Assignment 1. Abin Maharjan KU (MEd ECD) My Early Childhood Educator Essay Learning starts in infancy, long before formal education begins, and continues throughout life (Heckman & Schultz, 2007). With reference to the given quote, it would be quite just enough to highlight over education in the early age. Any individual with proper care and support from the young age has high chance of success in the later phase. Having importance in this crucial period, the various development projects have given priority over early childhood development. In this regard, the Millennium Development Goal, which primarily focuses on developing education has accepted that reaching towards global sustainable development goal consists on achieving a comprehensive development of early childhood (Londoño et al., 2019). Context Setting: As a grown up professional, when I observe back to my initial days as an ECD learner in the school, I feel that there were limited sources of guiding students. Facilitators mostly focused on memory of literacy and numeracy. We had some fun sessions related with fun making and games however, the priority was still on written exam. Which somehow limited my learning with in examination point of view only. During the early childhood years, particularly from birth to aged five, young children need exposure to literacy and numeracy in everyday life experiences (Resource and Development Unit, 2011). The primary component about literacy and numeracy was included in our learning but as learner I did not enjoy rather, I feared for making mistakes. In reviewing over these contexts, I feel my school environment was not child friendly. A school that provides a learning environment suitable to the children is a child-friendly school (Department of Education, 2010). As I my school was private and had to depend solely on students’ fee, the school management had pressure to show performance through term wise performance. At the same time, parents also assumed inscription of alphabets was an indicator of students’ learning. This is where, my learning rooted towards exam point of view and writing only. Primarily, the causes behind lack of parental awareness and incompetent teaching force back stepped my probability to blossom well. Child in the age of roughly 3-5 there is seen that intervention in combination with effective parenting increases interest in child with “ready to learn” attitude when they enter primary school (Dodge, 2007). ECD Facilitator through Current Perception Early Childhood Development period which covers age 0- 8, has primary founding role in preparing any qualified human force in the days ahead. There is no doubt, facilitator filling the role as ECD should hold attributes to fit in the position. As of the given standards in NAEYC, there are particularly 6 standards: 1) Promotes child development and learning, 2) Builds family and community relationship, 3) Observes, documents, assess to support young children and families, 4) Uses developmentally effective approaches to connect with children and families, 5) Uses content knowledge to build meaningful curriculum, and 6) Identifies with and acts as an early childhood professional. With prior reference to the given standards, when I peer over my ECD facilitator I assume that it was solely focused on memory part of learning only. Which is regarded as lower order things system in Blooms taxonomy. At the same time, the prior need of early childhood development has five major development phases: 1) Physical, 2) Emotional, 3) Social, 4 Linguistic and 5) Cognitive. With regard to these necessary components of ECD, I rarely experienced such strategic pedagogy that helped grow my learning and make my foundation for learning ahead. In gist, back then there was core space to: writing, memory and some fun activities. Whereas, the essentials like maintaining standards, development phases and curriculumbased learning was left apart. The influencing factors that contributed in slow progress include: lack of parental awareness, lack of updated facilitation skills among teachers and lack of child friendly environment in the schools. To conclude, as an ECD learner I feel that my learning was backed on poorly guided learning with low space to blossom my capacity and strengths. Reference: Department of Education. (2010). National Framework of Child-friendly School For Quality Education. Ministry of Education. Dodge, D. (2007). Human Capital, Early Childhood Development and Economic Growth. In Improtance of Early Childhood Development. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. Heckman, J. J., & Schultz, H. (2007). Invest in the Very Young. In Improtance of Early Childhood Development (2nd ed.). Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. Londoño, S. P. V., Soria, A. B. M. de, & Rivas, S. (2019). Early Childhood Development and Education: Theoretical Convergences and Divergences. Canadian Center of Science and Education, 12(7). https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v12n7p1 Resource and Development Unit. (2011). Early Literacy and Numeracy Self-Guided Learning Package. Community Child Care Victoria.
