If you were to sum up in one sentence what the EYLF encapsulates it would be: Know what you do and why you do it!
The EYLF stands for Early Years Learning Framework and is the basis for educators in terms of education and quality care for children.
It was introduced in 2010 to support and enhance children’s learning from birth to 5 years and assist with the transition to formal schooling.
Put simply the EYLF is a continuous journey.
The Early Year Framework is embedded into the Early Childhood Care and Education setting.
The EYLF reinforces the importance of equal access to care and education in early childhood settings through the connection and understanding of the significance of play-based learning. With such a strong emphasis on play-based learning the objective is to provide consistency in the delivery of care and education.
The EYLF puts children’s learning at the core and comprises three interrelated elements: Principles, Practice and Learning Outcomes.
This is best achieved through an ongoing cycle of planning, documenting and evaluating children’s learning. This in turn encourages educators to critically reflect on their practices and the value of the experiences and opportunities they provide.
The EYLF is a part of The National Quality Framework. The National Quality Framework is a key in the overall Early Childhood Care and Education fundamentals and strives for quality.
The NQF has three key elements:
The framework defines the principles, practice and outcomes to support and enhance young children’s learning without being prescriptive but rather it is open- ended and flexible. It is able to be interpreted simply because each educator is different.
It is to assist educators as the basis for a national curriculum framework and then to use those key elements and ideas to underpin practice. As such the EYLF will look different in every service and this is the way it should in order to be effectively implemented.
However, it is important to note that whilst there are varying ways it can be echoed in a service it should also be recognizable as the EYLF itself.
The EYLF guides educators into their decision-making and assists in planning, implementing and evaluating and reflecting on the quality in they provide through their curriculum and experiences.
Pedagogy, principles and practices underpin the EYLF. The EYLF is about helping educators make informed decisions about children’s learning and progress towards the five learning outcomes.
These three words……being, becoming, belonging are the title of the EYLF – but they are more than just a motto. These three simple words actually encapsulate what educators should be doing on a daily basis to support and promote a child’s learning.
Belonging
Children learn from their social context. relationships are vital to create a sense of belonging. By having a sense of belonging a child’s independence with others develops and helps to form the basis of relationships in defining a child’s overall identity.
When a child has a sense of belonging they can not only make sense of their world, they interact within it, they are more confident and secure and more engaged in their learning.
We can promote a sense of belonging by:
Being:
Is about allowing children the opportunity to be themselves to experience, to learn. Children live in the present therefore it is key to provide them the opportunities to grown and develop at their own pace without any pressure.
We can promote a sense of being by:
Becoming:
Becoming is who children are growing up to be. Children experience rapid change during the early years and becoming emphasizes learning to participate and fully support them in their learning journey to realise their full potential and help them to grow and become an active member of society.
This can be supported through:
These three elements work in conjunction with each other. No one element stands alone.
The EYLF challenges educators to question, reflect and be thoughtful and purposeful in what you do.
Note: We do discuss each component more closely in individual articles, however, for the purposes of all inclusive an overview and to offer a cohesive summary of the EYLF and all the components we have touched on principles, practices and outcomes here.
The 5 principles ‘reflect contemporary theories and research evidence concerning children’s learning and early childhood pedagogy’ (EYLF, p12).
Principles
Practices
The Learning outcomes:
The learning outcomes prompt educators to identify children’s strengths and make available opportunities to enable and facilitate children to use their strengths in everyday practice. A learning outcome is the skill or knowledge that is promoted through experiences and the environment and the link to children’s learning.
The outcomes give focus to our planning for children’s learning