top of page

VEYLDF: A Guide to the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework

Writer: OWNAOWNA

The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) is a learning framework for children's learning and development from birth to 8yrs old.


Similar to the EYLF, it is guided by principles - that the framework calls practice principles - and learning outcomes.


VEYLDF Practice Principles

VEYLDF Practice Principles


The practice principles under the VEYLDF are based on contemporary international evidence about supporting children's learning and development.

They help to promote personal and collective acknowledgement of each child's identity, culture and spirit, as well as supporting professionals to act in the best interests of the child. They also guide early childhood professionals as they respond sensitively and positively to each child.


Reflective practice

Reflection is a core part of an educator's work, maintaining a culture of learning and continuous improvement in an early learning setting.


The Early Years Planning Cycle outlines the process of questioning, analysing, acting and reflecting on evidence educators have collected. This process:

  • Strengthens the decisions they make about what is important to children, families and communities

  • Increases educators' awareness of bias and inequities, and supports them to uphold the rights of all children to become successful learners

  • May validate existing practices or challenge and drive improvements to less effective practices

  • Helps individuals and teams identify 'next steps' in improvement

  • Improves other context by identifying, transferring or extending positive aspects of practice and skills


Reflective practice occurs when educators:

  • Gather information, including the views and perspectives of each child, and use it to inform, review and enrich decision-making

  • Draw on expertise beyond the team to gain clear and shared understandings and to inform new directions

  • Reflect with children and families as collaborators to create more inclusive environments to advance each child's learning and development

  • Collaborate with professionals in other disciplines to provide, receive and consider multiple perspectives, encouraging every person's contribution

  • Use sound evidence to inform planning for children's progress in learning and development

  • Apply evidence-based practices to advance children's learning and development

  • Embrace professional learning and skill development that aligns with priorities for setting, service or network improvement

  • Review and evaluate to inform ongoing improvement

  • Challenge and change some practices to incorporate new understandings into practice


Partnerships with families


Families are the primary influence on a child's learning and development, and have valuable information on their child's strengths, abilities, interests and challenges.


Building relationships with families requires educators to persist in establishing and strengthening partnerships with family members. Just like each family, each partnerships is unique, and educators should work in partnership with all families to build links between home and early childhood settings. The helps to provide greater consistency and complementarity for the child.


To build effective partnerships with families, educators should:

  • Show respect in their relationships with families, adopting an open, non-judgemental and honest approach that is responsive to a family's situation

  • Understand that consensus with families is not always possible or desirable

  • Create a welcoming and inclusive environment where all families are encouraged to participate in and contribute to experiences that enhance children's learning and development

  • Listen to each family's understanding, priorities and perspectives about their child with genuine interest to inform shared decision-making and promote each child's learning and development

  • Actively engage families and children in planning for ongoing learning and development in the service, at home and in the local community

  • Establish partnerships where information sharing supports families' confidence, identifies what families do well, and recognises the family's critical importance in their child's life


High expectations for every child


High expectations are linked to children's agency and sense of capability. From educators and/or families, high expectations means being open to possibilities about children's capabilities and avoiding being locked in to ideas about what children are capable of at a certain age or stage.


The expectation of success is a powerful motivator for children, promoting resilience, regulating behaviour, and establishing goals. Building on children's strengths and having high expectations for success can help educators reach a unity of purpose around the child and family.


To achieve this, educators should:

  • Commit to having high expectations for every child's learning and development

  • Show sensitivity to the messages they convey about the child's and family's unique abilities

  • Notice and actively avoid the negative effects of low expectations, prejudice and low levels of attention to any child's learning and development

  • Value children's strengths and differences and communicate high expectations to them

  • Ensure that every child experiences success and is motivated to accept new challenges through which to learn and grow

  • Recognise that every child learns from birth, but some children require different opportunities, spaces and specific supports, in order to learn effectively and thrive

  • Work with all families, in particular those experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage, to promote the importance of having high expectations for their children

  • Expect and ensure that children express their views and contribute to decisions that affect them, including children who are not able to communicate with words.


Respectful relationships and responsive engagement


Warm and respectful relationships with familiar adults build and strengthen secure attachments that are fundamental to a child's learning and development. These relationships nurture, regulate and provide protective factors to support children's wellbeing, resilience and learning capabilities.


