TCHR2003 Curriculum Studies in Early Childhood Immersion Placement Daily Reflection Log

TCHR2003 Curriculum Studies in Early Childhood Immersion Placement
Daily Reflection Log
Write a 200-word response to each reflection question. Make links to the Early Years Learning Framework (AGDE, 2022) and/or Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2022) where relevant. Along with these daily reflections, Pre-Service teachers are encouraged to write daily observation notes about the learning environment, the learning and teaching approaches, and the backgrounds of children and families.

TCHR2003 Curriculum Studies in Early Childhood: Immersion Placement Daily Reflection Log — Complete Writing Guide

Day 1: Surprises and Insights About Curriculum Implementation

Pre-service teachers completing the TCHR2003 immersion placement often arrive expecting curriculum to look like structured lessons delivered from a fixed program — and are genuinely surprised to find something far more fluid, responsive, and child-directed in operation. What surprises or insights did you gain on your first day in relation to curriculum implementation? The most common first-day insight among student teachers in early childhood placements is the realisation that curriculum is happening constantly, not only during designated “activity time” but during transitions, mealtimes, outdoor free play, and spontaneous conversations between children and educators (AGDE, 2022).

Reflecting on Day 1, it became apparent that the educators consistently drew on the EYLF’s notion of curriculum as encompassing all interactions, experiences, routines, and environments — intentional and spontaneous — that occur within the setting (AGDE, 2022). Rather than following a rigid weekly plan, the room leader adjusted the afternoon program in real time based on children’s sustained interest in a water-mixing investigation that had emerged spontaneously at the morning’s sensory table. This responsive curriculum approach, while initially surprising, reflects exactly the kind of intentional teaching the EYLF describes: educators who observe carefully, interpret thoughtfully, and adapt purposefully (Fleer & Raban, 2020). What struck me most was how deliberately the environment itself functioned as curriculum — the placement of loose materials, the height of shelving, the rotation of resources were all intentional pedagogical decisions, not administrative ones.

Day 2: Mentor Teacher’s Beliefs About Curriculum

Discuss with your mentor teacher what they believe ‘curriculum’ is and record their ideas. Experienced early childhood educators frequently articulate understandings of curriculum that are considerably broader and more contextually grounded than the definitions found in policy documents alone. My mentor teacher described curriculum as “everything the children encounter, including the relationships they have, the space they move through, and the language they hear from us every minute of the day.” This understanding aligns closely with the EYLF’s definition of curriculum as incorporating “all the interactions, experiences, activities, routines and events, planned and unplanned, that occur in an environment designed to foster children’s learning and development” (AGDE, 2022, p. 23).

My mentor also emphasised that curriculum in the early childhood setting is always co-constructed — that children are not passive recipients of a pre-determined program but active contributors whose questions, interests, and play directions shape what gets taught and when. This constructivist orientation, informed by Vygotsky’s recognition that learning is fundamentally social and contextually embedded, was evident in the room’s pedagogical documentation: the learning stories displayed on the walls traced curriculum threads that had begun with a single child’s curiosity about snail trails and expanded, over several weeks, into investigations involving soil composition, rainfall, and garden ecosystems (Fleer & Raban, 2020).

Day 3: How Educators Demonstrate They Value Children’s Voice

How do the educators demonstrate that they value children’s voice in the program? Children’s voice — their capacity to contribute meaningfully to decisions about their own learning — is a foundational principle of Australian early childhood education, articulated in the EYLF’s learning outcome of children as “confident and involved learners” (Outcome 4) and its commitment to children’s agency and self-expression (AGDE, 2022). In practice, this principle manifests in strategies that are both structural and relational.

At this placement site, children’s voice was built into the daily rhythm in several visible ways. Morning circle time was structured as an open forum rather than a teacher-directed agenda: children proposed topics, named things they wanted to explore, and voted on the order of morning activities. Pedagogical documentation panels positioned at children’s eye height invited children to revisit and add to records of previous experiences, extending their role from subjects of observation to participants in interpretation. Perhaps most tellingly, when a dispute arose about the use of the large hollow blocks, the educator facilitated a child-led problem-solving conversation rather than simply imposing a solution — a practice that reflects NQS Quality Area 5’s emphasis on respectful and responsive relationships (ACECQA, 2020).

