8 November 2022

We are so excited about our partnership with the ABC!

Marilyn and the PlayLab team are super excited about our partnership with the ABC’s Play School Story Time and ABC Kids Early Education. The team have been working with the ABC’s Early Childhood Education Producer, Laura Stone, behind the scenes to prepare some super innovative materials for educators and families.


Visit Play School Story Time to find out more!





Celebrating our successes

We congratulate Dr. Kulsum Chishti Yonzon and Dr. Xianyu Meng on their recent doctorate conferral.  

Kulsum’s research study focuses on infants-toddlers learning and development, specifically how Conceptual PlayWorld creates conditions for developing the imagination and science concept formation in the toddler age period. Her areas of focus include children’s learning and development in infancy and toddler age period, translating theory into practice to develop effective play pedagogy, educational psychology, STEM education, and providing mentorship and guidance to early childhood educators and teachers. Kulsum is an Early Childhood Teacher and hails from Nepal. She has experience working in the early childhood sector in Nepal and Australia.



Xianyu's thesis was entitled "A cultural-historical study of the development of emotion regulation of children in institutional care in China: A playworld approach". Her research focused on applying the playworld pedagogy to an institutional care setting in the Chinese context, in an attempt to support the children's emotion regulation. Her research found that playworlds, when implemented as part of the institutional practice, created new developmental possibilities for children in institutional care in China.  Before commencing her PhD journey, she worked as a Montessori early childhood teacher for five years, and as an educational consultant for a not-for-profit organisation specialising in the care of vulnerable children. 


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are an early childhood educator who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest and join our private Facebook group - Conceptual PlayWorlds for Educators. You can also access free resources for educators. 

If you are a parent who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest. You can also access free resources for families.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Other resources
Sign up to receive our newsletters
Posted by

1 August 2022

Conceptual PlayWorld PD highlights

In this post we present highlights from our latest Conceptual PlayWorlds PD. 


Conceptual PlayWorld PD highlights




In July 2022, the PlayLab team delivered four free weekly Zoom PD sessions to a group of 90 pre-service and in-service early childhood teachers studying postgraduate early childhood degrees at the Indonesia University of Education (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, UPI). The fourth session was opened by Professor Ahmad Bukhori, Director of International Affairs; Dr Nandang Budiman, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Education; and Dr Euis Kurniati, Head of the Master of Early Childhood program. UPI has an existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Monash University and thus PlayLab is pleased with this opportunity to support and strengthen our relationship with Indonesian academics and researchers in the early childhood field.

It was wonderful to see participants’ high levels of engagement with the program. They also worked together to investigate how Conceptual PlayWorld (CPW) can be adapted into the Indonesian context by using well-known local storybooks to teach STEM ideas to young children. For example, participants shared ideas on how CPW can be used to teach children about current environmental issues such as flooding, which is common in Indonesia.

According to Dr Kurniati, “CPW’s planning proforma is easy to understand and will be very helpful for our future teachers wherever they teach. Thank you to Professor Fleer, Dr Anne Suryani, Ms Oriana Ramunno, and Dr Taj Johora for organising these Zoom PD sessions for us. We look forward to further collaboration with PlayLab”.

The PlayLab team welcomes expressions of interest from early childhood educators and educational institutions around the world who would like to learn about, and implement, the CPW program in their practice. If you would like more information please contact Dr Anne Suryani at conceptualplaylab@monash.edu

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are an early childhood educator who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest and join our private Facebook group - Conceptual PlayWorlds for Educators. You can also access free resources for educators. 

If you are a parent who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest. You can also access free resources for families.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Other resources
Sign up to receive our newsletters

Posted by

24 June 2022

Welcome to an exciting opportunity to have your say about PLAY!




The Monash PlayLab and Early Childhood Australia (ECA) are working together to support the Year of Play. We want to hear your thoughts through a very short survey (approximately five minutes). The outcomes of the survey will contribute important insights into how the sector engages with play and provide guidance for the development of resources and activities as we celebrate the Year of Play.

 

There are no right or wrong answers. Your responses will be kept strictly confidential, and no individual or service/school will be identifiable. When you respond to the survey on play, and say what kind of service you are in, we will then give you the opportunity to receive a summary of the models of play which you can use to self-assess or use to support your program.

