By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE and Cindy Green, BSc, RECE. We have written about our long-standing relationship in previous posts and how we connected when we were working at the same community college, teaching early childhood education, many moons ago! We became critical friends, before we knew the term. In our context, we were pedagogical … Continue reading
Filed under Emergent Curriculum …
Child-Initiated Play and Learning: Teacher-Framed Documentation and Reflection
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. When I began the journey to learn and understand emergent curriculum, I would not have believed that 20 years later, I would still be reflecting and wondering. Now, I know that I can never arrive at a place where I can say that I know everything that there is to … Continue reading
Early Childhood Education Rocks
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. The end of the year is a time to think back and reflect. Rather than considering just 2018 I decided to go way back to a time when I discovered emergent curriculum. It was twenty years ago that my quest for an alternative to themes lead to the discovery of a … Continue reading
From Across the Pond: What Early Childhood Educators Can Learn
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. When I began this blog six years ago, I had just started on a journey of professional learning through social media. Prior to 2012 I was not engaged on any platforms. Now I manage three Facebook pages, Technology Rich Inquiry Based Research, Resources to Support Early Childhood Development and York Region Nature … Continue reading
Themes in Early Childhood Education: Will They Ever End?
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. It was about fifteen years ago that I embarked on a journey to research, write and defend a doctoral dissertation on emergent curriculum. I wanted to write about a topic that reflected my practice as an early childhood educator and focused on an unresolved problem. I graduated with an early … Continue reading
Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education: The Art of Teaching and Learning
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE and Cindy Green, RECE. I (Diane) don’t remember when I first heard the word pedagogy but if memory serves me well, I started to really think about the term when I began to study the Reggio Emilia Approach to early learning in the late nineties. I kept coming across the term … Continue reading
Relationships at the Heart of Pedagogy
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. Pedagogy is defined as the method and practice of teaching. For early childhood educators it is about the understanding of how learning takes place and pedagogical approaches employed to support learning. It is different than curriculum which is the content of the learning (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014). An emergent … Continue reading
Stop Saying “Cute”: An Early Childhood Education Rant
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. and Gill Robertson, ECE. This post is the first of what I hope will be a series of co-authored blogs. This post is a rant and was inspired by words that rankle and undermine the view of ourselves as professionals and children as competent. “Cute” is one of those words. … Continue reading
Learning in and with Nature: The Pedagogy of Place
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. The joy of discovery can span over time. As a child, I loved finding hidden treasures in my explorations in nature. As an adult, I have retained this compulsion to search for nature’s bounty and my favourite place to do it, is on the beach. It might be a rock that’s shaped … Continue reading
The Importance of Art to the Development of the Whole Child
By: Diane Kashin, Ed.D, RECE. In my last post I discussed the importance of dramatic play and why it should not be taken for granted. Art like dramatic play is an essential experience for children but it is one that is often hijacked by adults and turned into a product-oriented, adult-directed craft. When I visit programs … Continue reading