Protective factors help children to feel safe and confident enough to try new things and learn new skills and concepts.


Educators can build respectful relationships and responsive engagement by:

  • Demonstrate sensitivity and initiate warm, trusting and reciprocal relationships with children and their families

  • Support families' choices and decision making ensure that children experience safe and stimulating learning environments

  • Help children to establish secure attachments and develop self-regulation

  • Develop learning programs that are responsive to each child and build on their culture, strengths, interests and knowledge

  • Support sustained shared thinking

  • Listen to, hear and take into account the views and feelings of each child

  • Recognise when a child learns something significant and apply this knowledge to strengthen learning relationships

  • Recognise and deepen their understandings about other people and how values and beliefs influence their own world view

  • Demonstrate respect for and understanding of the views of other professionals and families when communicating and interacting across cultures


Equity and diversity


All children have the capacity to succeed, regardless of their circumstances and abilities. They feel welcome and learn well when educators respect and acknowledge their unique identity.


When children experience acknowledgement of and respect for diversity, their sense of identity becomes stronger.


To achieve this, educators should:

  • Promote cultural awareness in all children, including greater understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and being

  • Nurture children's evolving capacity to learn from birth, regardless of circumstance or ability

  • Support all children to develop a sense of place, identity and a connection to the land and the natural world

  • Engage in sustained shared conversations with children to explore equity and diversity, to promote each child's sense of identity

  • Ensure that the interests, abilities and culture of every child and their family are understood and valued

  • Ensure that all children have equitable access to resources and opportunities to demonstrate their learning

  • Maximise opportunities for all children to do well and learn from others, including opportunities to experience diversity and difference in ways that nurture positive attitudes, and care and respect for others

  • Identify and implement the type and level of support or intervention that is required to demonstrate and improve children's learning and development

  • Recognise multilingualism as an asset and support children to maintain their first language, learn English as an additional language, and learn languages other than English

  • Are committed to equity and avoid practices that directly or indirectly contribute to gender inequality, prejudice and discrimination.


Assessment for learning and development


Assessment of children's knowledge, understandings, skills and capabilities is essential for planning and promoting learning and development. It is designed to discover what children know, understand and can do.


All children benefit when assessment reflects a whole-child approach that includes health and wellbeing, reveals strengths, and shows what might next be learnt.


Educators should assess children in ways that:

  • Are authentic and responsive to how all children can best demonstrate their learning and development

  • Are receptive to and include children's views of their own learning

  • Include information from a wide range of sources to help them assess and plan effectively

  • Reveal each child's specific strengths and capabilities and any gaps in achievement that may benefit from additional early intervention

  • Include the perspectives, knowledge, experiences and expectations of families

  • Provide families with information and ideas to support the child's learning at home and in other services

  • Value the culturally specific knowledge about children and their identity, wellbeing, learning and development that is embedded in their communities

  • Are transparent, giving all adults close to the child access to best 'next steps' in promoting a child's learning and development.


Integrated teaching and learning approaches


Integrated teaching and learning approaches involve adults drawing on and moving between 3 approaches in an interweaving way:

  • Adult-led learning: when adults introduce an experience or idea, and direct the learning, giving instructions, setting rules, asking questions and providing structure.

  • Children-directed play and learning: when children lead learning through exploring, imagining, experimenting, investigating and being creative in way that they control.

  • Guide play and learning: when aduilts and involved in children's play and learning, following their interests and responding to spontaneous learning opportunities.


Educators use integrated teaching and learning approaches to:

  • Encourage all children from birth to explore, solve problems, communicate, think, create and construct ideas and understandings

  • Create environments that provide children with socially mediated learning opportunities with a range of adults and peers

  • Promote each child's capacity for establishing friendships and encourage children to learn from and with each other

  • Share strategies with families and other adults to support learning in the home and other settings

  • Make decisions about what concepts to introduce to children and when, what is important for them to know and understand, and how to go about building on children's existing knowledge

  • Use intentional teaching strategies that are always purposeful and may be pre-planned or spontaneous, to support achievement of well considered and identified goals

  • Reflect carefully on whether, when and how to intervene in children's learning, making purposeful and deliberate choices about when to observe rather than participate

  • Teach children explicit subject matter (e.g. mathematical, literary, musical, scientific, artistic) and associated skills to deepen and extend their knowledge, understanding and values

  • Create physical and social environments that expose children to learning experiences and physical activity, both indoors and outdoors in the natural world.


