The three Artifacts should show evidence of how the Teacher Candidate has met the Early Childhood Graduate Teacher Standards in practice and focus on:

Professional Knowledge

Graduate Teacher Standard 4: A sound knowledge of curriculum approaches, how children learn and how to teach them effectively.

Early childhood pedagogy's principles are the base of EYLF (Early Years Learning Framework) which was formed to provide guidance to the early childhood educators to teach the children in a way that they take interest in learning. The interest of children directly affects the quality of their learning. One of the most significant aspects which come into play in the assessment of children's learning quality is the pedagogy of educator. Therefore, there is a need on the part of childhood educators to carefully question and consider their pedagogy and corresponding practices. One of the most commonly used practices in the sector of early childhood is 'learning through play'. EYLF describes play-based learning as 'a context for learning through which children organize and make sense of their social worlds, as they actively engage with people, objects and representations'. But exactly is the definition of the word 'play'(Ball et al., 2008).

There is no universally agreed upon definition of 'play', we can describe it by describing some of the characteristics of play which are agreed upon.

Pleasurable—play is a pleasurable and an enjoyable activity. It sometimes includes fears, challenges and frustrations. But key feature is enjoyment.

Symbolic—it is often pretended, means play has a quality of 'what-if'. Play offers some meaning to the player which most of the time is not evident to the educator.

Active—play requires physical, mental or verbal action to engage with people, ideas, materials or the environment.

Voluntary—play is chosen freely.

Process oriented—It has means unto itself and children most of the time do not have a goal in sight while they are playing.

Self motivating—play is itself a reward for the player (Schoenfeld & Kilpatrick, 2008).

The impact of play-based learning

In my pre-school prac, I have learned that children tends to grasp ideas more effectively and easily and maintain their interest in learning when the educational curriculum help them connecting the world around them and their lives with their learning. In my pre-school prac, I came across a program that emphasized the interconnected learning which takes place when children are exposed to real-life activities and situations in classroom and at home. For instance, once children made a trip to the toys and gift store. The trip helped them to develop their literacy by reading labels and signs in the grocery store. They developed their numeracy skills when teacher told them about the prices of different toys and then asked them to pay the money by themselves. Children also developed social skills by listening to the ideas of the others, like some students who had been to that grocery store before were given a responsibility (in teacher's supervision) to lead the children by giving them directions what turn they have to take. The trip also gave children an opportunity to explore ...