruit educators with special training. This, as a result, creates an inclusive care environment for every involved party (Education, 2019). Also, as educators with special training can take better care to children or students with sensitive personalities such as children diagnosed with autism or suffering from trauma. IDF funding also helps educators and education services to acquire resources such as equipment required for studying and classrooms as well.
The National Quality Standards (NQS) provides a benchmark of early childhood education and care across seven different quality areas. Each of these quality areas are broadly used and contains multiple sub-areas that should be fulfilled by educational services. The educator capacity building plan has been developed based on these. Each of these areas has multiple team goals that should be achieved to develop an inclusive care environment for additional needs children. Action plan to achieve each goal has been provided along with the available resources.
Part 2: Partnerships
In order to facilitate an effective education service, collaborative partnerships with other professionals are organizations are required. Partnerships with professionals highlight the need for professionals from a variety of backgrounds to work collaboratively to achieve the best results for children and their families. The partnership provides possibilities for professional development with the help of informal and formal learning from their peers with distinctive expertise and experience. Such collaboration can be effective through knowledge sharing and experience from collaboration with other practitioners. Early childhood professionals can also contribute towards new knowledge about the learning and development for early childhood education. The motivation to collaborate with other professionals in childhood education programs comes from a shared aspiration to attain the best results possible for children (Acecqa 2019). Achieving a positive collaboration requires the professionals to admire and acknowledge the distinctive skills and experience of other engaged professionals.
Education Services Australia (ESA) is a well-known education service provider and works on child education programs. In order to provide better early childhood education service, this service group can be partnered with. Building knowledge during early childhood learning, as well as developing, both individual and regulatory allegiance is essential. Professionals from different backgrounds must appreciate each other by using frequently understood terms in order to share their competence with others, and it takes time for collaboration based relationships to develop as well. Children, families, as well as the professionals, benefit from such collaborations in which the knowledge, skills and experience are being shared. Therefore, collaborating with organizations such as ESA will be an important factor to provide better education services and gain more knowledge about this service as well.
Part 3: IPPSP
SERVICE NAME: TAFE NSW Inclusive Practice and Principles Strategic Plan (IPPSP) STUDENT NAME: | ||
| Service Review | ||
Issues and dynamics with additional needs for children:
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Educator Needs | ||
Educators may:
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Barriers and Strategies There are certain barriers and challenges that can affect the service's ability to include the additional needs of children in their learning process. In order to meet the criteria of the NQS, it is necessary to address and identify these challenges on multiple levels. Once these barriers have been identified, it is necessary to provide strategies that can be implemented by the service to address these inclusion barriers and challenges (Ecrh 2019). The challenges to the service have been identified in six different areas. They are activities of educator, children supervision, physical environment, the structure of the program, concern of parents and child-related. Each of these primary barriers might have multiple secondary barriers that limit the scope of the service to provide an all-inclusive program plan. For each of these secondary barriers, one or more strategies have been provided that would help mitigate these challenges and develop an inclusive care environment for additional needs children. | ||
| Level 1 Barrier | Level 2 Barrier | Strategies |
| Physical environment |
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| Supervision of all children |
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| Educator |
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| Program structure |
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| Parent/guardian concerns |
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| Child-specific barriers |
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Educator Capacity Building Plan The National Quality Standards (NQS) provides a benchmark of early childhood education and care across seven different quality areas. Each of these quality areas are broadly used and contains multiple sub-areas that should be fulfilled by educational services (Acecqa, 2019). The educator capacity building plan has been developed based on these seven areas providing team goal for each area, an action plan to achieve the goal, resources required to achieve it and how much progress was achieved by the educator. Each of these areas has multiple team goals that should be achieved to develop an inclusive care environment for additional needs children. Action plan to achieve each goal has been provided along with the available resources. | |||
| Team Goals | Action Plan | Resources | Progress Notes |
