Assignment Task

Children and Families in Early Childhood Education

Critically analyse the significance and effects of working in collaborative partnerships with young children and their families, utilising a range of academic and research-based literature.

Based on your analysis, design a set of principles that will ensure collaborative partnerships which will facilitate building resilience and support positive outcomes for young children and their families. Provide at least two examples for each of your principles which will illustrate how they could be used to bring about a desirable consequence. Use the course literature to support your decisions and inform your discussion.

Task

1. Analyse and debate the respective benefits and limitations of a situated learning versus networked learning approach. What learning communities result from these approaches and what is the role of the professional educator within these communities?

2. Analyse and debate the challenges of implementing a sociocultural learning approach in early childhood settings, as described by Brennan (2007). Explore how these could be overcome by a community of learning approach.

3. Choose two early childhood learning communities for analysis and debate from a situated learning perspective. Analyse how values, beliefs and cultural contexts uniquely shape the two communities of learning. Explore the opportunities for shared responsibility and agency in each approach at philosophical and practical levels.

4. Analyse and debate the opportunities and challenges for the professional educator working in a community of learning in which the predominant cultural context is significantly different from his or her personal contexts.