Day 4: How the Service Gains Family Feedback on the Program

How does the service gain family feedback on the program? Family engagement in curriculum evaluation is a professional and ethical obligation in Australian ECEC, not merely a courtesy. NQS Quality Area 6 requires that services demonstrate genuine partnership with families and communities, which includes actively seeking and acting upon family input into the educational program (ACECQA, 2020). At this service, family feedback was gathered through several channels operating simultaneously, recognising that families have different capacities, preferences, and cultural orientations regarding formal versus informal participation.

The most structured mechanism was a termly family survey, distributed digitally and available in three community languages, that asked families specific questions about their child’s interests, recent home experiences, and any concerns or aspirations they wished to share with educators. Less formally, daily communication at drop-off and pick-up was actively cultivated as feedback opportunity — educators were observed asking specific, open questions (“Has Mateo mentioned the garden project at home?”) rather than delivering one-way information. The service also held bi-annual family information evenings at which curriculum directions and pedagogical approaches were presented and debated, with family contributions documented and referenced in subsequent program planning (Sheridan et al., 2019).

Day 5: Factors Influencing Curriculum Decisions

What are the factors influencing curriculum decisions? Curriculum decision-making in early childhood settings is shaped by an overlapping set of influences — regulatory, theoretical, relational, and contextual — that experienced educators navigate simultaneously and largely intuitively. The EYLF and NQS provide the regulatory and philosophical architecture, but within that framework, individual curriculum decisions are shaped by factors that vary considerably from service to service and day to day.

At this placement site, the primary visible curriculum influences were: children’s documented interests and observed play patterns (tracked through anecdotal records and learning stories); the cultural backgrounds and home practices of enrolled families, particularly in relation to foods, celebrations, and community events; the physical affordances and limitations of the indoor and outdoor environments; available resources and materials; and the educators’ own professional knowledge, values, and developmental priorities. Seasonal and community events — an upcoming NAIDOC Week, the beginning of the local fishing season — also appeared in curriculum planning documents as anchors for embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives authentically rather than tokenistically (AGDE, 2022; Gorringe et al., 2022).

Day 6: Mathematics and Science Experiences

What Maths and Science experiences have the children engaged with, and what teaching and learning approaches were used? Mathematics and science in early childhood education do not announce themselves through worksheets or textbooks; they emerge from the materials children handle, the questions they ask, and the problems they set themselves in the course of play. At the Foundation level, the Australian Curriculum’s Mathematics strand emphasises number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability as learning areas that young children begin to develop through concrete, hands-on experience (ACARA, 2022).

During this day’s observation, mathematical thinking was evident in children’s sand-pit play: two children were systematically filling containers of three different sizes and comparing how many small containers filled the medium one, spontaneously generating questions about volume and capacity that the observing educator extended by introducing a set of measuring jugs and asking, “How many of the red cups do you think would fill the big yellow bucket?” The science experience was embedded in a living classroom garden: children were harvesting silverbeet, comparing the sizes of different leaves, noting which plants had flowered and which had not, and discussing, with evident enthusiasm, why the tomato seedlings closest to the wall were taller than those in the centre of the bed (Campbell & Howitt, 2024). The educator’s primary approach in both cases was sustained shared thinking — positioning herself alongside the children, asking genuinely open questions, and contributing her own hypotheses to the investigation without directing its outcome (Sylva et al., 2020).

Day 7: Literacy and Creative Arts Experiences

What Literacy and Creative Arts experiences have the children engaged with, and what teaching and learning approaches were used? Literacy in early childhood settings is far broader than the ability to recognise letters or decode simple words; it encompasses oral language fluency, narrative comprehension, the use of symbol systems including drawing and mark-making, and emergent understanding of print as meaningful and functional (ACARA, 2022). During today’s observation, a small group of four- and five-year-olds spent over thirty minutes in the writing corner, producing what they variously described as “shopping lists,” “letters to the tadpoles,” and “books about dinosaurs” — each child operating at their individual level of representational sophistication but all engaged in purposeful, self-directed literacy practice.

The Creative Arts experience was a large-scale collaborative mural on canvas laid on the outdoor ground, with children working across the full surface using rollers, sponges, and brushes. The educator’s facilitation of this experience was characterised by provocation rather than instruction: she placed the blank canvas and materials without explanation, waited for children to begin, then joined the conversation that emerged about colour mixing (“If I put blue on top of yellow, what will happen?”). Documenting this experience through photographs and brief observational notes, she connected it afterward to EYLF Outcome 5 — children as effective communicators — noting that the mural had generated more extended peer language and negotiation than almost any other activity that week (AGDE, 2022).

