Abstract:
Pre-recorded presentation link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pH4WGJnJioThere is urgent need to redress Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child health and development inequalities. Poor physical and socioemotional development are major contributors to the gaps that exist in health and education between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and non-Indigenous children. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child development is confounded by multiple factors, including underlying trauma from colonisation, dispossession and instability related to cultural and socioemotional learning during the first 2000 days. A growing body of evidence, not yet tested with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, shows that fundamental movement skills (FMS) combined with socioemotional learning (SEL) incorporated into the Move2Smile program, builds learning capabilities and improves child development outcomes, to better prepare children for a meaningful life. Our project highlights the importance of co-design with community before community-controlled implementation and evaluation with an example of how the Move2Smile with Culture program was co-conceptualised in partnership with the Yarrabah Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in Australia. Our new program, Move2 Smile with Culture will centre around a movement-based program embedded with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing which will promote the cultural reflections of the curriculum. We will outline how this program will be implemented in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the first 2000 days to build FMS and SEL and provide wide-reaching community benefits. This study explores the importance of embedding the Move2Smile program with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of learning through community co-design (Move2Smile with Culture). The Move2Smile with Culture program to be implemented within an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled early learning setting will assess the impact and feasibility using the ORBIT model. The key objective of this presentation is to explore co-designing the Move2Smile with Culture program through embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing using inclusive early learning practices.