7 March 2023

Are you an educator that strives to foster scientific curiosity?

Are you an educator that strives to foster scientific curiosity, develop mathematical logic and instil design and engineering thinking in our children?


The Conceptual PlayWorld model is a play-based model that can help you achieve those learning outcomes. It’s based on some of the world’s best research, and inspires young children to form concepts in STEM, especially girls.

If you, or someone you know, would like to learn how to construct a Conceptual PlayWorld for STEM in your setting - We are offering free VIP professional development programs.

Whether you’re an educator in Family Day Care, Preschool or School, we’re inviting you to join us!

We want to help you pioneer Conceptual PlayWorlds in your educational environment and there’s a number of ways you can participate.

Option 1

Marilyn and her team from the Conceptual PlayLab Monash University, run 2 hour workshops via Zoom. So wherever you are in Australia, or the world, you and a group of your peers can do this Professional Development together. 

Option 2

The second option is a self-paced PD. You do this on your own, working through a series of modules at a pace that suits you.

The modules are packed with videos, prompts, and resources to support the planning and building of your very own Conceptual PlayWorld.

Marilyn and the team make sure the Professional Development is catered specifically for you - the workshop is based on the stories you and your children love.

All you have to do is have a selection of your favourite books ready and you’re good to go

Click here to sign up for your personalised PD today!

The Conceptual Playworld - where imagination in STEM and imagination in play come together.


The Conceptual PlayLab celebrates!


Congratulations to our very own Senior Research Fellow, Dr Anne Suryani who was awarded an Advancing Women's Success Grant which supports the career progression of early to mid-career high potential academic women with primary carer responsibilities and assists the university in fostering talent and progressing gender equity in senior roles within the academy.


Anne was also awarded the DFAT AII Studies and Cultural Leadership Award which recognises excellence in study or research at any level and across any discipline, or in cultural education and outreach, which has contributed to an increased understanding of Indonesia among Australians.


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.

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24 January 2023

Are you looking for resources to kickstart 2023?

Are you looking for resources to kickstart 2023? Jump onto the ABC Kids page and download Conceptual PlayWorld starters for the stories read on Play School Story Time abc.net.au #STEM @MonashEducation 




View Play School Story Time on ABC iview

Latest papers


Our latest papers are available online.







Working papers from the Conceptual PlayLab publications page.



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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.

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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. 


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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.

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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

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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.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

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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

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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.



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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.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

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12 October 2021

Launching the PlayLab Podcast

The PlayLab Podcast

We're so excited that the PlayLab Podcast officially launched on October 4! The Podcast, hosted by Monash PlayLab Director Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer, shares the most up to date findings from our research and deep dives into the evidence-based model of Conceptual PlayWorlds for the intentional teaching of STEM concepts in the early years of childhood.  

In the first episode, we introduce listeners to the research of the Conceptual PlayLab and touch on the story of how it all began.  Each episode features a member of our team and an interview with Conceptual PlayWorld STEM champions who have personal experience with the model.  The episodes include:
  1. Welcome to the PlayLab Podcast
  2. Conceptual PlayWorlds for Families 
  3. The Educator’s perspective and opening opportunities for young girls in STEM
  4. Infants and toddlers, and how they experience STEM
The podcasts are designed in bite sized chunks you can listen to whilst commuting or going for a walk. To listen, please follow this link. 


National Science Week Public Event - Innovating in early childhood: STEM learning


To celebrate National Science Week in August, the Conceptual PlayLab's Marilyn Fleer, Prabhat Rai and PhD student Sharon McCormack showcased innovative digital tools to enhance meaningful sharing between children and their families and early childhood educators, which was live streamed on 17 August 2021.  Marilyn showcased research into family day care educators, Prabhat discussed digital innovations in family homes and Sharon shared her study design to reach families through the Facebook platform.  

The video has been viewed 1,086 times on YouTube. You can watch it here.




Celebrations

In our last update, we reported that Tanya Stephenson submitted her thesis for examination! Tanya is now officially Dr. Tanya Stephenson and she has joined the PlayLab as Postdoctoral Research Fellow!  Tanya is the first Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate scholarship holder to complete her PhD with the Conceptual PlayLab. She is passionate about advancing early childhood STEM education. Her doctoral research focused on early childhood teacher professional development, particularly teacher practices to encourage girls in STEM. Her research interests include early childhood education, STEM education, educational equity, curriculum and policy, educational psychology and teacher professional development.



Another student, Xianyu Meng, has submitted her thesis for examination!

Sharing our research

We are continuing to share our research and findings with educators, families, policy makers and fellow researchers.

ECA National Conference 2021 - Young Citizens: the right to play, learn and be heard

We were proud to be part of ECA National Conference 2021, which brought together 1500 professionals discussing key issues in early childhood education over three days 7-9 September 2021. 

