Creative encounters with the arts and languages

This unit will explore children’s creativity through the lens of language, literacy and the arts (e.g. through combining art, music, dance, drama, storytelling, media arts and maker/design).  It focuses on practices, learning theories, and pedagogical innovations for early childhood education with an emphasis on making, responding and communicating through arts and text, while simultaneously advancing contemporary strategies for expressing and interpreting through multimodal communications tied to cultural experiences. Through online learning opportunities and at home projects, you will explore arts and language practices, processes, media and content knowledge. In turn you will create a portfolio of arts and experiences with various community-based literacies that are analysed through theoretical and pedagogical insights appropriate to early childhood contexts. Adopting the role of creative and multimodal early childhood teachers, you will develop the skills and confidence to plan, implement and evaluate experiences for young children that are informed by early childhood curricula. In the process you will explore how children make meaning through learning in, about and through the arts, language and literacy.  You will explore how the arts and language in early childhood connect to home, community, regional and inter/cultural awareness while exploring how the arts and language enable children to communicate in multiple ways that link to sustainability, inclusivity, contemporary society and varied cultural perspectives (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Asia and Pacific perspectives). Digital media will be used as a creative and communicative tool.  This unit explores UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals while also exploring the decolonisation of western approaches to the arts and literacy.