Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Teaching
Course code: GD-ECTCH
January, April, October
AUD $36,000 (2026 indicative first year fee). Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) are not available
Access Melbourne is available
April, October
AUD $52,000 (2026 indicative first year fee)
IELTS 7.0: with no band less than 7.0
Course structure
Overview
In this course you will enhance your abilities to teach across the curriculum from birth through to eight years of age*. You will learn to create teaching and learning built on the image of the child as capable and contributing citizens. Central to this work is building relationships with children, families, communities, and the local place and environment.
With a focus on foregrounding Indigenous Worldviews and sustainability, you will learn to incorporate these ways of knowing, being, and doing into your daily teaching in respectful ways. You will be empowered to promote inclusivity and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, communities, organisations, and standpoints in early childhood education, and adopt a teaching style where children, families, and teachers are contributors to building sustainable communities.
*You will be qualified to teach children between birth and five years but will study learning and teaching for children aged birth up to eight years.
What you will learn
As a graduate of this course, you will:
- Be culturally and socially aware (in particular, have the ability to foreground Indigenous Worldviews and engage with sustainability within your teaching practice), and able to establish respectful and ethical relationships with students, staff, families, communities, and the broader school communities, learning ecologies and early childhood settings
- Embody the standards of the teaching profession and support the development of teaching as a profession
- Be a practitioner of teaching who views children as capable, using an inclusive, developmental and post-developmental, relational approach through complex learning and teaching strategies.
- Be creative, innovative, self-directed and life-long learners, with the ability to link theory and practice and respond to a changing educational landscape
Workload
You should allow an estimated 10.63 hours per week of study time throughout the eight-week term, equating to a time commitment of 85 hours.
Explore this course
The Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Teaching requires you to complete 100-credit points of study over one year full time, or 9 months accelerated study.
Students must complete:
- 7 compulsory subjects; and
- 60 days of professional practice, which is incorporated into the subject Professional Pedagogical Practices (P3).
The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework begins with the cultural knowledge story developed by Dr Sue Atkinson, a Yorta Yorta woman, and Annette Sax, a Taungurung woman, positioning Indigenous knowledges as first in understanding how to practice as early childhood teachers. Using the cultural knowledge articulated through the framework, teacher candidates will engage with the Learning and Development Outcomes, Practice Principles and Transitions as explained through the story descriptions inclusive of Indigenous Worldviews. This subject will focus on understanding the learner including:
- foregrounding the image of children, families, teachers, and communities as capable and contributing to learning and teaching,
- interrogating multiple theories and worldviews of child development,
- creating curriculum that builds relationships with children, families, environment, and local place, and
- utilising assessments to make visible teaching, learning, listening, care, relationships, and understandings.
This subject will include 60 days of professional placement:
- 10 days 0‐2 aged children setting
- 35 days in 3‐5 aged children setting
- 5 days in primary (Foundation 2) settings
- 10 days in a community setting (for example, multi‐age playgroup or after-school program).