My Reflection on Research in the Early Childhood Field

For the last eight weeks, I have studied about research in the early childhood field, and as a result learned a great deal about research from the terms used to how to plan a research project.  In addiition to planning research, I have learned valuable information about researching topics on the internet and how to determine whether or not a website and the information was reliable.  I have also learned how to read research papers with more ease and comprehension.  

Often during the last two months, I have found myself thinking about research duriing my everyday work.  I often find myself  thinking "that would make a good research question" and asking myself "would I use a quantitative or qualitative approach to studying that question?"      Before taking this class, I considered research as something that was completed by scientists and not early childhood professionals.  I now realize that early childhood professionals have the ability to gather information and conduct research projects that can provide valuable insight into the field of early care and education.  

International Research

This week I reviewed European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) website. at http://www.eecera.org/journal/ to answer the following questions:   

What are some of the current international research topics?  It was interesting to learn that many of the same topics that researchers and early childhood professionals are researching in the United States are also being examined in other countries.  The issues of transitioning children, school readiness, the professionalism of child care, access and quality are being examined. 

What surprising facts/insights/new ideas about early childhood did you gain from exploring this international early childhood website?  While reviewing the website, I found a study that was completed in Greece about Parent Perceptions of Quality in Early Childhood programs.  The study compared the results of the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale Parent Questionairre (ECERSPQ) with the results of the ECERS-R  that was completed by trained professionals.  The study was large with over 500 parents participating.  The results found that in general parent's perceived the program as being a higher quality than the trained observers.  I was very interested in the ECERSPQ as a way to study parent perceptions of quality.   A brief search for more information about this tool did not yield results.  However it gave me some ideas to use as part of the research simulation on parent perceptions of quality in early care and education. 

 What other noteworthy information did you find on this website?  The access to the journal articles on the website provided another source of information for my studies.  It was a great to find these journal articles. 

The Benefits of Research

Research in the field of Early Care and Education has contributed to a better understanding of how young children develop and grow.  Brain research has identified the importance of the first five years of life in the overall development and learning of  children. Also,through research we have identified that quality early childhood programs benefit young children,  families and communities.  These benefits include less grade repetition, lower dropout rates, higher school completion rate, improved health and nurition, improved social and emotional behavior, improved parent-child relationships, increased earning potential and economic self sufficiency.    Research has even helped to identify what practices create quality environments for young children to grow and thrive in. 

Dispite my initial concerns over ethical questions, I have gained a better understanding of the importance of research in the Early Childhood Field this week.  I have also learned how research is guided by ethical guidelines and principles that have been designed to protect subjects from being harmed or exploited.  The overall contributions to the field of early care and education have been significant. 

Research Simulation Week 1

Researching information on the internet this week brought to mind the saying "Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.".  I actually considered using this quote as part of my discussion post for class this week.  However,  when I "googled" it to find out who authored the quote, I found conflicting answers including Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin and Proverbs.  This simple search illustrated to me how difficult it can be to find accurate and trustworthy information on the internet.  After all, anyone can post things on the internet whether it is true or not. For this reason, I have always approached using information from websites cautiously and have relied on ones that I am familar with to get information.  This week's study has helped me to distinguish the credibility of websites and information by looking at indicators of credibility, accuracy, reasonableness and support.  I found this extremely helpful in my searching for information.  
As I begin my research simulation, I have picked the topic of quality child care and narrowed it down to three subtopics including the effects of quality child care on children's development especially their readiness for school,  parent's perception of quality child care and evaluations of quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS).
I chose the topic of quality in child care because of my passion for working with child care programs to improve quality.  As a former child care director who now works as an employee of a QRIS program, I am very interested in looking at ways that quality can be improved in child care.  As a working parent, I am interested at how quality programs can be made available to parents who need a safe and healthy place for their child to be while they are working and how quality influences a parents decision in choosing child care.  At this point I am going to focus more on parent perceptions of quality and how this affects their choice of child care.  Because the definition of quality can be so broad and can depend on perception, I think it's important to take into consideration the perspective of parents.  Afterall, they decide on what type of early care and education program to enroll their child in. 

Lessons Learned- International Early Childhood Education

Over the past eight weeks I have studied various websites and podcasts about the international early care and education community.  In addition, I have reached out to collegues in other countries to learn more about early childhood education as it exists around the world.  This has been an eye opening and rewarding experience to learn about how other nations view  childhood and provide early care and education to young children.  It has given me a glimpse into cultures  and experiences that are very different from my own and expanded my knowledge about how issues like poverty, equity, excellence and diversity, affect children around the world and how early care and education programs worldwide have addressed these issues.  In addition, I have also gained knowledge of resources and information that I can use in my work.  But most importantly, I have recognized that the early childhood communtiy worldwide is more alike then different.  We share similar goals and we have a wealth of knowledge that can be shared with each other to benefit all children.  So while there are better educational systems than ours in the United States and many that suffer greater challenges,  I believe there are lessons we can learn from the successes and failures of other countries and in turn much that they learn from our successes and failures.   My goal for the field of early care and education is to consider what we have in common with early care and education professionals around the world and to find ways that we can provide better early care and education by sharing our experiences and learning from each other. 

UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage

This week I reviewed the UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/), The three insights I have gained include:

 1.  The country ECE profiles that are part of this site provide valuable information about ECE as it exists in other countries.  I have found in reviewing the information that other countries are struggling with the same issues of equity, affordability, quality and access.  I look forward to reading more of these and learning about my counterparts in other countries.

2.  The international resources from books to videos are also another source of imformation.  The video of the early childhood programme for the nomadic Loipi of northern Kenya was very interesting and to me reinforced my belief in focusing on the whole child- from nutrition to socialization- as part of early childhood education. 

3.  In addition,  the policy briefs are very informative.  Upon reviewing the brief "Preschool Class for 6-year olds in Sweden: A Bridge between Early Childhood and Compulsory School", I found it interesting that lowering the entry age of children for school was a concern in Sweden because of their view of childhood as "a golden time of life" and that lowering the entry age would take away a part of childhood.  This echos my own concern that a focus on academic standards in the United States could lead our early educators to use practices that might take away from our children "being kids".

After reviewing this website I plan on adding it to my list of resources to use and refer to. 

 

 

Sharing Web Resources- The Global Summit on Childhood

My search of the ACEI website this week took me to a video of the Global Summit on Childhood held in Washington DC in March of 2012.  The feature speaker was Christopher Clouder from the U.K. who spoke about his work traveling the world to study childhood.  He began his inspiring speech  by saying “I dreamed that life was joy.  And then I awoke and realized life was duty.   And then I went to work and low and behold I discovered that duty can be joy.  We have a duty to all of the children in the world.   We are very fortunate that we work with children and can experience this joy that children bring to the world.”  Clouder described the early educator’s relationship to children by saying  “children inform us, children inspire us” and that we as educators are in search of that” quality of childhood that has a joyousness to it.”  He also described how educators from around the world are brought together often to discuss problems…” When we work together, so often we see what is deficient, what could be better, what is not right, the injustices, the cruelity…but we should not let that  fact be a burden”  Instead he pointed to the fact that as early educators we need to work together to “find those roots of childhood joy”  and that is “what encourages us to go back to our individual struggles, the challenges we face in our daily world knowing that we are with others finding that childhood quality that lives within every human being throughout their lives.”

 

Clouder also spoke of working with young children by saying “When working with children we have to be respectful to the child, they are our teachers.”  He described teaching as a reciprocal process rather than a one way process of the teacher giving a child knowledge.  

 

Describing the future of childhood and of education, Clouder said “We have to find our paths as we go along…we are also always learning our way.  The childhood of us is not the childhood of today and the childhood of today is not the childhood of the future.”  

Clouder read a quote from a declaration that UNICEF put together about the future of the education system worldwide, basically coming to the conclusion that educational institutions of the future must  put more emphasis on children’s social and emotional capabilities.   It also stated that the importance of acquiring factual knowledge will decline significantly in favor of the ability to find access to and creatively utilize information.  

 

Although,  Clouder was not discussing the specific topics of accessibility, responsiveness and awareness his speech was an inspiring reminder to me of the reason that we as early care and education professionals work in this field.  Earlier this week in my discussion post I described ways in which early care and education professionals can be more responsive to the needs of children and families.  I included in my post the fact that child care workers should be paid better and that professional development and technical assistance should be available to programs seeking quality.  These are some of the things  that I have often seen as barriers to providing responsive care and education in child care.  However, most child care workers are not working in the field of early care and education to become rich.  Instead they work because of the joy of childhood that Clouder described in his speech.  I visited a program as part of my work this week and as I talked with the director, she spoke about her dedicated staff.  She said that even though her staff only make minimum wage ($7.25/hr) they have dedicated their lives to the families and the children.  The director told me of how her staff paid for their registration fees and spent a Saturday at a conference without being paid because they wanted to.  I realized that a responsive early childhood educator is more than someone who has a degree in early childhood and makes substantially more than minimum wage.  They have a passion for working with young children and they continue to learn and grow as part of the reciprocal relationship with the children and families.  Education alone does not make a great teacher.  Likewise, more pay does not make a teacher better.  It takes heart, dedication and a love for the joy of childhood.  Passion for working with young children is a quality that is priceless.

 

 Reference

Clouder, Christopher (2012) The Future of Childhood.  The Global Summit on Childhood Retreived from:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7r-idxHixo&feature=youtu.be