Partnerships with professionals


Early childhood professionals have diverse disciplinary background, training and experience. Effective partnerships with other professionals require leadership, common goals and communication across disciplines and roles to build a sense of shared endeavour.


By developing and refining their expertise, respecting colleagues, caring for the wellbeing of themselves and others, and drawing on expertise of peers, professionals can work in partnership to improve the quality of children's learning experiences and advance learning and development.


Educators work in partnership to:

  • Research, share information and plan together to ensure holistic approaches to children's learning and development

  • Respect each others' practice, skills and expertise collate and use the evidence of children's prior and current learning and development to build continuity in learning and development

  • Continue to learn and deepen their expertise in order to best support children's learning and development

  • Acknowledge the significance of transitions in early childhood services and schools, and work in partnership to ensure that families and children have an active role in transition processes

  • Work to improve the continuity of practice between settings, including the daily transitions for children and their families

  • Foster engagement in early years learning communities, where individuals mentor, coach and learn from each other

  • Develop and promote collaborative partnerships in early years networks

  • Provide accountable leadership for learning and development outcomes and support research-based practice in learning networks.



VEYLDF Learning and Development Outcomes

VEYLDF Learning and Development Outcomes


The VEYLDF identifies 5 outcomes for all Victorian children from birth to 8yrs old.


IDENTITY: Children have a strong sense of identity

The 4 elements of this learning and development outcome are:


Children feel safe, supported and secure

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • build secure attachment with one and then more familiar educators

  • use effective routines to help make predicted transitions smoothly

  • sense and respond to a feeling of belonging

  • communicate their needs for comfort and assistance

  • establish and maintain respectful, trusting relationships with other children and educators

  • openly express their feelings and ideas in their interactions with others

  • respond to ideas and suggestions from others

  • initiate interactions and conversations with trusted educators

  • confidently explore and engage with social and physical environments through relationships and play

  • initiate and join in play

  • explore aspects of identity through role-play


Children develop their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience and sense of agency

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • demonstrate increasing awareness of the needs and rights of others

  • are open to new challenges and make new discoveries

  • increasingly cooperate and work collaboratively with others

  • take considered risks in their decision-making and cope with the unexpected

  • recognise their individual achievements and the achievements of others

  • demonstrate an increasing capacity for self-regulation

  • approach new safe situations with confidence

  • begin to initiate negotiating and sharing behaviours

  • persist when faced with challenges and when first attempts are not successful.


Children develop knowledgeable and confident self-identities

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • feel recognised and respected for who they are

  • explore different identities and points of view in dramatic play

  • share aspects of their culture with other children and educators

  • use their home language to construct meaning

  • develop strong foundations in both the culture and language/s of their family and the broader community without compromising their cultural identities

  • develop their social and cultural heritage through engagement with Elders and community members

  • reach out and communicate for comfort, assistance and companionship

  • celebrate and share their contributions and achievements with others.


Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • show interest in other children and being part of a group

  • engage in and contribute to shared play experiences

  • express a wide range of emotions, thoughts and views constructively

  • empathise with and express concern for others

  • display awareness of and respect for others' perspectives

  • reflect on their actions and consider consequences for others.


Community: Children are connected with and contribute to their world

The 4 elements of this learning and development outcome are:


Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active civic participation

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • begin to recognise that they have a right to belong to many communities

  • cooperate with others and negotiate roles and relationships in play episodes and group experiences

  • take action to assist other children to participate in social groups

  • broaden their understanding of the world in which they live

  • express an opinion in matters that affect them

  • build on their own social experiences to explore other ways of being

  • participate in reciprocal relationships

  • gradually learn to 'read' the behaviours of others and respond appropriately

  • understand different ways of contributing through play and projects

  • demonstrate a sense of belonging and comfort in their environments

  • are playful and respond positively to others, reaching out for company and friendship

  • contribute to democratic decision-making about matters that affect them.


