When you think about using ChatGPT in Early Childhood Education and Care, what comes to mind?

Experience ideas? Learning stories? Program ideas? Maybe help wording an observation?

These can be useful and we do have an article to help you with that.

But that barely scratches the surface of how an AI tool such as ChatGPT can support educators, Educational Leaders, Nominated Supervisors and service leaders.

Some of the hardest parts of working in Early Childhood Education and Care aren't necessarily the tasks that require another template or activity idea.

They're the moments where you need to think.

Why are we doing this?

Is there a risk we haven't considered?

How do I help an educator improve their practice without simply telling them what to do?

How do we get families more involved?

What does this theorist actually mean for what happens in our room?

How can we critically reflect on a practice that has been in place for years?

Used appropriately, ChatGPT can become a useful tool for prompting these conversations, challenging thinking, explaining unfamiliar concepts and helping you approach everyday problems from another perspective.

Below are 75 prompts designed to do exactly that.

Before You Start: Use AI Responsibly

ChatGPT should support professional thinking — not replace it.

Do not enter children's names, family information, medical details, incident information, staff information or other identifying or confidential information into ChatGPT.

When asking about the National Quality Framework, National Quality Standard, legislation, regulations, health, safety or compliance requirements, always check information against the current authoritative source.

Most importantly, don't let AI make professional decisions for you.

A useful rule is:

Use ChatGPT to help you ask better questions, not to remove the need to think.

1. Strengthening Supervision

Supervision can become familiar very quickly. Educators know their environments, routines and usual positioning — but familiarity can also make it harder to notice emerging risks or assumptions.

Use these prompts to look at supervision with fresh eyes.

Prompt 1 – Find our supervision blind spots

"Act as a critical friend reviewing supervision practice in an Early Childhood Education and Care service. I will describe an area of our environment, where educators usually position themselves, the ages of the children and how children move through the space. Ask me questions one at a time to identify possible supervision blind spots, higher-risk times and assumptions we may be making. Don't create a supervision plan for me; help me critically examine our existing practice."

Prompt 2 – Review a transition

"Help me critically review supervision during this transition: [describe transition]. Ask me about educator positioning, communication between educators, movement of children, head counts, environmental risks, children who may require additional support and what happens if the normal routine is interrupted. Finish with five areas our team should discuss."

Prompt 3 – Challenge our usual practice

"We currently manage supervision during [routine/situation] like this: [describe de-identified practice]. Give me 10 challenging questions that could help our team determine whether our current approach is still effective."

Prompt 4 – Create a team supervision discussion

"Create a realistic Early Childhood Education and Care supervision scenario where several things happen at once and educators need to make decisions about positioning and attention. Give us five questions to discuss as a team. Don't give us suggested responses until after we've completed the discussion."

Prompt 5 – Look for patterns

"I am going to provide de-identified information about several incidents, near misses or supervision concerns. Help me identify recurring circumstances, locations, routines or times that may warrant further investigation. Don't assume that a pattern proves a cause. Instead, give me questions our team should investigate."

2. Health, Safety and Risk Thinking

Quality Area 2 isn't simply about having policies and completing checklists. Children's health and safety depends on practices being understood, implemented and continually reviewed.

Prompt 1 – What have we normalised?

"Help our team examine [routine/environment/practice] from a health and safety perspective. Ask us questions designed to identify risks we may have stopped noticing because we encounter them every day."

Prompt 2 – Think beyond the obvious risk

"The potential hazard is [describe hazard without identifying children]. Help me consider the situation from multiple perspectives including likelihood, possible consequences, children's ages and capabilities, environment, supervision, routines and reasonably foreseeable changes. Don't complete the risk assessment for me."

Prompt 3 – Turn an incident into learning

"Create a set of reflective questions our team can use after a de-identified incident or near miss. Focus on what contributed to the situation, systems, environment, communication, supervision and what could reduce the likelihood of recurrence. Avoid questions that focus on blaming an individual."

Include your reflections in your Incident Response Record Book.

Prompt 4 – Test our emergency thinking

"Create a realistic unexpected scenario that could occur in an Early Childhood Education and Care service relating to [emergency type]. Don't tell us what to do. Instead, progressively reveal complications and ask our team what we would do next so we can test our understanding of our procedures."

Prompt 5 – Children's perspective on safety

"Help me review [routine/environment] from a child's perspective. Give me questions that explore whether children understand expectations, can seek help, feel safe raising concerns and are supported to develop appropriate independence while remaining protected from harm."

