Tuesday 29th Oct
Today delegates from around Australia like little children followed Claire to St Pancras to catch the train to the English Midlands for our first stopover on tour.
After arriving in Corby, we got straight to work establishing an understanding around the variety of settings that we all work in across Australia- presenting our backgrounds and 'bag of challenges' within our site context. Claire led us through a course of discussion topics including a true model of Nature Pedagogy. Essentially, she is saying that within any diagram of nature pedagogy practice educators should be thinking intentionally about how children's learning pathways can be extended into all 3 environments ( inside the centre, outside and beyond). Plans derived from a child's interest should include a variety of learning experiences extending into all 3 areas. With this in mind we have been asked to consider the degree of flexibility within our settings that allows children to use all 3 spaces all day, whether resources are open ended to be used anywhere throughout these spaces and how much uninterrupted time is available for children to access the curriculum and pursue their wonderings all day. As educators we must think about whether we interact as provokers of learning where we introduce new possibilities all day, knowing when to step back ..... or do we merely 'supervise' and control children's learning pathways. Mmmmmm.