Children respond to diversity with respect

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • begin to show concern for others

  • explore the diversity of culture, heritage, background and tradition and that diversity presents opportunities for choices and new understandings

  • become aware of connections, similarities and differences between people

  • listen to others' ideas and respect different ways of being and doing

  • practise inclusive ways of achieving coexistence

  • notice and react in positive ways to similarities and differences among people.

Children become aware of fairness

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • discover and explore some connections amongst people

  • become aware of ways in which people are included or excluded from physical and social environments

  • develop the ability to recognise unfairness and bias and the capacity to act with compassion and kindness

  • are empowered to make choices and problem-solve to meet their needs in particular contexts

  • begin to think critically about fair and unfair behaviour

  • begin to understand and evaluate ways in which texts construct identities and create stereotypes.


Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • use play to investigate, project and explore new ideas

  • participate with others to solve problems and contribute to group outcomes

  • demonstrate an increasing knowledge of and respect for natural and constructed environments

  • explore, infer, predict and hypothesise in order to develop an increased understanding of the interdependence between land, people, plants and animals

  • show growing appreciation and care for natural and constructed environments

  • explore relationships with other living and non-living things and observe, notice and respond to change

  • develop an awareness of the impact of human activity on environments and the interdependence of living things.


Wellbeing: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing

The 2 elements of this learning and development outcome are:


Children become strong in their social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • demonstrate trust and confidence

  • remain accessible to others at times of distress, confusion and frustration

  • share humour, happiness and satisfaction

  • seek out and accept new challenges, make new discoveries, and celebrate their own efforts and achievements and those of others

  • increasingly cooperate and work collaboratively with others

  • enjoy moments of solitude

  • recognise their individual achievements

  • make choices, accept challenges, take considered risks, manage change and cope with frustrations and the unexpected

  • show an increasing capacity to understand, self-regulate and manage their emotions in ways that reflect the feelings and needs of others

  • experience and share personal successes in learning and initiate opportunities for new learning in their home languages or Standard Australian English

  • acknowledge and accept affirmation

  • assert their capabilities and independence while demonstrating increasing awareness of the needs and rights of others

  • recognise the contributions they make to shared projects and experiences.


Children take increasing responsibility for their own health and physical wellbeing

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • recognise and communicate their bodily needs (for example thirst, hunger, rest, comfort, physical activity)

  • are happy, healthy, safe and are connected to others

  • engage in increasingly complex sensory-motor skills and movement patterns

  • combine gross and fine motor movement and balance to achieve increasingly complex patterns of activity, including dance, creative movement and drama

  • use their sensory capabilities and dispositions with increasing integration, skill and purpose to explore and respond to their world

  • demonstrate spatial awareness and orient themselves, moving around and through their environments confidently and safely

  • manipulate equipment and manage tools with increasing competence and skill

  • respond through movement to traditional and contemporary music, dance and storytelling of their own and others' cultures

  • show an increasing awareness of healthy lifestyles and good nutrition

  • show increasing independence and competence in personal hygiene, care and safety for themselves and others

  • show enthusiasm for participating in physical play and negotiate play spaces to ensure the safety and wellbeing of themselves and others.


Learning: Children are confident and involved learners

The 4 elements of this learning and development outcome are:


Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • express wonder and interest in their environments

  • are curious and enthusiastic participants in their learning

  • use play to investigate, imagine and explore ideas

  • follow and extend their own interests with enthusiasm, energy and concentration

  • initiate and contribute to play experiences emerging from their own ideas

  • participate in a variety of rich and meaningful inquiry-based experiences

  • persevere and experience the satisfaction of achievement

  • persist even when they find a task difficult.


Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • apply a wide variety of thinking strategies to engage with situations and solve problems, and adapt these strategies to new situations

  • create and use representation to organise, record and communicate mathematical ideas and concepts

  • make predictions and generalisations about their daily activities, aspects of the natural world and environments, using patterns they generate or identify, and communicate these using mathematical language and symbols

  • explore their environment

  • manipulate objects and experiment with cause and effect, trial and error, and motion

  • contribute constructively to mathematical discussions and arguments

  • use reflective thinking to consider why things happen and what can be learnt from these experiences.