3. Becoming a Stronger Educational Leader

Educational leadership isn't about having all the answers. Strong Educational Leaders build educator capability, encourage reflection and support educators to develop their own professional thinking.

Prompt 1 – Coach instead of tell

"An educator I support is finding [describe professional challenge] difficult. Instead of telling me what they should do, give me five coaching questions I could ask to help them reflect and develop their own response."

Prompt 2 – Plan a short professional conversation

"Help me plan a 10-minute professional discussion with educators about [topic]. Give me an opening scenario, three questions that progressively deepen the discussion and one final question that challenges an assumption we might hold."

Record what comes of the conversation in your Educational Leader Diary.

Prompt 3 – Help an educator go deeper

"An educator can describe what children did but finds it difficult to explain the learning or pedagogical reasoning behind their decisions. Give me questions I could use as an Educational Leader to support them to develop this skill without doing the thinking for them."

Prompt 4 – Reflect on my leadership

"Ask me 10 questions to critically reflect on my effectiveness as an Educational Leader. Include how visible and accessible I am, how I mentor educators, whether I challenge practice respectfully, how I support different levels of experience and whether professional discussions actually result in changes to practice."

Prompt 5 – Build a professional learning focus

"Our team is currently finding [area] challenging. Help me turn this broad issue into a professional learning focus. Ask me questions first about what we're observing, what educators already know and what improvement would actually look like before suggesting possible next steps."

4. Building Educator Capability

Professional development doesn't only happen at conferences. Some of the most valuable learning can occur through conversations, mentoring, reflection and everyday practice.

Prompt 1 – Turn an issue into professional learning

"We've noticed [de-identified practice issue]. Help me identify what knowledge, skill or understanding might sit underneath this issue and suggest questions I can use to determine what professional learning may be useful."

Prompt 2 – Create a micro-learning discussion

"Create a 10-minute team learning activity about [topic]. Include a short scenario, one key concept, three discussion questions and a final question asking educators how this applies to their own practice."

Prompt 3 – Develop professional goals

"Ask me questions about my current role, strengths, areas I find challenging and professional interests. Based on my answers, help me turn one area into a meaningful professional development goal rather than a generic goal."

Prompt 4 – Differentiate professional support

"I have educators with very different experience levels. Help me think about how I could explore the same topic — [topic] — with a new educator, an experienced educator and an educator ready for a leadership challenge."

Prompt 5 – Follow up professional development

"Our team recently completed professional development about [topic]. Give me five questions we can revisit one month later to determine whether the learning has influenced actual practice."

Record your actions in your Professional Development Log.

5. Understanding Theorists and Pedagogy

Knowing the names Piaget, Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner or Bowlby is different from understanding how theoretical perspectives influence everyday decisions.

Prompt 1 – Make a theory practical

"Explain [theorist/theory] using a realistic example involving a fictional child in an Australian Early Childhood Education and Care setting. Then show me how this theory could influence an educator's interpretation of what they observe."

Prompt 2 – Compare perspectives

"Compare how three different theoretical perspectives might interpret this situation: [scenario]. Explain how each perspective might lead an educator to notice something different. Don't tell me which perspective is correct."

Prompt 3 – Bronfenbrenner in real life

"Explain Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory using one fictional child attending an Early Childhood Education and Care service. Show how different influences surrounding the child could affect their experiences and then give me three questions to apply this thinking to practice."

Prompt 4 – Challenge my theoretical knowledge

"Quiz me on [theory/theorist] using Early Childhood Education and Care scenarios rather than definition questions. Give me one scenario at a time and ask me to explain how the theory could help interpret it."

Prompt 5 – Find the theory already in our practice

"I'll describe an everyday practice at our service. Help me identify theoretical perspectives that could help us understand why we use this approach. Explain the possible connections without claiming that our practice is automatically evidence of a particular theory."

And capture reflections in your Programming and Reflection Diary.

6. Having Difficult Professional Conversations

Leadership sometimes means addressing practice that isn't meeting expectations. Preparing your thinking beforehand can make these conversations clearer and more constructive.

Prompt 1 – Prepare for the conversation

"I need to have a professional conversation about [issue]. Help me separate observable facts from assumptions or interpretations before I plan the discussion."

Prompt 2 – Practise possible responses

"Role-play an educator who is resistant to feedback about [practice issue]. Give me one realistic response at a time and allow me to practise responding as their leader. After each response I give, provide feedback on whether I remained clear, respectful and focused on practice."

