THE NATIONAL QUALITY STANDARDS (NQS) for early childhood education and care (ECEC) were implemented in Australia in 2012. A thorough understanding of the Standards is important for educators to improve and enhance quality in the sector. This imperative also applies in early childhood teacher education where capabilities to incorporate the NQS are essential to enhance the knowledge and understanding of future early childhood teachers. This investigation reports on the creation and evaluation of the effectiveness of a Reflective Template, based on Bloom's revised taxonomy to scaffold pre-service teacher understanding about early childhood practices and to specifically link to/unpack these policy documents' desired outcomes. The Reflective Template was utilised with 29 pre-service teachers undertaking study in a Bachelor of Education (Primary) program who were specialising in early childhood education. The findings revealed the template enabled movement beyond observing and recounting a situation to creating questions to reflect on their own practice and transfer of higher order reflection that was deeper than experienced in other teacher education subjects.
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