Day 8: Physical Activity in the Service

Do you think the children engage in sufficient physical activity at the service, and why or why not? Physical development in early childhood is not merely a health outcome — it is a developmental imperative with direct implications for cognitive functioning, social competence, and emotional regulation. Australia’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines for the Early Years specify that children aged 3 to 5 years should accumulate at least 180 minutes of physical activity per day, with older children spending at least 60 minutes in energetic play (Department of Health, 2021).

At this service, the outdoor environment was well-resourced and accessible for extended periods each morning and afternoon, and children were observed engaged in sustained running, climbing, jumping, and cooperative physical games. However, some concerns arose about the indoor environment’s capacity to support movement during periods of inclement weather: the indoor space, while thoughtfully arranged, did not offer equivalent opportunities for large-motor activity when rain confined the program to inside areas. The NQS Quality Area 3 requirement that physical environments “offer a range of spaces and resources that promote all aspects of children’s learning and development” may warrant review in relation to this service’s wet-weather provisions (ACECQA, 2020).

Day 9: Reconciliation and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives

How does the service advance and celebrate reconciliation and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives? The embedding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives within early childhood curriculum is a professional, ethical, and legal responsibility that extends well beyond symbolic gestures or isolated cultural activities (AGDE, 2022). The EYLF V2.0 revision of 2022 strengthened the framework’s commitment in this area, requiring educators to actively engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being, and doing as foundational to all curriculum decision-making, not as an add-on to an otherwise monocultural program (AGDE, 2022).

At this service, the most substantive reconciliation practice observed was the Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), developed in genuine partnership with local Elders and the local Land Council, which specified concrete actions across curriculum, staffing, community engagement, and governance. A local Aboriginal Elder visited the service fortnightly to share language, stories, and knowledge of Country with children and educators together — a practice that modelled, for children, the principle that knowledge exists in community relationships and not only in books or digital resources. Seasonal curriculum threads drew on local Aboriginal ecological knowledge, connecting children’s observations of the natural environment to the traditional custodians’ deep understanding of the same country (Gorringe et al., 2022). Children’s acknowledgement of Country at the beginning of each day was supported by educators who could explain, in age-appropriate language, what the words meant and why they mattered.

Professional Growth Through Immersion Placement: A Synthesis

The immersion placement experience documented across these nine days reveals curriculum in early childhood education as something qualitatively different from the formal, subject-based instruction that the term “curriculum” implies in secondary and tertiary contexts. In the early childhood setting, curriculum is relational, co-constructed, and inseparable from the physical environment, the community context, and the values that educators bring to every interaction. Pre-service teachers who are able to observe this reality attentively — who resist the impulse to impose a preconceived model and instead allow the complexity of high-quality early childhood practice to genuinely surprise them — are likely to develop the professional agility that the EYLF, the NQS, and the Australian Curriculum together demand. Reflective practice, grounded in systematic documentation and genuine dialogue with mentors, families, and children, is the mechanism through which the immersion placement transforms raw observation into professional knowledge (Fleer & Raban, 2020).

References

Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). (2020). Guide to the National Quality Framework. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/about/guide

Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2022). The Australian Curriculum. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/

Australian Government Department of Education (AGDE). (2022). Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia (V2.0). https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/EYLF-2022-V2.0.pdf

Campbell, C., & Howitt, C. (Eds.). (2024). Science in early childhood. Cambridge University Press.

Department of Health. (2021). Australia’s physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines for the early years. Australian Government. https://www.health.gov.au/topics/physical-activity-and-exercise/physical-activity-and-exercise-guidelines-for-all-australians/for-children-and-young-people-0-to-17-years

Fleer, M., & Raban, B. (2020). Early childhood education and care: Building a future. Cambridge University Press.

Gorringe, S., Ross, J., & Fforde, C. (2022). ‘Deadly’ ways to learn: A framework for embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives within schools. AIATSIS. https://aiatsis.gov.au

Sheridan, S. M., Knoche, L. L., Edwards, C. P., & Kupzyk, K. A. (2019). Parent engagement and school readiness: Effects of the Getting Ready Intervention on preschool children’s social-emotional competencies. Early Education and Development, 21(1), 125–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409280902783948

Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj, I., & Taggart, B. (2020). Effective pre-school, primary and secondary education project (EPPSE 3–16). Institute of Education, University of London.