Prompt 3 – Keep the conversation focused

"Give me questions I can use during a difficult professional conversation to keep the discussion focused on children's outcomes, professional responsibilities and improving practice rather than personality."

Prompt 4 – Examine my own assumptions

"Before I address [issue] with an educator, ask me questions that challenge whether I could be making assumptions about their intentions, knowledge, confidence or reasons for their practice."

Prompt 5 – Plan the follow-up

"Help me develop questions for a follow-up conversation after an educator has agreed to work on [area]. Focus on what has changed, what remains difficult, what support they need and what evidence might demonstrate progress."

Record your meeting in your Meeting's Log.

7. Challenging 'We've Always Done It This Way'

Some practices exist because they work. Others exist simply because nobody has questioned them recently.

Prompt 1 – Challenge a routine

"We have always done [routine/practice] this way: [description]. Ask me 10 critical reflection questions that challenge why we do it, who benefits, who may be disadvantaged and whether it remains consistent with our current philosophy and understanding of quality practice."

Prompt 2 – Find the hidden rule

"Help me identify unwritten adult-created rules within [routine/environment]. Ask questions about what children are and aren't allowed to do, why those expectations exist and whether each restriction is necessary."

Prompt 3 – Look from different perspectives

"Help us examine [practice] from the perspective of a child, family member, educator, new staff member and service leader. What might each person notice or question?"

Prompt 4 – What would happen if we stopped?

"Our service routinely does [practice]. Ask us questions about what might happen if we stopped doing it tomorrow. Help us identify its actual purpose rather than assuming it is necessary."

Prompt 5 – Does this match our philosophy?

"I'll provide a section of our service philosophy and describe a current practice. Help me develop questions our team can use to explore whether the practice genuinely reflects the philosophy."

Consider practice reflections like these and reflect as a team in your Children's Centre Diary.

8. Strengthening Critical Reflection

Critical reflection goes beyond recording what worked and what didn't. It involves examining assumptions, perspectives, knowledge and the reasons behind practice.

Prompt 1 – Take my reflection deeper

"Here is my de-identified reflection: [reflection]. Don't rewrite it. Instead, ask me five questions that would help me think more deeply about why this happened, whose perspectives I considered, what assumptions may have influenced me and what I might investigate next."

Prompt 2 – Challenge an assumption

"Our team believes [belief about practice]. Act as a critical friend and give us questions that challenge this belief without assuming it is right or wrong."

Prompt 3 – Add missing perspectives

"We are reflecting on [issue]. Give us different perspectives we could consider, including children, families, educators, community, culture, inclusion, research and theory where relevant."

Prompt 4 – Move from reflection to change

"We have reflected on [issue] and identified [finding]. Ask us questions that help determine whether anything should change in our practice and how we could tell whether that change made a difference."

Prompt 5 – Create a team reflection provocation

"Create one challenging critical reflection question about [topic] suitable for an educator team meeting. It should not have an obvious correct answer. Then provide five follow-up questions I can use if the discussion stalls."

Record your reflections in your Butler Diaries and log books.

9. Connecting With Families Meaningfully

Family engagement is more than sending information home. Meaningful partnerships require communication to move both ways.

Prompt 1 – Audit our communication

"Help me review the ways our service communicates with families. Ask me questions to identify which methods mainly send information to families and which genuinely invite families to contribute, influence decisions or share their knowledge."

Prompt 2 – Improve a family question

"We currently ask families: '[question]'. Help me turn this into a more open and inviting question that may generate meaningful information rather than a yes/no response."

Prompt 3 – Reach families who rarely respond

"Give me reflective questions to explore why some families may rarely engage with our current communication methods. Consider accessibility, language, time, culture, confidence, relevance and communication preferences without making assumptions about individual families."

Prompt 4 – Use family knowledge

"Give our educator team five questions to reflect on whether information families share with us actually influences children's experiences, routines, environments or curriculum."

Prompt 5 – Look beyond events

"Our service wants to strengthen family partnerships without simply adding more events. Ask me questions about our current relationships and then suggest different categories of opportunities for genuine family participation and input."

10. Building Genuine Community Connections

Community engagement should make sense for the children, families and context of the service — rather than becoming a list of annual visitors and excursions.

Prompt 1 – Map our community

"Help me create questions our team can use to map our local community. Include people, organisations, cultures, places, natural environments, services, knowledge and community issues that may be meaningful to our children and families."

