Unit Synopsis
The pedagogical approaches adopted by teachers within early childhood settings are informed by a range of sources including understandings about how young children learn, emerging research on the importance of the first one thousand days in the life of a child and guidance from research and curriculum frameworks. Play is recognised as a context for learning with the child’s right to play and the benefits of play enshrined in national and international policy. In this unit, you will research early childhood pedagogies and theories of play that support the holistic development of young children. Understandings derived by researching pedagogical approaches and learning theory will inform the selection of strategies that are responsive to children’s development. The centrality of relationships and responsive language-rich adult-child interactions as pedagogy will be examined also. You will apply practices for gathering, organising, interpreting and sharing data about what children know, can do and understand. Through the analysis of curriculum documents, you will identify opportunities for children’s acquisition of literacy and numeracy knowledge in meaningful and developmentally appropriate ways.
Details
| Level | Postgraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 8 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 1 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Completion of 72 credit points in CA10 or CG72 OR Admission to CM43. Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Term 3 - 2026 Profile
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Written Assessment | 50% |
| 2. Presentation | 50% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 3 - 2023 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 100.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 16.67% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Student evaluations
Relevance of content.
Continue to review the content in line with the learning outcomes and assessment tasks for the unit.
Students seem satisfied with content and how it is delivered.
Source: Student evaluation
Upload of recordings.
Recordings to be uploaded following the zoom sessions.
All videos were uploaded in a timely manner.
Source: Student communication
Unit content
Continue to embed contemporary research pertaining to early childhood pedagogies
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Analyse curriculum documents to identify opportunities for children’s acquisition of literacy and numeracy knowledge in meaningful and developmentally appropriate ways
- Research and apply strategies for gathering, organising, interpreting and sharing data about children’s learning with particular attention given to sharing information with important stakeholders (families)
- Research a range of early childhood teaching strategies/pedagogies and theories of play that support the intellectual, social, emotional and physical development and learning of young children
- Analyse the learning behaviour of children to document their strengths, needs, interests and capabilities and identify opportunities for learning
- Synthesise knowledge of child development, learning theory and contemporary research to recommend teaching strategies/pedagogies that are responsive to children’s stages of development and characteristics that affect their learning
- Justify pedagogical approaches and responsive adult-child interactions that support the learning of children from birth to eight years of age with reference to contemporary research literature
- Identify strategies to support inclusive student participation and engagement in classroom activities.
Learning outcomes and assessment in this unit provide opportunities for students to engage with content and practices in the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Graduate Stage) focus areas of:
1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
1.2 Understand how students learn
1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
1.4 Strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
1.5 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability
2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
3.3 Using teaching strategies
3.5 Use effective classroom communication
3.7 Engage parents/carers in the educative process
4.1 Support student participation
5.1 Assess student learning
5.4 Interpret student data
6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| 1 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | • | • | • | • |
| 2 - Presentation | • | • | • | • | |||
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | • | • | • | • | • | ||
| 2 - Communication | • | • | |||||
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | • | • | • | • | • | • | |
| 4 - Research | • | • | • | • | • | ||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | |