If you are looking to upskill yourself for a career in early childhood education, then you should consider taking some best free online early childhood education courses.
There are lots of free courses available online for individuals to learn or venture into. Even teachers take online courses in order to advance their knowledge in their teaching careers.
Early childhood education courses focus on the courses that provide individuals with the advanced skills in child growth, development, learning, and strategies that are crucial to their success as daycare, preschool, and elementary teachers around the world.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLC), the employment rate of preschool teachers is projected to grow to 18% from 2020 to 2030 much faster than the average of all occupations. This implies that early childhood education is a growing field.
You may be wondering by now who exactly should take early childhood education or at what age range is one worthy to take up this education.
Now, These courses are specially designed for people who are willing to take up teaching jobs in preschool. If you are deeply interested in contributing to the developmental stages of a child’s life, are passionate about imparting knowledge, or are strongly invested in the growth of children in general, this is a call for you.
Apart from free online early childhood education courses, there are online continuing professional development (CPD) courses for teachers to enroll in to take their teaching practice to the next level. They also have training courses with certificates for teachers to enroll in.
To take a free online early childhood education course as a teacher you will be required to devote a specific duration of time and complete a given amount of coursework. Most courses are intensive, while the others are self-paced. Since we have explored what this online course is all about, let’s delve into the real matter.
Free Online Early Childhood Education Courses
In this section, I will be talking about free online early childhood education courses. Emphasis will be made on the online platform where these courses can be accessed. The courses are as follows;
- The Best Start in Life: Early Childhood Development for Sustainable Development
- Child Protection: Children’s Rights in Theory and Practice
- Early Childhood Development: Global Strategies for Implementation
- Understanding Child Development: From Synapse to Society
- Motivating Gen Z Learners: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know
- Early Childhood Development Course
- ContinueD
- Montessori Teaching – Fundamental Concepts & Principles
- Teaching ESL using Games and Activities
- Understanding Knowledge and Imagery in Cognitive Processing
- English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development
- Professional Development for Early Career Teachers
- Autism and Neurodiversity: Building Your Child’s Strengths
1. The Best Start in Life: Early Childhood Development for Sustainable Development
This free online early childhood education course is the first on our list. Through this course, you will explore how neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, and other studies have influenced our understanding of early childhood development. The course is for teachers, graduate students, healthcare professionals, and other practitioners interested in the societal and biological factors impacting the children they support.
Offered By – edX
Duration – 8 weeks ( 2 to 4 hours per week)
Language – English
Institution – SDGAcademyX
Instructor – Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, Aisha Yousafzai, Jack Shonkoff, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa
2. Child Protection: Children’s Rights in Theory and Practice
This second course on our list teaches how to protect children from violence, exploitation, and neglect through law, policy, and practice in a human rights framework. Just like in our world today, children are at a high risk of violence, abuse, exploitation, and neglect. But this course will teach you the causes and consequences of child protection failures.
You will consider the strategies, international laws, standards, and resources required to protect all children and will be able to link legal frameworks and child-rights approaches to the work of policymakers, lawyers, health workers, educators, law enforcement, and social workers.
Offered By – edX
Duration – 16 weeks (2 to 6 hours per week)
Language – English
Institution – HarvardX
Instructor – Jacqueline Bhabha (Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights)
3. Early Childhood Development: Global Strategies for Implementation
This is another interesting course on our list of free online early childhood education courses too. It aims to examine the best practices in child and family policies, advocacy, financing, and pathways to scale, learning how to generate innovative, scalable intervention strategies that support early childhood development.
How can we ensure that we don’t fail the next generation of children? What investments do we need to make an impact? What implementation decisions do we need to make for program success? These questions and many more would be answered through the course of the learning process.
Offered By – edX
Duration – 7 weeks (1-3 hours per week)
Language – English
Institution – HarvardX
Instructor -Aisha Yousafzai (Associate Professor • Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health)
4. Understanding Child Development: From Synapse to Society
In this course, you will learn how a child’s development is influenced by a number of factors at different levels. You will also come to understand that development can be studied at different levels of understanding from different angles and domains.
This course contains basically six modules which include;
- Introduction to dynamics of youth
- Brain and motor movement
- Cognitive development
- Communication
- Social-emotional development
- The big picture
Offered By – Coursera
Duration – 26 hours (3 weeks at 8 hours per week)
Language – English
Institution – Utrecht University
Instructor – Dr. Jorg Huijding
5. Motivating Gen Z Learners: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know
This is the fifth course on free online early childhood education courses. we will be talking about too. In this course, as a beginner, you do not need any previous experience before you can start. In this course, you will learn the key motivational concepts and the behaviorist approach to motivation, and explain how the motivation to learn is enhanced when the basic needs are fulfilled.
You will also come to terms with how our mindsets and attributions influence our motivation. You will also be able to relate the above concepts to self-regulated learning and also state the key motivational concepts and the behaviorist approach to motivation. You will also be privileged to gain some soft skills like; Motivation, education, learning styles, teaching philosophy, and positive education.
This course contains 4 modules which include;
Session 1 – Understanding what motivates behavior: Do punishments and rewards work?
Session 2 – Looking into the Needs of Learners: Needs-Based Theories of Motivation
Session 3 – Mindsets and Causal Attributions for Success and Failure
Session 4 – The Self-Regulated Learner
Offered By – Coursera
Duration – 8 hours (3 weeks at 2 hours per week)
Language – English
Institution – Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Instructors – Stefanie Chye, Yvonne Seng, Tan Chee Soon, Caroline Koh.
6. Early Childhood Development Course
This free online early childhood development course will help you learn the best ways to care for a child and unlock the skills and knowledge you need to promote early childhood learning and development. The overview of this course that would be treated covers the following; understanding childhood development milestones, gaining practical skills for handling and caring for a baby, stimulating development through various modalities, identifying and addressing challenges in child development, and developing a daily routine for happy, developing children. Unlike the other courses we have talked about, this course contains just 1 module and 8 topics which will be covered for a period of 4 weeks.
7. continueD
As part of this best free online early childhood education course, continue D course provides you with a seamless online learning experience. This online continuing education is one that fits your life. It is a convenient, affordable solution that fits your lifestyle and learning style. Continue D makes it easier than ever to find the online continuing education courses you need. You can sign up as an individual and get unlimited access.
When you join, you will get some massive benefits like 12 months of unlimited access to the course library for your professional area. During the course of the learning, you can learn in the comfort of your home, office, or in any multiple convenient format.
This course has been tested and trusted by thousands of professionals who believed that the course would continue to provide high-quality, engaging content developed and presented by leading experts. Your membership expires immediately 12 months after you have joined.
8. Montessori Teaching – Fundamental Concepts & Principles
This is another free online early childhood education course we will be discussing here. Courses in Montessori covers the fundamental concepts and historical context of early childhood education (ECE), Maria Montessori and her observations about the learning behaviors of children, and different established domains of Montessori. It also explains the role of the surroundings for environment-led learning. This course is an ideal match for beginners in the Montessori method.
Around the world today, teachers in Montessori are relatively high in demand because there aren’t enough professionals in that basic field. So, what this course also does is help you build your interest in Montessori teaching by helping to highlight the fundamental areas of Montessori teaching. So, if you are looking to make a career in teaching, this could be a great opportunity for you. you can get yourself enrolled.
9. Teaching ESL using Games and Activities
This is another special course in our list here, this course helps teachers around the globe to explore the English language. Hence, English can be considered to be a borrowed language for some countries today and they prefer to label it as a second language.
Therefore, this free online course is designed to help English Second Language (ESL) teachers around the world find more exciting and fun learning methods by engaging in interactive games and activities.
We know that this language barrier sometimes poses a threat to one’s ability to communicate and express themselves more efficiently. So, the essence of this course is to help you as a teacher keep your students or pupils engaged throughout the learning process. This course will cover 3 modules and 8 topics with a final assessment after which comes the course certification.
10. Understanding Knowledge and Imagery in Cognitive Processing
This free online course focuses basically on learning about Cognitive Processing and the concepts and procedures involved in Knowledge and Imagery. You would also be Learning about the definition of spatial cognition and the different approaches to categorization. Mental imagery, which refers to the ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli, will be discussed.
Learning this comprehensive course will help to boost your knowledge and imagery in cognitive processing skills. The course is being broken down into 3 modules and 15 topics which will last for 5 hours at most. All topics in all the modules must be completed before you can take your final assessment and get your certificate.
11. English in Early Childhood: Language Learning and Development
This course right here is another interesting course you really need to explore. This is a course that helps you discover how very young children learn English as an additional language and how you can help them progress. Teaching the English language to children while they are still learning their mother tongue can be a very tedious task to accomplish, but you would be glad you did after all.
In this course, you will come to understand how children learn best through play because play as we all know improves the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and young people. Through play, children learn about the world and themselves. They also learn skills they need for study, work, and relationships such as confidence.
You will be interested in this course if you are: a parent of young children who wishes to support their child learning an additional language; an English teacher or an early childhood practitioner; or someone who is interested in the area of child development and language acquisition. Also, note that English has to be your first language as this is one of the other requirements for this course.
Duration – 6 weeks
Weekly study – 2 hours
12. Professional Development for Early Career Teachers
If you are a teacher or an intending teacher, then you have to stay glued to this information I am about to pass. When you enroll in this professional development for early career teachers course, it will help you discover how to develop and improve your teaching abilities as you begin your career as a teacher.
This course right here would help you discover expressways on how to juggle your teaching career with other workloads. Through this course, you would explore your professional development needs, behavior management strategies, pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning, ways to prioritize your workload, and more.
During the process of learning in this course, you will meet other learners, share your ideas, and join in active discussions in the comment sessions. This course is primarily for teachers starting out in their careers but will be of use to teachers at any stage of their careers. You will come to learn and interact with professionals like Miriam Jones, Dave Jones, and Martin Smith who are all experienced in this teaching area.
Note; It is 5 weeks long with 3 hours weekly commitment
13. Autism and Neurodiversity: Building Your Child’s Strengths
This is the last on our list of free online early childhood education courses. Autism and Neurodiversity: Building Your Child’s Strength. This course would help you to recognize some behavioral concerns, understand the diagnosis process, create a plan, build on strengths, and successfully advocate for your child.
This course has been created for some families who may have noticed early signs of this autism syndrome in their young ones. This is a 6-week course that requires 1-2 hours of weekly commitment. It is also self-paced allowing you to complete it at your own pace.
Conclusion
Having known or discovered so many of these courses, you can now decide which best suits you. These courses are vast and can deepen your knowledge in any field you try to venture into.