Children transfer and adapt what they have learnt from one context to another

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • engage with and co-construct learning

  • develop an ability to mirror, repeat and practise the actions of others, either immediately or later

  • make connections between experiences, concepts and processes

  • use the processes of play, reflection and investigation to problem-solve

  • apply generalisations from one situation to another

  • try out strategies that were effective to solve problems in one situation in a new context

  • transfer knowledge from one setting to another.


Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • engage in learning relationships

  • use their senses to explore natural and built environments

  • experience the benefits and pleasures of shared learning exploration

  • explore the purpose and function of a range of tools, media, sounds and graphics

  • manipulate resources to investigate, take apart, assemble, invent and construct

  • experiment with different technologies

  • use information and communications technologies (ICT) to investigate and problem-solve

  • explore ideas and theories using imagination, creativity and play

  • use feedback from themselves and others to revise and build on an idea.


Communication: Children are effective communicators

The 5 elements of this learning and development outcome are:


Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • engage in enjoyable reciprocal interactions using verbal and non-verbal language

  • respond verbally and non-verbally to what they see, hear, touch, feel and taste

  • use language and representations from play, music and art to share and project meaning

  • contribute their ideas and experiences in play and small and large group discussion

  • attend and give cultural cues that they are listening to and understanding what is said to them

  • are independent communicators who initiate Standard Australian English and home language conversations, and demonstrate the ability to meet the listener's needs

  • interact with others to explore ideas and concepts, clarify and challenge thinking, negotiate and share new understandings

  • convey and construct messages with purpose and confidence, building on literacies of home and/or family and the broader community

  • exchange ideas, feelings and understandings using language and representations in play

  • demonstrate an increasing understanding of measurement and number using vocabulary to describe size, length, volume, capacity and names of numbers

  • express ideas and feelings and understand and respect the perspectives of others

  • use language to communicate thinking about quantities to describe attributes of objects and collections, and to explain mathematical ideas

  • show increasing knowledge, understanding and skill in conveying meaning.


Children engage with a range of texts and get meaning from these texts

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • listen and respond to sounds and patterns in speech, stories and rhymes in context

  • view and listen to printed, visual and multimedia texts and respond with relevant gestures, actions, comments and/or questions

  • sing chant rhymes, jingles and songs

  • take on roles of literacy and numeracy users in their play

  • begin to understand key literacy and numeracy concepts and processes, such as the sounds of language, letter–sound relationships, concepts of print and the ways that texts are structured

  • explore texts from a range of different perspectives and begin to analyse the meanings

  • actively use, engage with and share the enjoyment of language and texts in a range of ways

  • recognise and engage with written and oral culturally constructed texts.


Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • use language and engage in symbolic play to imagine and create roles, scripts and ideas

  • share the stories and symbols of their own cultures and re-enact well-known stories

  • use the creative arts, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, drama, dance, movement, music and story-telling, to express ideas and make meaning

  • experiment with ways of expressing ideas and meaning using a range of media

  • begin to use images and approximations of letters and words to convey meaning.


Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • use symbols in play to represent and make meaning

  • begin to make connections between, and see patterns in, their feelings, ideas, words and actions, and those of others

  • notice and predict the patterns of regular routines and the passing of time

  • develop an understanding that symbols are a powerful means of communication and that ideas, thoughts and concepts can be represented through them

  • begin to be aware of the relationships between oral, written and visual representations

  • begin to recognise patterns and relationships and the connections between them

  • begin to sort, categorise, order and compare collections and events and attributes of objects and materials in their social and natural worlds

  • listen and respond to sounds and patterns in speech, stories and rhyme

  • draw on memory of a sequence to complete a task

  • draw on their experiences in constructing meaning using symbols.


Children use information and communication technologies to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking

This is evident, for example, when children:

  • identify the uses of technologies in everyday life and use real or imaginary technologies as props in their play

  • use information and communication technologies to access images and information, explore diverse perspectives and make sense of their world

  • use information and communications technologies as tools for designing, drawing, editing, reflecting and composing

  • engage with technology for fun and to make meaning.


 
 
 

Comments


bottom of page