Early Years Professional Development Centre

In an age of migration, global travel and instant communication anywhere in the world, people from diverse cultures are meeting and interacting with each other as never before. In such an age, understanding culture takes on new significance and  as an educator, you are expected to show leadership and model  practices that will help prepare all young children to participate in the society, now and in the future.

Communication is very likely both the most important and the most complex set of skills a child will ever develop. These skills develop naturally in the first three years of life, if the child has the neurological and physical capabilities and is developing in a language-rich environment. Many factors impact the development of communication and language. 

Agreeing on an understanding of quality is especially challenging for educators working with children and families with diverse cultural backgrounds. Because of their difficulty defining quality, most researchers decide to focus on characteristics or elements that distinguish high quality from low quality. In this module, you will look first at the context in which programming is being offered, and then focus on ten established professional benchmarks of quality in early care and education to determine whether they continue to signal high quality care in settings serving diverse populations.

In a world of increasing global migration, understanding the settlement process is of growing significance. Before exploring that process in more detail, it is important to set the stage for your exploration of settlement by becoming more familiar with the effects of migration in the community where you live and work and by understanding as much as possible about migration experiences within your own family.

While children’s play occurs universally, there are patterns and characteristics that vary among and within cultures. Professionals who work with multi-cultural families need to be aware of and able to engage in discussions that serve to increase mutual understanding. The objective of this learning module is to present different perceptions regarding play and development that are relevant to professionals who work in multicultural settings and create a dialogue about play as a universal and culturally-based activity