 

You will also have the option to sign up for free professional development through the Monash PlayLab or further connect to ECA’s Year of Play.

 

Please follow this link to participate in our survey: https://tinyurl.com/YearOfPlaySurvey 

 

We look forward to your responses!

 

Sincerely,

Laureate Prof. Marilyn Fleer, Dr Anne Suryani and Dr Kate Highfield

monash.edu/education/research/projects/conceptual-playlab


Join the conversation!

Join our early childhood educators FB private group facebook.com/groups/383942372405331

Posted by

17 March 2022

Join our public lecture: Concepts, Creativity and Collective Thinking of Infants, Toddlers and Pre-schoolers - STEM Findings from the PlayLab

Welcome to our first post for 2022!

STEM Findings from the PlayLab pubic lecture

Come along and hear about how infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers think, create and collectively innovate in STEM.

Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer and Dr Prabhat Rai will share an overview of what we have learned over three years:
  • snapshots of practices from the PlayLab researchers through video and photographic documentation
  • new findings about how infants and young children think with concepts
  • how to authentically create STEM problems in play
  • how conceptual thinking changes from infancy to school
  • new digital innovations and possibilities for imagining in STEM for playgroups, preschools, family homes and schools






Laureate Professor Marilyn and Doctor Prabhat will be joined by PhD graduate Doctor Kulsum Chishti Yonzon, and PhD candidate Sonya Nedovic.


This event will be a hybrid event, where attendees can join in person at Monash University's Clayton Campus or online.

Date: Thursday 17 March 2022
Time:  5.45pm – 8:00pm (AEDT, GMT+11)
To register for the event follow this link.

Event schedule
5:45pm
Arrival/registrations/exhibition for in person attendees
6:30pm
Panel presentation commences in room and online
7:45pm
Questions from audience
8pm
Event concludes

Our team keeps growing

We welcome Doctor Anne Suryani to our Conceptual PlayLab team as a Senior Research Fellow to lead Pillar 3 - Developing a national, evidence-based model for STEM teaching in the pre-school years! 



Anne holds a PhD in Educational Psychology with a Mollie Holman Medal for the best doctoral thesis in education from Monash University. Prior to this role this role, she worked as a research fellow at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne.

Anne has been working in a range of government-funded, consultancy and grant-based educational research in the Asia-Pacific Region, including Australia. She has strong quantitative skills and experience in large-scale survey design and analysis as well as longitudinal and comparative studies. Her research interests include teacher motivation, teacher education, teacher professional development, religious tolerance education, and educational policy.


We also welcome four new PhD students, Wenxuan Zhang, Hong Chen, Zixi Liang, and Roujia He.

Wenxuan's research interests focus on the early childhood mathematics education in China, with specific emphasis on applying cultural-historical perspectives to understanding play-based pedagogy in children’s mathematics development. She is enthusiastic about how early childhood teachers in China implement Mathematical Playworld as an innovative approach.




Hong has worked as an early childhood teacher and also a primary level language teacher in Melbourne. Having been working with children from early childhood settings and primary school settings, she is passionate about discovering the depth of transition in regards to play, professional development and community involvement. She is particularly interested in supporting children's transition from early childhood settings to primary schools in Australia through the implementation of Conceptual PlayWorld. We’re looking forward to seeing the results of her research on children's transition to schools.




Zixi holds a Master of Teaching and Graduate Certificate of Educational Research from Monash University. She is passionate about improving children's social-emotional development in vulnerable families. She is also interested in fathers' involvement, and how to design early intervention programs and implement effective practices to provide unique opportunities for non-resident fathers to contribute to children's social-emotional development. 




Roujia has worked as an early childhood educator and teacher in Melbourne and China. She is passionate about children’s cognitive development in a family environment. She is particularly interested in helping parents support children’s mathematical development in home sitting in China through the implementation of Conceptual Play World . We’re looking forward to seeing the results of her research on improving parenting skills through Conceptual Play World.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are an early childhood educator who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest and join our private Facebook group - Conceptual PlayWorlds for Educators. You can also access free resources for educators. 

If you are a parent who would like to have an opportunity to participate in the Conceptual PlayLab research activities in the future, you can register your interest. You can also access free resources for families.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Other resources
Sign up to receive our newsletters


Posted by
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)