Child development and education of young children

The purpose of this Chapter, and indeed of this book, is to provide an overview of the essentials of child development for teachers of young children. A strong understanding of child development knowledge often forms the core of early childhood teachers' professional practice. We usually think of early childhood education as teaching children from birth to 8 years of age, although such knowledge should empower teachers thoroughout prmiary school as well. It is the teaaching staff at the Institute of Early Childhood at Macquarie University, Sydney who have contributed to this volume; and despite all our differences, we share a common passion for the welfare of children and their families, and state of the art practice in teaching. I will speak for all the Chapter authors of this book: if you sense a bias towards being child- and family centred, and having play and relationships at the forefront of our teaching practice with young children and their families, we are ready to agree with you! And we joyously invite you, the teacher, the tutor, or the teacher-in-the making to join our chorus. In this Chapter, we present you with what is ahead of you in this book, and we ouline our reasons for our choices

Social emotional development

In this chapter, we review the basics of social and emotional bases of growth and development, and renew our understanding of how essential early positive and rewarding experiences with caring adults are in children's lives for them to flourish. Babies are 'wired' to be interactive with their caregivers from birth and depend on them to receive social emotional sustenance to thrive and develop. Infants, as they grow older, will become more adept in self-regulation of their emotions and states, while being socialised by their caregivers into what the adults deem to be culturally and socially appropriate and desirable behaviour patterns. Parents and children exert mutual influences in shaping each other. Both their biological inclinations and their socio-cultural formations transact in forming young children's sense of self, self-worth, self-esteem, self-reliance, self-efficacy - in short, their sense of purpose and pursuit of happiness in life

Unusual sensory sensitivities in autism: a possible crossroads

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Neuroscience and early childhood: a necessary partnership

6 page(s

From a Distance: Student Empowerment and Constructing Teacher Identities Online

ABSTRACT Online learning has infiltrated tertiary learning and teaching applications and offers enrichment in the construction of student learning through opportunities unfathomable for most university teachers when they were students. While all students benefit from online learning components that are supplemental to more traditional modes of teaching, it is the distance education students who are the most significant beneficiaries of these applications. This paper presents a framework developed towards ongoing dynamic evaluations of undergraduate units that are fully online on the WebCT platform in one of Australia's leading early childhood teacher education programs. It also describes a journey in which online learning and teaching experiences harnessed technology to better suit pedagogically-driven innovations and initiatives through unit content, instructional design and the emotionally supportive and empowering 'community spirit' created through online communications for distance education students. These experiences helped shape a platform of social discourse in constructing complex professional identities of pre-service early childhood teachers, and one of their teachers

From a distance: Student empowerment and constructing teacher identities online

Online learning has infiltrated tertiary learning and teaching applications and offers enrichment in the construction of student learning through opportunities unfathomable for most university teachers when they were students. While all students benefit from online learning components that are supplemental to more traditional modes of teaching, it is the distance education students who are the most significant beneficiaries of these applications. This paper presents a framework developed towards ongoing dynamic evaluations of undergraduate units that are fully online on the WebCT platform in one of Australia's leading early childhood teacher education programs. It also describes a journey in which online learning and teaching experiences harnessed technology to better suit pedagogically-driven innovations and initiatives through unit content, instructional design and the emotionally supportive and empowering 'community spirit' created through online communications for distance education students. These experiences helped shape a platform of social discourse in constructing complex professional identities of pre-service early childhood teachers, and one of their teachers.9 page(s