EDF5048 · Creative encounters with the arts and languages

Overview

This unit will explore children’s creativity through the lens of language, literacy and the arts (e.g. through combining art, music, dance, drama, storytelling, media arts and maker/design). It focuses on practices, learning theories, and pedagogical innovations for early childhood education with an emphasis on making, responding and communicating through arts and text, while simultaneously advancing contemporary strategies for expressing and interpreting through multimodal communications tied to cultural experiences. Through online learning opportunities and at home projects, you will explore arts and language practices, processes, media and content knowledge. In turn you will create a portfolio of arts and experiences with various community-based literacies that are analysed through theoretical and pedagogical insights appropriate to early childhood contexts. Adopting the role of creative and multimodal early childhood teachers, you will develop the skills and confidence to plan, implement and evaluate experiences for young children that are informed by early childhood curricula. In the process you will explore how children make meaning through learning in, about and through the arts, language and literacy. You will explore how the arts and language in early childhood connect to home, community, regional and inter/cultural awareness while exploring how the arts and language enable children to communicate in multiple ways that link to sustainability, inclusivity, contemporary society and varied cultural perspectives (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Asia and Pacific perspectives). Digital media will be used as a creative and communicative tool. This unit explores UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals while also exploring the decolonisation of western approaches to the arts and literacy.

Offerings

The Handbook publishes no offerings for this unit.

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. critically explore creative approaches to learning through language and the arts, (e.g. through combining art, music, dance, drama, storytelling, media arts and maker/design)
2. identify and critically apply theories of early literacy (birth – 5 years) that support effective learning and development within educational settings and community spaces
3. explore and apply knowledge of arts pedagogies within early childhood that respond to and inform various cultural and social settings, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Asia and Pacific perspectives
4. plan, implement and evaluate effective pedagogical experiences for children that intentionally support their creative and critical thinking through language and the arts
5. investigate home and educational settings, along with multilingual learning to identify themes and concepts that inform innovative arts and literacy strategies
6. demonstrate an understanding of how the arts and language enable children to communicate in multiple ways that link to sustainability, inclusivity, and contemporary society and traditions.

Workload

The minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per teaching period comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Usually, you can expect to engage with: • 24 hours of scheduled learning delivered online via synchronous directed learning activities; and • the remaining hours to be allocated towards self-directed/independent study Scheduled learning activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.