Investigation of Early Childhood Education in Australia

This assignment investigates historical factors influencing early childhood education in Australia. It examines key issues such as family income, home life stability, childcare quality, and family background, highlighting their impact on children's learning. The paper also discusses the lack of funding, leading to underpaid staff and high teacher-child ratios, which demotivates educators and affects children's performance. Furthermore, the paper addresses ethical and legal issues, emphasizing the need for schools to provide equal treatment and adhere to regulations. The solution suggests involving parents in the education process through e-portfolios and access to resources to improve children's learning outcomes. The references cited include academic research on cultural-historical theories and language/literacy development in Australian Aboriginal children.

Investigation of a
Contentious Early
Childhood Issue

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Historical factors in early childhood education in Australia..................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................2

MAIN BODY
Historical factors in early childhood education in Australia
Early childhood education refers a branch of education theory which is all about teaching to
children from birth up to the age of the eight. It is known as crucial stage of education and for
implementing successful curriculum and making children able to learn it is important for staff
members to give rights to children’s parents in education and curriculum of children. It can help
both parents and teachers in promoting effective learning to their children Webb & Williams,
(2018). But making it successful and implementation is not an easy task there are several factors
which affect this early childhood education ethical, legal, unmotivated and underpaid staff,
historical factors, cultural influences and others. There are some historical factors which affect
early childhood learning or education in Australia such as: family income, stability of home life,
quality of child care and family background. There are some people who are educated but there
are many families whose income is not good so, they cannot afford early childhood education
and it affects learning of their children. Also due to ineffective educational background of
families they find problems in supporting teachers in increasing learning of their children.
Australia has invested in the regulation of care and education by introducing q2uality
assurance process. One of the main issues in this education is lack of funding as it is stated that
many staff are underpaid. It leads demonization among them and they do not focus on increasing
learning to children. So, poor ratio, high teacher child ratio is all main issues leads to de-
motivation and affect performance of children. The development of early childhood education in
Australia can be dated to the 1870s. It is also stated that working women are playing an
important role in development of early childhood education but still there is requirement of
making some innovation and new ideas in it for solving all issues like ethical, legal and others.
For example: It is important for schools to provide equal and fair treatment to all children as per
ethical consideration and when they discriminate their children then it is considered ethical
issuers. Legal issues occur when school d not follow all acts and rules which is being developed
for childhood education as they have to face problems and due to lack of health and safety and
other laws parents may file a lawsuit against them.
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For solving all these issues it is important to involve parents in this early childhood and
parents also require knowing staff, staff requires creating E-portfolio where parents of their child
can see progress whenever they want as it will be easier for them to make changes, focusing the
more and improving their learning accordingly Fleer & Veresov, (2018).
In addition, it is also important for all staff of early childhood education to provide access to
parents on resources and also make them available on private website for child’s progress.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Fleer, M., & Veresov, N. (2018). Cultural-historical and activity theories informing early
childhood education. In International handbook of early childhood education (pp. 47-
76). Springer, Dordrecht. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-024-0927-7_3)
Webb, G. L., & Williams, C. J. (2018). Factors affecting language and literacy development in
Australian Aboriginal children: Considering dialect, culture and health. Journal of Early
Childhood Research, 16(1), 104-116.
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1476718X17693417)
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