Marilyn and Prabhat presented an overview of what we have learned from studying a broad range of Conceptual PlayWorlds in different early childhood settings. Over 500 people attended the presentation.
 
Marilyn also took part in the Play Statement, presenting on what we know about the research into play and was on the panel talking about children's rights.


Latest papers

We are excited to share our latest publication -  “You Can be Whatever You Want to be!”: Transforming Teacher Practices to Support Girls’ STEM Engagement.

Published in the Early Childhood Education Journal, this paper explores how the STEM education practices of early childhood teachers change and develop through the Conceptual PlayWorld model towards actively supporting girls’ STEM engagement. An important consideration that contributes towards increasing the number of girls and women in future STEM-related careers.

Read more here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10643-021-01262-6

You can also access our latest working papers from the Conceptual PlayLab publications page.



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See our newsletter for further details about our other activities.

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.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
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Sign up to receive our newsletters
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16 August 2021

Join our National Science Week Public Lecture on "Innovating in early childhood: using technology for equity and STEM learning"




During National Science Week, we will showcase innovative digital tools, alongside what we have learned about supporting STEM conversations with educators and families over the past year.  Come along to a public lecture to hear about our findings to date.

You will experience the following journey with a special focus on STEM PlayWorlds across different digital platforms:

Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer will share a snapshot of an exciting professional development model for family day care educators to help them bring STEM into the family home.


Dr. Prabhat Rai will showcase how to work remotely with families through innovative models of collaboration and engagement.



PhD student Sharon McCormack will highlight creative and imaginative ways that families and educators can use social media for STEM learning.



Date: Tuesday 17 August
Time:  6:30pm – 8:00pm
The event will be live streamed online, to register for the event follow this link.

Celebrations

We had many things to celebrate in the last few months:
- Tanya Stephenson submitted her thesis for examination!
- Xianyu achieved her Final review and Monique achieved her Confirmation review milestones in July
- Two of our PhD students, Yuwen and Yuejiu achieved their Progress review (mid-candidature) milestone in August, and 
- We welcome three new PhD students Oriana, Sonya, and Wenxuan to our Conceptual PlayLab team!


Celebrating our women in STEM: Dr. Rebecca Lewis, Dr. Ade Dwi Utami, and Dr. Fatema Taj Johora

Our PhD graduates are producing amazing research that we’d like to share with you:
 
Inclusive education: Participation of children with disabilities in Australian mainstream preschools. Click this link to know more about Dr Johora's work.
 
Why play matters? Changing teachers' play pedagogical practices to improve children's learning and development.  Work based in Indonesia. Dr Utami's fabulous research can be accessed from the following link.
 
The educator’s role in creating the conditions for children’s participation and concept formation using a teacher-researcher methodology: Implications for professional development. Dr Lewis's paper based on her doctoral research explains educator’s role in creating conditions for children’s concept learning, and can be accessed from here.

From left, Dr. Ade Dwi Utami, Dr. Fatema Taj Johora, Laureate Profession Marilyn Fleer, Dr. Rebecca Lewis



Sharing our research

We are continuing to share our research and findings with educators, families, policy makers and fellow researchers.

ISCAR 2020/2021
The International Society for Cultural-historical and Activity Research 2020 conference was scheduled to be held in July/August 2020 but had to be postponed due to the pandemic. The Conceptual PlayLab presented a number of papers, symposia, workshops and posters at the conference this year. We enjoyed the many rich, stimulating and inspiring discussions with scholars across the world. 

South Australian Association of Independent Schools
Marilyn delivered webinar for the educators through the network of South Australian Association of Independent Schools which introduced characteristics of Conceptual PlayWorlds and inspired participants to implement it in their educational settings. 

ASERA conference 2021
The Conceptual PlayLab’s team; Laureate Prof. Marilyn Fleer, Dr. Glykeria Fragkiadaki, Dr. Prabhat Rai and Ms. Tanya Stephenson presented a symposium titled “Programmatic research on STEM concept formation: Conceptual PlayWorlds as an educational experiment in early years” in ASERA’s 2021 conference.
 
Four interrelated papers were presented that showed results from educational experiments done by the team at Conceptual PlayLab in collaboration with educators, families and children. An intervention of a Conceptual PlayWorld was used for researching STEM concept formation and the motives of teachers, families, and early childhood children and girls.

TAFE staff in NSW
Dr. Rebecca Lewis introduced TAFE CEC staff to the Conceptual PlayWorld model, and the national programmatic study led by Prof. Marilyn Fleer.  


Latest papers
Our latest paper are available online.


You can also access our latest working papers from the Conceptual PlayLab publications page.



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See our newsletter for further details about our other activities.

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
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