Enhancing the Australian early childhood teacher education curriculum about very young children

Abstract

Research has shown that the care and education of infants and toddlers is an under-represented area in early childhood teacher education. This is also the case in Australia, meaning that pre-service teachers have few opportunities for learning about infants and toddlers and thus tend to have limited theoretical and practical knowledge about infancy and early development. The project reported in this paper targeted this need by providing an online learning resource called U3Vid (u3vid.com.au) for early childhood teacher educators and pre-service teachers to gain knowledge and experience for the education and care of very young children. Overall, the U3Vid website has proved to be an effective online resource for Australian early childhood teacher education for understanding the pedagogy and curriculum associated with children aged birth to three years. This paper reports on findings from the project on pre-service teacher perspectives of engaging with online learning focusing on very young children. Findings from the online survey provide important insights into the suitability of online learning in early childhood teacher education as a way of engaging with reflective practice to combat the gaps in early childhood teacher education regarding infants and toddlers.

Keywords:

• teacher education
• infants
• videos

Acknowledgements

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching.

Notes on contributors

Dr Susanne Garvis is interested in the education and care of infants and toddlers. She has led government-funded projects, consultancies and philanthropy grants. Dr Garvis is based at Monash University, Australia.

Narelle Lemon is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Her teaching is positioned within Teacher Education with research focused on arts education, cultural engagement, social media for professional engagement, and narrative inquiry including image-based methods to share voice.

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. In the seeding project [SD12-2575].