FREE Online Webinar: How everyday interactions with young children enhance their development & create a strong foundation for the future

Calling all Early Childhood Professionals - this one's for you!

Join us for a special online webinar in celebration of National Playgroup Week 2025!

In this insightful session, Professor Susan Hespos from MARCS BabyLab will explore how everyday interactions with young children are crucial for enhancing their development and laying a strong foundation for the future.  Whether you're an educator, caregiver, or early childhood professional, this webinar will provide valuable insights into the power of play and interaction in the early years. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to deepen your understanding and strengthen your practice!

Webinar details

• Wednesday 19 March
• 12.30pm to 1.30pm
• Online via Microsoft Teams Webinar
• For: Educators, Professionals, as well as Parents, Caregivers, Grandparents
• FREE
• This event will be recorded
• Slides will be shared after the event

About Professor Susan Hespos

Developmental psychologist Professor Hespos is on a mission to show that babies think before they speak. She runs BabyLab, the foremost infant research laboratory in Australia that conducts research with infants and children focusing on language acquisition, cognitive development and learning. Historically, it was thought that infants are born with a relatively blank slate and knowledge is constructed through interactions between the infant and the environment. In this approach, the task for the young infant is to construct reality by gaining experience. But Professor Hespos champions a different position in her work, called core knowledge. The key tenet of this approach is that underneath all the things that vary across humans, there exists a set of perceptual and conceptual capacities that are common.

About MARCS BabyLab

MARCS BabyLab is a non-profit Western Sydney University research centre for pure and applied research focusing on language acquisition, cognitive development and learning.

BabyLab team up with little humans to try and answer big questions about what goes on inside the mind of babies and young children. Researchers design simple but intentional experiments on speech perception, conceptual change, and guided play. These studies allow us to learn more about the way humans acquire language and think about the world.

More information: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/babylab

Proudly Hosted by Playgroup NSW CEO Emily Caska