School: Education

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

  • Unit Title

    Visual Arts and Music Education in Early Childhood
  • Unit Code

    AED6160
  • Year

    2025
  • Enrolment Period

    1
  • Version

    6
  • Credit Points

    15
  • Full Year Unit

    N
  • Mode of Delivery

    On Campus
    Online
  • Unit Coordinator

    Dr Amelia RUSCOE

Description

This unit offers opportunities for the advanced study of contemporary pedagogical design to support young children's learning through the Arts. An emphasis will be on visual arts and music from birth to eight years of age. The unit explores how visual arts and music uniquely transform children's understanding of themselves and their world as they experience it through their senses and express it multi-modally. Children's processes of creative production and aesthetic response will be reflected upon to ascertain appropriate approaches to teaching and learning that nurture and support the development of playful, creative and imaginative behaviours. Further, this unit examines contemporary teaching and assessment strategies, appropriate environments and how to select content in teaching visual art and music to young children.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

  1. Advocate the benefits of visual arts and music for young children’s holistic development.
  2. Analyse the impact of socio-cultural influences upon a child’s creative and aesthetic development, and ways of making meaning.
  3. Design and showcase a range of authentic teaching methods, and environments for supporting music and visual arts development and performance.
  4. Critically reflect upon and extend personal artistic and musical skills, processes and production through methods of inquiry.
  5. Evaluate responsive teaching methods, appropriate curriculum content and strategies that facilitate music and visual art learning and expression.

Unit Content

  1. Theoretical perspectives and beliefs about visual arts and music and how this influences teaching and learning in the early years context.
  2. Impact of music upon brain and body development during early life.
  3. Strategies to support the construction of meaning through the arts in the early years.
  4. Multi-modal expression through the use of authentic arts-based experiences.
  5. The contemporary context of early years arts education and the pedagogical approaches that influence holistic development.
  6. Planning respectful, playful arts-based experiences to promote creativity, innovation and imagination.
  7. The teacher's role in planning resourcefully and sustainably, and preparing a responsive, reciprocal learning environment and communicating arts based learning to other staff and families.
  8. Specialised strategies for planning, assessing and reflection using the Early Years Learning Framework, Western Australian Curriculum and Kindergarten Curriculum Guidelines.

Learning Experience

ON-CAMPUS

Students will attend on campus classes as well as engage in learning activities through ECU's LMS

JoondalupMount LawleySouth West (Bunbury)
Semester 110 x 3 hour seminarNot OfferedNot Offered

For more information see the Semester Timetable

ONLINE

Students will engage in learning experiences via ECU’s LMS as well as additional ECU learning technologies

Additional Learning Experience Information

A combination of lectures, workshops, guest speakers, videos, required readings and group and individually assigned work are used to achieve the unit outcomes. Students are required to become independent learners, who can adapt to the roles of practitioner or learner as they contribute to workshops as competent team members.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

ON CAMPUS
TypeDescriptionValue
Creative WorkArt education Visual Diary and Exhibition50%
PortfolioMusic Education Professional Portfolio50%
ONLINE
TypeDescriptionValue
Creative WorkArt education Visual Diary and Exhibition50%
PortfolioMusic Education Professional Portfolio50%

Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005)

For the purposes of considering a request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), inherent requirements for this subject are articulated in the Unit Description, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the support for students with disabilities or medical conditions can be found at the Access and Inclusion website.

Assessment

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. Informal vivas may be conducted as part of an assessment task, where staff require further information to confirm the learning outcomes have been met. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Academic Integrity

Integrity is a core value at Edith Cowan University, and it is expected that ECU students complete their assessment tasks honestly and with acknowledgement of other people's work as well as any generative artificial intelligence tools that may have been used. This means that assessment tasks must be completed individually (unless it is an authorised group assessment task) and any sources used must be referenced.

Breaches of academic integrity can include:

Plagiarism

Copying the words, ideas or creative works of other people or generative artificial intelligence tools, without referencing in accordance with stated University requirements. Students need to seek approval from the Unit Coordinator within the first week of study if they intend to use some of their previous work in an assessment task (self-plagiarism).

Unauthorised collaboration (collusion)

Working with other students and submitting the same or substantially similar work or portions of work when an individual submission was required. This includes students knowingly providing others with copies of their own work to use in the same or similar assessment task(s).

Contract cheating

Organising a friend, a family member, another student or an external person or organisation (e.g. through an online website) to complete or substantially edit or refine part or all of an assessment task(s) on their behalf.

Cheating in an exam

Using or having access to unauthorised materials in an exam or test.

Serious outcomes may be imposed if a student is found to have committed one of these breaches, up to and including expulsion from the University for repeated or serious acts.

ECU's policies and more information about academic integrity can be found on the student academic integrity website.

All commencing ECU students are required to complete the Academic Integrity Module.

Assessment Extension

In some circumstances, Students may apply to their Unit Coordinator to extend the due date of their Assessment Task(s) in accordance with ECU's Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000001386.

Special Consideration

Students may apply for Special Consideration in respect of a final unit grade, where their achievement was affected by Exceptional Circumstances as set out in the Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000003318.

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