Contemporary Perspectives of Learning and Development for Early Childhood

Overview

In this unit pre-service teachers focus on traditional and contemporary approaches and perspectives in early childhood education, professional understandings about children and key cultural-historical issues affecting children and their families. This provides them with the opportunity to acquire knowledge of diverse traditional and contemporary philosophical and pedagogical perspectives relevant to the early childhood profession (birth to eight years of age) and the capacity to use this knowledge to inform their professional judgments

Learning outcomes

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Assessment

Content

• Introduction to early childhood development and learning
• Historical and philosophical underpinnings of early childhood education
• Traditional and contemporary influential philosophies and approaches (including Reggio Emilia, Steiner, Montessori, Te Whariki, Forest Schools)
• Neurological perspectives
• Past and present images of children and childhood
• Contemporary research perspectives of child and childhood
• The sociology of childhood
• The effects on children and families of attitudes to social class, gender, ethnicity, race and the dominant culture
• Cross-cultural perspectives on children, childhood and early childhood education
• The image of the child