What is National Quality Standard? | Quality Area 1 – Standard 1.2 Educator Facilitate and Extend Each Child’s Learning and Development

What is National Quality Standard? | Quality Area 1 – Standard 1.2 Educator Facilitate and Extend Each Child’s Learning and Development – Element 1.2.1

In the last blog we shared with you information on National Quality area 1 Standard 1.1 and its elements. Today, we will explore Standard 1.2 in detail.

Standard 1.2 is further split in to three elements as below:

1.2.1 Intentional teaching

Educators are deliberate, purposeful and thoughtful in their decisions and actions.

1.2.2 Responsive teaching and scaffolding

Educators respond to children’s ideas and play and extend children’s learning through open-ended questions, interactions and feedback.

1.2.3 Child directed learning

Each child’s agency is promoted, enabling them to make choices and decisions that influence events and their world.

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Let us take each element one by one.

1.2.1 Intentional teaching

Educators are deliberate, purposeful and thoughtful in their decision sand actions.

Aim of Element 1.2.1 is to ensure that educators actively promote children’s learning through challenging experiences and interactions that foster high-level critical thinking skills. They intentionally engage with children in meaningful ways that support their thinking and learning as stated in Early Years Learning Framework.

Intentional teaching utilises professional knowledge and strategies that reflect contemporary theories and research concerning children’s play, leisure and learning (Framework for School Age Care, p. 14). Intentional educators are able to explain what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Intentional educators:

• recognise that learning occurs in social contexts and that interactions and communication are vitally important for learning
• use strategies (such as modelling and demonstrating, open-ended questioning, speculating, explaining and engaging in sustained shared conversations) to extend children’s thinking and learning
• move flexibly in and out of different roles and draw on different strategies as the context of children’s play changes
• use their professional knowledge to plan programs that support children’s knowledge building (adapted from the Early Years Learning Framework, p. 15; and the Framework for School Age Care, p. 14).

When a service goes through assessment and rating an assessor may observe the following:

Educators:

• providing time, space and learning experiences that facilitate thoughtful and challenging conversations with children
• engaging with children by listening, showing interest and asking open ended questions to encourage thinking and conversation
• using a range of communication strategies that involve explanations, speculation and problem solving
• collaborating with children to develop further knowledge and skills
• using teaching strategies that complement the goals they have for children’s learning
• providing instructional/intentional support to children during play, routines and transitions
• who are fully present and mindful of opportunities to provide children time and space to ‘be’.

Assessor may discuss the following:

• plans and strategies educators use to promote learning across all aspects of the program
• how intentional teaching strategies are used to extend children’s play, including spontaneous experiences
• any changes in practices that have been implemented to support a child requiring additional assistance, and how those changes have been adapted and sustained over time to benefit the learning of other children and build respect for diversity

How educators:

decide when to use particular intentional teaching strategies, including the intentional positioning of resources or structuring of the learning environment

Assessor may sight the following:

• the written program
• team meeting minutes when intentional teaching strategies have been discussed
• documented examples of reflective practice
• planning documentation that identifies resources to support ongoing learning
• documentation that monitors children’s learning, wellbeing and engagement.

In the next blog we will focus on Element 1.2.2 of Standard 1.2 of Quality area 1.

Sourced from National Quality standard published by ACECQA https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/acecqa/files/NQF/Guide-to-the-NQF-3-Guide-to-the-NQS-Part-A.pdf