Include children with service needs. Provide alternate communication practices for children with CALD background. Use of sign language for children with speech and communication difficulties. Focus on social skills for children suffering from autism. Multi-use building for children with chronic health disorders. Relaxing activities for children suffering from trauma. | Changes to the physical environment to offer care for children with chronic illness. Building modifications. Reflective conversations. Attend appropriate language courses. Adjust program structure and activities. | IDF Funding. Use sensory aids and supports. Use visual aids and reminders. Using specialist equipment. | Language barrier overcome with the use of other language and sign languages. Children suffering from trauma are able to relax and control their stress with the help of behaviour management. |
| QA 1 Educational Program and Practice | |||
Think more deeply about the approach to learning, development and care in the service (Ecrh.edu.au, 2019). Development of Program. | Holistic approaches Responsiveness to children Learning through play Intentional teaching Learning environments Cultural competence | Case studies of educational program and practice. Guidelines for documenting children’s learning. Case studies of documenting children’s learning and development | The educational program has been restructured and adjusted to fit the needs of the children. |
| QA 2 Children’s Health and Safety | |||
Provide well-being and comfort for all children. Appropriate opportunities to meet the need for sleep, rest and relaxation of all children. | Implement safe lifting and positioning techniques. Flexibility with meal times. Flexibility with rest times. Flexibility with activities. Choice for non-sleepers. Offer indoor/ outdoor program. Establish quiet areas. | IDF funding for equipment that supports the comfort and well-being of children. Multi-use building for including all equipment. Considerations to room layout. | The funding and other resources have been acquired from the local council and equipment for sleep, rest and relaxation have been purchased. |
| QA 3 Physical Environments | |||
Organise outdoor and indoor spaces. Adapt spaces to support every child’s participation. Engage every child in quality experiences inbuilt and natural environments. | Set up inclusive outdoor and indoor spaces. Hazard checklist to ensure a safe environment. Change when it is necessary. | Providing resources to enable every child to participate in play-based learning. Making changes to ensure safe spaces. | The spaces have been built with the help of IDF funding. Most of the child in the batch of 30 participate in the experience regardless of their additional needs. |
| QA 4 Staffing Arrangements | |||
Organise educators. Support children’s learning and development. | Staff arrangement carefully. Ensure educator to child ratio. Provide supervision all the time. | Staff arrangement lists. Observation and documentation. | |
| QA 5 Relationships with Children | |||
Build trusting relationships through responsive and meaningful interactions. Engage and support each child so that they feel confident, secure and included. | Interact with children. Encourage children to discuss and express their idea by asking questions. Play with children. | Provide group activities. Provide questions to discuss in a group. | Interaction with children helps in gaining their trust |
| QA 6 Collaborative Partnerships with Families and Communities | |||
Effective partnership with children. Encourage children’s participation, inclusion and access to the program. | Discuss to parents about children’s strengths, interests and habit. Share information and knowledge. Engage parents in the curriculum decision-making process. | Organising meeting with parents. Talking to parents. Providing handbooks in different languages. | Parents need to be involved with the development of their child |
| QA 7 Leadership and Service Management | |||
Regular evaluation of the performances of educators, co-ordinators and staff members. Putting in place the individual plans that support learning and development. | Staff meeting. Collaborate with the community. Provide self-evaluation and individual plans. Discuss and share knowledge. Participate in essential courses. | Organise meeting. Group communication. | Effective leadership helps in timely implementation of the project plan |
Pedagogy depicts the practice of educating. It is a set of instructional procedures and techniques which facilitates the learning to take place. Furthermore, provide possibilities for the acquisition of skills, knowledge, dispositions and attitudes within specific social and material circumstances. Early learning and development have gone through a lot of modifications in recent years. Victorian Framework's Learning and Development Outcomes demonstrates a growing consideration for diverse needs of the children. Young children flourish and learn at different rates as well as in different methods. Therefore it is required from the early childhood education professionals to possess the understanding of such differences and act according to it (Childaustralia 2019). Possession of the experience and skills of early childhood education in diversified fields produces holistic approaches to help with the children’s learning and their development.
In order to provide a good learning experience to the children, a dynamic architecture is needed. This dynamic architecture is a set of skills, and they are executive function and self-regulation. As an educator, these skills are required to be enhanced among the children. Changes and modifications in the development of curriculum and practices in pedagogy are necessary for the children with CALD background and for those suffering from autism and communicative speech difficulties. Early childhood learning programs suggests play-based learning as a context for learning through which children assemble and make sense of their social worlds, as they engage actively with people and objects around them.
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Pages: 4
Words: 890