EUB173 Professional Experience: The First 1000 Days

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2025, Online

Overview

A child’s learning journey begins from birth. Biological, psychosocial, emotional and ecological factors work in a dynamic fashion, shaping young minds and bodies. The period up until age 3 is one of the most important stages for cognitive, neurological and social emotional development and wellbeing, which all support successful learning. Early childhood educators play a vital role in nurturing positive learning experiences for young children. This unit will develop your theoretical knowledge, and understanding of key cognitive, developmental, ecological and well-being factors to enhance early childhood education and care from birth to 3 years.

You will participate in 15 days of professional experience. Learning in this unit will be related to preparing for and reflecting on the time you will spend in a Birth to 3 years setting. This professional experience may be undertaken in your place of employment, subject to criteria.

This is a designated unit which is essential to your course progression. Designated units include professional experience units, units requiring the development of particular skills, and units requiring demonstration of certain personal qualities. If you fail to achieve a satisfactory level of performance in a designated unit, you may be excluded from enrolment or will be put on academic probation. If you fail a designated unit twice within your course, you may be excluded. Supplementary assessment is not available on designated units.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. Explain key developmental theories and contextual factors that shape childhood development, learning and wellbeing from birth to 3 years.
2. Critically reflect on professional conversations with colleagues and parents/carers about early childhood learning, development and wellbeing.
3. Create educational resources appropriate for parents/carers that support children’s optimal development.
4. Seek and apply constructive feedback from supervisors, teachers and peers to improve teaching practices.
5. Demonstrate planning, teaching, management of safe and supportive learning environments, assessing and recording learning, and professional conduct during professional experience.

Content

Learning Approaches

In this unit, you will learn by engaging in active and reflective learning. Learning activities are designed to draw upon your professional experience and prior learning.

A range of teaching and learning experiences will be used including:

• professional readings
• video and/or audio recordings
• online interactives and activities. 

Professional experience will involve 15 days of supervised teaching practice, formal observations and integration with kindergartens.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

Feedback in this unit is provided to you in the following ways:

• feedback from peers in group discussions
• unit coordinator and tutor comments to the cohort
• supervising teacher
• formative assessment tasks, and
• summative assessment tasks.

Assessment

Overview

This unit has two assessment tasks:
1. Digital Learning Resource and Reflective Analysis - draws on your learning about child development to create a digital learning resource for families and reflect for improvement and future use.
2. Professional experience report - This will require you to connect the learning from this unit and your course about the first 1000 days to professional experience.

You must receive a passing grade (Satisfactory) on each assessment task to successfully pass this unit. Since this is a Professional Experience unit, special conditions of assessment apply to the first assessment task in the unit— Digital Learning Resource and Reflective Analysis. A resubmission of the assessment task within 72 hours of the release of results for that task may be permitted if your assessment mark falls within a 10% margin of insufficiency.. It is your responsibility as a student to resubmit your complete assignment should your unsatisfactory attempt fall within this margin of insufficiency and notify your Unit Coordinator via email of your submission. 

Unit Grading Scheme

S (Satisfactory) / U (Unsatisfactory)

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Digital Learning Resource and Reflective Analysis

You will develop an educational multimedia resource for parents/carers about supporting optimal development of children Birth-3 years. Your resource must cover topics covered in this unit. In your professional placement setting, share your resource with educators and parents/carers. Reflect on the conversations, how this impacts on your understanding of the topic and how you would adjust the resource for future use.

This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.

Threshold Assessment:

You must achieve a passing grade (satisfactory) on each individual assessment task to successfully pass this unit. Resubmission of Assessment Task 2 may be permitted. See 'Assessment Overview' above.

Assessment: Professional Experience

Threshold Assessment:

You must achieve a passing grade (satisfactory) on each individual assessment task to successfully pass this unit. If this task is unsatisfactory, it cannot be resubmitted.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is a commitment to undertaking academic work and assessment in a manner that is ethical, fair, honest, respectful and accountable.

The Academic Integrity Policy sets out the range of conduct that can be a failure to maintain the standards of academic integrity. This includes, cheating in exams, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion and contract cheating. It also includes providing fraudulent or altered documentation in support of an academic concession application, for example an assignment extension or a deferred exam.

You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.

Breaching QUT’s Academic Integrity Policy or engaging in conduct that may defeat or compromise the purpose of assessment can lead to a finding of student misconduct (Code of Conduct – Student) and result in the imposition of penalties under the Management of Student Misconduct Policy, ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Requirements to Study

Requirements

Meet, and show evidence of, the public health or employment vaccination mandates/requirements of your state jurisdiction. 

Blue Card

A blue card is required to complete this unit. A blue card confirms that you have passed a screening of your criminal history (the Working with Children Check) and have been approved to work with children and young people. For more information on the blue card and how to apply please visit the QUT website.

Costs

Risk Assessment Statement

There are no out-of-the-ordinary risks associated with the general conduct of this unit. Workplace health and safety protocols in relation to computer use will apply.

Managing the risk associated with your work integrated learning placement is bound in an agreement with the systemic employment bodies and individual sites where necessary. The Workplace Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) places duties of care on everyone to ensure the health and safety of themselves and others in the workplace.

Students should be aware of and comply with the QUT work integrated learning policy.

Course Learning Outcomes

ED34 Bachelor of Early Childhood Education (Birth to Five)

1. Knowledgeable: Integrate theory, curriculum and context to plan, implement and evaluate learning and teaching.
   Relates to: ULO1, ULO5, Digital Learning Resource and Reflective Analysis, Professional Experience
2. Collaborative: Collaborate with children, families, colleagues, wider communities and other professionals to promote child learning development and wellbeing outcomes
   Relates to: ULO4, Professional Experience
3. Reflective: Critically reflect on practice to engage in continuous quality improvement in early childhood contexts.
   Relates to: ULO2, Digital Learning Resource and Reflective Analysis
4. Professional: Apply policy, legislative requirements, codes of conduct and ethical principles to early childhood practice.
   Relates to: ULO5, Professional Experience
5. Communicative: Articulate early childhood teaching philosophies, pedagogies and practices to a variety of audiences.
   Relates to: ULO3, Digital Learning Resource and Reflective Analysis