IEC4031: Understanding and advocating for the lower primary child
In this course, you will have opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions to understand the lives of young children (0-8 years old) as well as to critically reflect on issues relevant to their lives. You will be exploring multiple perspectives on topics such as influences on early childhood education (locally and internationally), beliefs and assumptions about children and teaching, transitions, parent partnership, children’s rights, quality in early childhood education, leadership and professional development. In your explorations, you will be immersed in the ways of thinking and acting in early childhood education to enable you to advocate for the child in his/her lower primary school years and beyond.
This course is a pre-requisite for all who are interested in the other courses listed within the Advanced Diploma in Teaching Early Primary School Years (ADTEPSY).
IEC4032: Curriculum and Assessment in the Early Years
This course provides you with opportunities to extend and deepen your skills and knowledge in designing, developing and enacting curriculum and assessment practices for the lower primary child. You will explore the concepts, principles and discourses in curriculum and assessment in ECE as well as different curriculum approaches/models that exist. You will be prompted to reflect on the importance of play and integrated learning in curriculum and assessment, and consider the role of teacher as curriculum designer and developer. Through these explorations, you will have the opportunity to advocate for curriculum and assessment practices that are developmentally appropriate, meaningful and inclusive for all children in the early years.
IEC4033: Learning Environments for Young Children
This course will provide lower primary teachers with an understanding on the importance of well-designed environment on young children’s holistic development, learning and behaviour. It will also provide insights into how a safe, inclusive and nurturing environment can be designed to meet children’s diverse interests, needs and abilities. The importance of the environment in supporting the curriculum, and the role of the teacher in the planning, implementation and evaluation of the environment (including learning centres) will also be highlighted in the course.
The environment has been espoused as the ‘third educator’ in early childhood education. Participants will learn how the environment (indoor and outdoor) can be designed for individual, small and large group activities. They will also learn how the environment can be designed to provide children with lots of opportunities to learn about themselves and the world around them. Principles and elements of environmental design will be introduced to participants.
The course will provide participants with opportunities to link theory to practice through field visits, hands-on activities and assignments.
IPS4003: Theories and Applications of Educational Psychology and Social and Emotional Development in Early Childhood Teaching and Learning
This course provides the foundation for understanding learners, learner development, and the psychology of learning in early childhood. It considers how young children learn and why they may fail to do so, with regards to pupils’ cognitive, social, emotional and personal development. The interplay between the various factors influencing the processes of learning is discussed, and proactive approaches to engage pupils and enhance their motivation, learning, and thinking are explored. Theories on child psychosocial and cognitive development are expounded and their implications for classroom-practice investigated.
In addition, this course focuses on building a rigorous understanding of social and emotional development issues with children, with the aim of promoting their holistic development. A foundation will be laid for participants to acquire knowledge in the domain of psychosocial development that includes changes in feelings, temperament and personality, and children’s relationships with others. The course provides an avenue to explore approaches to nurturing a child’s sense of emotional security and safety, attitudes and values about self, others, learning, and wellbeing within a collaborative framework. Participants will be encouraged to explore tools and a range of strategies to promote the primary school students’ personal and social functioning and to fully integrate the principles of social-emotional learning (SEL) into the classroom. Emphasis will be placed upon the ways in which a range of aspects of primary-school life can help develop and promote emotional and social well-being in the young learners.
IEL4002: Developing Children’s English Language in the Lower Primary
This course will enable teachers to relate theories about children and language to their current practice of teaching English in the lower primary. As well as learning about child development, teachers will deepen their understanding of social issues that affect children’s language development. Taking into account these theoretical perspectives, teachers will reflect on how to guide children’s language development through examining strategies for teaching reading, writing, and oral communication, such as reading schemes, phonics, and vocabulary. Teachers will learn about the stages of children’s reading and writing development through the study of various diagnostic, analytic assessment strategies. This will in turn enable them to refine their skills in customizing materials for individual children or specific groups. Techniques for selecting books and materials appropriate for teaching the different language skills at the different stages of children’s language development will be presented.
IME4002: Fostering Numeracy in Younger Learners
A main goal in primary school education is to develop numeracy among young children through meaningful activities that will enable them to use mathematics to make sense of the world. This course shows teachers how to develop engaging teaching and learning activities to foster numeracy among young learners. The course includes activities which incorporate the element of purposeful play, social interactions and whole child development weaved into Learning Experiences for the attainment of content objectives in the primary one and two mathematics curriculum.
IEC4034: Storying Learning Journeys in ADTEPSY
This capstone course is an opportunity for you to reflect on, evaluate and share the story of your ADTEPSY learning journeys. You will be required to demonstrate that you have synergised/made connections with the learning across the modules and your teaching, and to provide evidence/documentation of this synergy/connections.
“The stories we craft about our lives are just that-stories. We know that memories, especially memories of highly emotional events, cannot be assumed to be completely accurate recordings of what really happened. But the stories’ imperfections do not render them powerless when it comes to our well-being. Indeed, the stories we tell about our lives imbue our day-to-day existence with a sense of meaning and purpose. This is what I think about each person’s life story as ‘the most important fiction’. Conceiving of your story as one of the keys to a meaningful and happy life is a wonderfully empowering insight; for regardless of your life circumstances, the story you tell about your life is malleable and in your control”
Jonathan Adler (2011), in Leo Borman’s The World Book of Happiness, p.217
This course is only open to participants who have completed all the other 6 courses.