How to successfully achieve a balanced curriculum today?

The rapid growth of digital technologies during the 21st century has provided young children with access to new contexts for play activities through such devices as computers, tablet computers, smartphones, and digital toys.

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Having a balanced curriculum, in the 21st century, would therefore include promoting digital literacy in early childhood education which is something that all young children are entitled to. This is something that all schools and early childhood learning centres should offer.

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Digital pedagogy in early childhood education should then have a balance between open-ended play-based learning and intentional teaching practices. However, this can be difficult to achieve as they appear to be at odds with each other.

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Here is what I mean – Open-ended play-based learning provides children with important opportunities for exploring and experimenting with ideas while intentional teaching practices consider the role of adult engagement in children’s play (thespoke.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au). It is an “active process and a way of relating to children that embrace and builds on their strengths, interests, ideas, and needs. It requires teachers to be purposeful in their decisions and actions” (qcaa.edu.au).

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What is the play-framework?

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of co-hosting an early childhood education webinar with John Siraj-Blatchford who presented a wonderful discussion about sustainability in early childhood education. The play-framework (Edwards, MacKenzie, Moore & Boyd, 2013) is based on this principle and it involves three main play-types: Open-ended play; Modelled play; Purposefully-framed play.

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The play-framework is also based on these three principles:

1. Principle 1 – that all three play-types are equally valuable;
2. Principle 2 – that the three play-types can be used in multiple combinations. This principle can be used by early childhood educators to engage young children in learning a concept over any period of time and this may be from a matter of minutes through to a month of planned play-based learning.

(Edwards, MacKenzie, Moore & Boyd, 2014)

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Here is an example of each of these in action. It is based on children’s learning about recycling.

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Open-ended play - Sandy placed a range of different household recyclable materials in the home corner. She also included a recycling, compost and rubbish bin in the corner.

In a digital play context:

Sandy placed a range of different digital technologies in the role play area. She included a laptop, smartphone, and a digital camera.

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Modelled play: Sandy joined the children in the home corner and illustrated which items could be placed in the different bins through role-play.

In a digital play context:

Sandy joined the children and modelled and demonstrated how to use each of the digital technologies that she had laid out for them.

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Purposefully-framed play: Sandy invited the children to discuss their home recycling practices, to read books with her about rubbish and to view video-footage about the process of recycling.

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In a digital play context:

Sandy invited the children to discuss their home uses of digital technology, to view a video about different technologies, and read a few books or stories which include digital technologies.

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How can the play-framework be used?

This framework can be used to support children’s conceptual understanding in a broad array of content areas. By developing children’s conceptual understanding in meaningful and purpose-driven activities you can engage children in their learning about STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) as well as the arts and literacy.

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Conceptual understanding underpins every ICT technique that can be demonstrated by you as the teacher and is very important in the development of young children’s ICT capability and digital literacy in early childhood education.

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It is, however, only achieved when intentional play based learning is employed in the early childhood learning environment as many digital technologies involve different ICT techniques, processes and routines to be able to understand their digital potential. That is, developing metacognition throughout the learning activities.

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What are the benefits of the play-framework?

The key benefit of the framework is that it helps you balance open-ended play with intentional play based learning. It also benefits young children’s learning as it increases their access to multiple experiences for supporting learning and this includes exploration, experimentation, modelling by early childhood teachers, discussion, conversation and access to information resources (Edwards, MacKenzie, Moore & Boyd, 2014). Vygotsky (2004) made particular references in his literature to do with multiple learning experiences as the provision of a ‘rich reality’ for children’s learning.

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Conclusion

The play-framework as a model for early childhood teachers to balance open-ended play-based learning with intentional play-based learning is the ideal strategy for you to apply for any play context including digital play in the early years. Through using these multiple learning experiences the children in your care can build upon their capabilities in ICT as a result of the effective development of digital literacy in early childhood education. You can learn about teaching strategies Early Childhood Australia from this website .