Prompt 2 – Check whether a connection is meaningful

"We are considering a community connection with [organisation/group]. Give me questions to determine whether this would be meaningful, reciprocal and relevant to our children and community rather than simply something we can document."

Prompt 3 – Start with families

"Give me five questions we could ask families to discover community knowledge, skills, connections and places that are meaningful to them without making families feel pressured to participate."

Prompt 4 – Go deeper than the annual event

"We currently acknowledge [community/cultural event] once each year. Give us critical reflection questions about how the ideas, people, knowledge or perspectives connected with it might be represented more meaningfully throughout the year where appropriate."

Prompt 5 – Make community visible

"Give our team questions to reflect on whether our physical environment, curriculum, resources and conversations genuinely reflect the local community surrounding our service."

Record your reflections in your Butler Diaries and log book designed for your role.

11. Reviewing Environments Through a Different Lens

An environment can look beautiful and still create barriers. Reviewing spaces through different perspectives can reveal things that aren't obvious during a normal room check.

Prompt 1 – Children's agency lens

"I'll describe an area of our environment. Ask me questions about what children can independently access, choose, move, change, initiate and influence within the space."

Prompt 2 – Inclusion lens

"Help me critically review this environment: [description]. Ask questions about physical accessibility, sensory needs, communication, cultural representation, different abilities and whether all children can participate meaningfully."

Prompt 3 – Belonging lens

"Give me questions to examine what messages our environment may communicate about who belongs here, whose family and culture are represented and whose experiences may be less visible."

Prompt 4 – Adult convenience lens

"Help us identify aspects of our environment that may be arranged primarily for adult convenience. Ask questions about furniture, access to resources, displays, routines, storage and movement without assuming adult convenience is always inappropriate."

Prompt 5 – What does this space communicate?

"I'll describe one area of our service. Tell me what messages a child might potentially receive from the way the space is arranged, then give me questions to investigate whether those interpretations are accurate."

12. Supporting Children's Rights, Agency and Voice

Children's agency is not simply giving children a choice between two experiences. It includes genuine opportunities to influence what happens in their day.

Prompt 1 – Find decisions children could influence

"List questions our team can use to identify everyday decisions currently made entirely by adults that children may be able to appropriately influence."

Prompt 2 – Audit a routine for agency

"Help me review [routine] through the lens of children's agency. Ask about choice, participation, pace, independence, consent, communication and how individual needs are accommodated."

Prompt 3 – Voice versus genuine influence

"Give us five critical reflection questions to distinguish between collecting children's voices and actually allowing children's perspectives to influence decisions."

Prompt 4 – Consider non-verbal voices

"Help our team think about how we recognise the perspectives of infants, toddlers, children who communicate non-verbally and children who may not readily express preferences verbally."

Prompt 5 – Balance agency and safety

"Create a team discussion scenario where children's agency and an educator's responsibility for safety appear to conflict. Give us questions that help explore how both can be considered rather than presenting it as a simple choice between freedom and safety."

Use a tool like the Children's Voices Diary to help give all children a voice.

13. Strengthening Team Culture and Collaboration

A strong team isn't one where everyone always agrees. It's one where educators can communicate, question practice, share responsibility and learn from one another professionally.

Prompt 1 – Diagnose a communication problem

"Our team is experiencing [de-identified communication issue]. Ask me questions to help distinguish whether the underlying problem relates to expectations, role clarity, communication systems, confidence, workload, relationships or something else."

Prompt 2 – Make meetings more reflective

"Our team meetings currently cover [topics]. Help me identify opportunities to include more professional discussion and critical reflection without making the meeting significantly longer."

Prompt 3 – Explore psychological safety

"Give me 10 anonymous reflection questions educators could consider about whether they feel comfortable asking questions, admitting they don't know something, raising concerns and respectfully challenging practice within our team."

Prompt 4 – Learn from educator strengths

"Help me create a simple process for identifying the professional strengths and knowledge already within our educator team so that educators can learn from one another."

Prompt 5 – Examine consistency

"Our educators approach [routine/practice] differently. Give us questions to determine where consistency is important, where individual professional judgement is appropriate and whether everyone understands the underlying expectations."

14. Making Your QIP Useful Again

A Quality Improvement Plan should support continuous improvement — not become a document that receives attention only when Assessment and Rating approaches.

