The Australian Council of Education Research (ACER) and the Department of Education are developing an intentional teaching professional learning program that will be released in mid-2025.
ACER will deliver 2 workshops based on this forthcoming professional learning program, focusing on how educational leaders can use the theory and research of intentional teaching and support their teaching teams to translate it into everyday teaching practice.
Workshop 1: Intentional Teaching in Early Childhood Education: Theory to Practice
Evidence suggests that intentional teaching is among the least understood pedagogies and is considered challenging to apply, despite the positive impact quality interactions between children, their peers, adults, and the environment has on learning and development.
This workshop will unpack the concept of intentional teaching, address common misconceptions, and explore its theoretical foundations. It will explore how intentional teaching complements and enriches play-based learning experiences and supports children’s holistic learning in line with the learning progressions.
Finally, the workshop will consider how teaching teams negotiate the integrated teaching approaches of child-led, adult-led, and guided play to facilitate rich, interactive learning experiences with and for children.
Workshop 2: Supporting Children’s Language and Literacy Development through Intentional Teaching
Language skills are a well-researched predictor of children’s future reading comprehension and plays an important role in children’s social and emotional development and self-regulation. Language also contributes to early mathematical development and scientific reasoning, since it enables children to represent and understand quantities and reason through problems.
This workshop will provide an evidence-based understanding of children’s early language development to support teaching teams to plan purposeful, play-based experiences to foster children’s literacy development, communication, emotional wellbeing, and learning across domains.
The workshop will highlight key concepts from the latest research on early language development, and show how teaching teams can frame day-to-day, play-based interactions as opportunities to intentionally foster children’s language growth.
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