ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on pedagogical approaches that are suitable for the early years of school. It looks at approaches considered age-appropriate by the Queensland Government Department of Education and Training (DET, 2019): inquiry learning; play-based learning; the project approach; explicit instruction; an event-based approach; direct teaching. Each of the approaches are discussed in terms of the strategies used and how the approaches connect to the age-appropriate pedagogies. By combining approaches educators can provide a range and balance of age-appropriate pedagogies where the learning is both teacher-initiated and child-initiated with planned as well as spontaneous opportunities. Further considerations in finding a balanced approach are: connected versus disconnected from the natural world; multicultural versus monocultural; and multilingual versus monolingual. These considerations provide a unique opportunity to embed Indigenous perspectives into early childhood education.
