Children

We believe that the major aspects of children’s lives intersect through strong connections and understandings, and these understandings are incorporated into planning for children’s learning, children are much more likely to succeed and have a strong sense of belonging.

We believe that developing a meaningful curriculum for children involves interactive decision making by children, parents and families, educators and the broader community with the aim of fostering children’s learning. 

We believe in providing an environment in which our children feel, safe, secure, encouraged, appreciated, accepted, challenged and stimulated through interactions with each other, educator and the experiences COSCARE provides.

We believe in using the Principles and Practices of the framework to encourage that:

• Children are capable and competent 

• Children actively construct their own learning

• Learning is dynamic, complex and holistic 

• Children have agency. They have capacities and rights to initiate and lead learning and be active participants and decision makers in matters affecting them.

 

Families

We believe that building genuine partnerships involve a commitment to respectful and reciprocal relationships and to supporting families as children’s first and most influential teachers.

We believe developing relationships and partnerships with all families, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, is an integral to ongoing, open and honest communication.

We believe in developing relationships and working in partnership requires understanding and respecting each family’s nature, culture and home language/s.

We believe it is equally important to listen to the understandings each family has for the belonging, being and becoming of their own children. A partnership with a family is about listening in order to:

• Understand family perspectives

• Support family aspirations

• Plan for equitable outcomes

 

Educators

We believe that each educator needs to understand their own pedagogy, where it comes from and how it affects each child. Our pedagogy is made up of principles and practices, influences by our knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes and perceptions.

We believe that our responsibility as early childhood educators working with and for Australia’s children is to understand our own principles and practices, understand the Principles and Practices of the Framework, and work hard to make sure our work practices and principles are consistent with the Framework.

We believe reflective practice can help educators to think more deeply about their work and motivate them to explore new ideas and approaches. We believe educators need to aim to embed inquiry into their everyday practices, which include:

• Holistic approaches

• Responsiveness to children

• Learning through play

• Intentional teaching

• Learning environments

• Cultural competence

• Continuity of learning and transitions

• Assessment of learning

We believe educators need to engage in professional growth to lead to thoughtful judgement and decision making for all children’s learning through:

• Belonging relating to connections and relationships with other educators and professionals from other disciplines, participation in professional organisations and networks, and community involvement.

• Being relating to the individuality of each early childhood educator and to the distinctiveness of each team of educators. Individuals and groups bring a unique collection of beliefs, values, interests, knowledge, experience and perspectives to planning, practice and relationships.

• Becoming relating to the importance of learning and reflecting in order to increase professional knowledge and improve skills and practices.

 

Community

We believe early childhood settings are potentially places and spaces for building social connections, positive relations and a feeling of belonging to the community and Croydon Public School.

We believe that building an understanding of children’s families and communities, spark the process of developing relationships and strengthen the connections between family, community and educational setting.

We believe when children experience connectiveness between their worlds, their opportunities to grow are unlimited. 

 

Curriculum/Documentation

COSCARE uses a framework of principles, practices and outcomes with which to build our curriculum.

We believe by collecting data, we identify what each child and group of children brings and use the information to plan and monitor learning experiences for children, using all three levels of outcomes so that each child is strong in belonging, being and becoming and each child expands their capacities within the five Learning Outcomes.

We believe that assessment for children’s learning refers to the process of gathering and analysing information as evidence about what children know, can do and understand. It is part of an ongoing cycle that includes planning, documenting and evaluating children’s learning.

We believe in providing structured and non-structured social environment for the children and educator to come together in a mixed, warm atmosphere, which enables them to develop strong relationships with each other.

We believe that all our curriculum decisions affect each child in some way. This is why it is important that the decisions made are understood on:

• Content for our curriculum-what to teach, planned experiences and learning

• Approaches for managing behaviour

• How we set up the environment

• What resources we choose

• Particular programs or methods

• Which teaching strategies to use

• How we will relate to people

• How we assess