Requirement of Early Childhood Educators

Critical reflection is an important requirement of early childhood educators.  Even though this is the last assessment task for this course you could start with this journal in the first week of the course and aim to make an entry at the end of each week.  In this reflective journal, you will reflect on pedagogical practices you have been studying that underpin learning for children.

Critical reflection is a common practice in early childhood profession to help educators improve, change or re-examine current practice, perspectives, thinking and skills. Critical reflection means regularly identifying and exploring our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences and then deciding about how they fit in with the ideas, concepts, and theories that you are aware of, learning more about what others have been discussing and sharing.

In this reflective journal, explore not only your own thoughts, events and experiences that have occurred, but also examine them from different perspectives and consider whether this might in fact change your approach or own perspective. You may find it helpful to use a reflective framework such as the ‘So What? Model or the DATA model outlined in the O’Connor and Diggins' readings. Meaningful reflection will allow for consistent evaluation of your actions and approaches to early learning and an early childhood educator role.

You will end up with more but for the final assessment submission choose, submit one of your journal entries (800 words) that best represent your reflective practice. 

A minimum of 3 scholarly references must be used to inform the Reflective Journal. References List is not counted in the word count.