Pre-service teachers visit GOMA to learn more about early learning environments

First-year pre-service teachers from the University of Queensland (UQ) recently visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) to learn how to foster early learning environments that engage young children and develop their professional practice.

The students spent time examining and exploring the Gallery’s ‘Superpowered’ exhibit, which uses art to empower Aboriginal people and create cultural and social learning spaces for all children. 

Visiting the museum as part of the Early Years Curriculum and Pedagogical Foundations (EDUC1760) course, the pre-service teachers were encouraged to use the excursion to consider how they can enhance the learning environments they create for children in order to provoke curiosity and lifelong learning.

Course coordinator Melinda Pratt was pleased to see students become inspired and curious by the immersive experience, explaining that the course has been designed with creativity and curiosity at its core to help grow the preservice teachers’ 21st Century competencies.

“The early years of life are a time of extraordinary and pivotal growth and development,” she said.

“Children are introduced to learning experiences that engage them as active social citizens, researchers, and in conversation with the world. If provided with quality learning environments and relational approaches to teaching and learning, young people have the unique opportunity to grow and flourish as active learners.”

The course combines active, socially constructed experiences with digital real-world simulations and AI tools like ChatGPT, RiPPLE and DALL-E 2.  

“Designing learning environments is a highly creative process in which social, cultural and political conditions are experienced,” Mrs Pratt said.

“It’s not just a transmission of knowledge, but a unique opportunity to build young children’s conversation with our changing world.” 

“Equipping young children as competent, active, change makers by bringing the relational connectivity between teacher, child and the environment for authentic learning is key.”

To learn more about the University’s education degrees, see here. 

Source: https://hass.uq.edu.au/article/2023/03/investing-our-future-through-early-years-education