Languages of Children

This unit focuses on the many languages of children including artistic modes of expression, asking students to reconsider taken for granted responses to languages, literacies and materials.

Drawing on philosophical understandings of expression including ‘the hundred languages of children’ articulated in the Reggio Emilia approach, this unit examines meaning-making through languages and literacies including the languages of music, movement, drama, visual arts, storytelling, technology, and interactions with materials. Students will engage with Place from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and with these multiple languages in order to develop an understanding of how children, including EAL learners, communicate in many different ways and how these languages can inspire rich multi-disciplinary, multi-literate and multi-modal learning experiences and channels for children to express ideas.

Underpinning this unit is the recognition that our interactions and relationships with each other and the material and immaterial world are complex social acts and that meaning-making occurs through languages and literacies experiences that hold purpose in rich, thoughtful environments and which include critical and multi-literacy experiences.
Students will use a range of arts and other languages to understand themselves as early childhood teachers, and how children engage with the world through a variety of languages. Students will also reflect how to understand these languages in planning, initiating new ideas, and making decisions regarding construction of curriculum for young children.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Articulate and explore the many and varied languages of human expression through personal, social and philosophical perspectives;
2. Contextualise language, communication the arts and collaboration as complex social acts of early childhood education;
3. Adapt the many languages of expression to create learning environments that support children's play exploration and communication, showing an ability to support EAL learners and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives;
4. Substantiate connections between Place-based and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, Indigenous modes of expression, and languages, literacies and the Arts.