Prompt 1 – Find improvement opportunities

"Ask me questions about one area of our service to help identify genuine opportunities for improvement. Don't suggest a QIP goal until you understand our current practice, strengths and challenges."

Prompt 2 – Test whether a goal matters

"Our proposed improvement goal is: [goal]. Challenge it. Ask us why it matters, how it relates to outcomes for children, what evidence led us to identify it and what meaningful improvement would look like."

Prompt 3 – Turn a broad goal into something workable

"Our QIP says we want to 'improve [area]'. Ask me questions that will help make this goal more specific and meaningful without reducing improvement to simply completing a task."

Prompt 4 – Review progress

"We have been working towards this improvement goal: [goal]. Give us questions to determine what has actually changed in practice, what evidence we have, what barriers remain and whether our next step should change."

Prompt 5 – Find improvement in everyday conversations

"Give our team five questions we can use at the end of a staff meeting to identify whether anything discussed should inform our service's ongoing self-assessment or Quality Improvement Plan."

15. Preparing for Assessment and Rating Through Better Questions

Assessment and Rating preparation shouldn't be about memorising the 'right' thing to say.

A stronger approach is ensuring educators understand why practices occur and can confidently discuss the thinking behind them.

Prompt 1 – Practise an assessor conversation

"Act as an authorised officer visiting an Early Childhood Education and Care service for Assessment and Rating. Ask me one realistic question at a time about [Quality Area/topic]. After I respond, ask a natural follow-up question rather than immediately telling me the answer."

Prompt 2 – Ask me 'why?'

"I will describe one of our service practices. Ask me progressively deeper questions about why we do it, how we know it works, how children and families influence it and how it has changed over time."

Prompt 3 – Test whether practice is understood

"Create five questions an educator could be asked about [practice]. Start with a simple question about what happens and progressively move towards questions about why it happens, how decisions are made and how practice is reviewed."

Prompt 4 – Look for the gap between policy and practice

"Choose a fictional Early Childhood Education and Care policy area and create a scenario where written procedure and everyday practice don't quite match. Give our team questions to identify the gap and discuss why it matters."

Prompt 5 – Practise talking about improvement

"Ask me questions about one improvement our service has made. Help me practise explaining what prompted the change, who contributed, what we changed, what happened as a result and what we are still working on."

A course to support you in this area is coming soon, you'll find it in our training portal.

A Better Way to Use ChatGPT in Early Childhood Education and Care

You may have noticed that many of these prompts don't ask ChatGPT to produce very much.

That's deliberate.

They ask it to:

• question

• challenge

• explain

• coach

• role-play

• compare perspectives

• identify areas worth investigating

• facilitate discussion.

That is where AI can become particularly useful professionally.

Instead of:

"Write my critical reflection."

Try:

"Ask me questions that will help me critically reflect."

Instead of:

"Write my QIP."

Try:

"Challenge whether this is actually a meaningful improvement goal."

Instead of:

"Tell me how to supervise children."

Try:

"Ask me questions that could expose gaps in how we're currently supervising."

The difference is important.

The first approach outsources professional thinking.

The second can help strengthen professional thinking.

Don't Copy and Paste Without Context

You'll also get much better results when you give ChatGPT useful context.

For example, instead of:

"Give me questions about family engagement."

Try:

"We're a 60-place long day care service. Most family communication currently happens through our app and at drop-off and collection. We get very little response when we ask for feedback through the app. Ask me questions that could help our team understand why and identify other ways we could build two-way communication."

The more useful context you provide — while keeping information de-identified — the more useful the conversation can become.

You can also tell ChatGPT:

"Ask me one question at a time."

"Don't give me the answer yet."

"Challenge my assumptions."

"Give me another perspective."

"What haven't I considered?"

"Don't write this for me. Help me work it out."

These small instructions can completely change the type of support you receive.

AI Shouldn't Replace the Educator

The National Quality Standard reaches far beyond programs and observations.

It asks services to consider children's health and safety, relationships, environments, professional collaboration, partnerships with families and communities, leadership, governance and continuous improvement.

Quality practice also involves reflection.

Not simply recording what happened, but questioning practice, considering different perspectives, identifying assumptions and allowing reflection to influence what happens next.

AI cannot know your children, families, educators, community or service context the way you do.

It cannot make professional judgements on your behalf.

And it should never replace conversations between educators.

But it can give you another question.

Another perspective.

Another way of approaching a problem you've been staring at for months.

And sometimes, a better question is exactly where better practice starts.

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