Have you ever read your centre’s philosophy?
Did you know your child care centre has one? Every childcare centre has to have one. It’s a document that describes a centre’s approach to educating and caring for your child. In my experience, most parents never read the centre’s philosophy, those who do, are left with more questions than answers. More often than not, these philosophies contain lots of technical terms related to the approaches a given centre takes. This looks great when assessment and rating comes around but a lot of educators don’t know what half of this stuff means and are far more concerned with sending your child home safely. How our governing body, ACECQA, thinks parents with limited time digests the childcare lingo is anyones guess. So what do these terms actually mean.
Well Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Reggio Emilia are some of many early childhood theorists sited by childcare centres in their philosophies. Each has a differing opinion on how a given area of early childhood development happens. Is the science interesting? Sure if your into that but no one, early childhood theorist is totally correct. Sometimes, children should be left to well, children, we all know the saying’, let kids be kids. That very much applies here. Most centres will use terms like ‘child directed play’ and site literature like poems or personal experiences as inspiration for there practices. Unless you have the time to do the background reading its essentially meaningless, if it ever had any real meaning to begin with.
Room staff are expected to wright out a personal philosophy too. In some centres I’ve worked in, all staff have a statement reflective of there personal practice displayed in the centre. I’ve seen personal philosophies follow a differing approach to that of the centre mine does. But it’s the way in which I practice and that’s perfectly ok if very confusing. Basically your reading a statement of intended practice both centre wide and on an educator by educator basis. My philosophy is my educational biography, the centres could be anyones. In some larger companies the centre’s philosophy is written and updated by someone in head office who has a limited idea about what’s actually happening on the floor.
Look sometimes, the approaches as stated do work their way into our programming or operating practices. More commonly, educators are far more concerned about ensuring the children’s physical needs are met and they don’t leave our care in an ambulance. These philosophies are statements of intent although they don’t always reflect reality, all children are going to conform to a mixture of all the above anyway even if it’s not whatever listed. I’m not saying that these philosophies are complete and utter rubbish put the point is mute if parents don’t know what they are or understand what they mean. It’s another one of those things that we have to have, legally, that don’t make much sense in the way their used.
My point is that these documents as ‘statements of intended practice’ are essentially useless unless parents can understand them without getting a qualification in childcare. The children don’t care how I’m going to educate them just that I’m doing so in a way that makes them feel safe and valued. If your going to spend the time reading anything. Start with the room lead’s personal philosophy. Maybe ask them to clarify any and all unfamiliar terms, the rest is even less important to the education of your child. None of it is important to the care of your child and again what really matters here?