EDUC 6163 - week 5

I chose to explore the research published by the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA). I learnt that EECERA is a non-profit organization "which promotes and disseminates multi-disciplinary research on early childhood and its applications to policy and practice" (EECERA, 2012), and found out that their journal European Early Childhood Education Research Journal (EECERJ) "is issued five times annually and now is in its 22nd year of publication. It has become a world leader in the field" (EECERA, 2012).

In the October 2014 issue which is their 22^nd Volume and 4^th Issue, there were eleven articles available online but not all of them are research articles. One interesting study is titled Feelings towards child–teacher relationships, and emotions about the teacher in kindergarten: effects on learning motivation, competence beliefs and performance in mathematics and literacy. In reading through the abstract I learnt that the study was conducted using interviews with kindergarten children and the variable found to contribute the most to school performance was competence beliefs (Georgia Stephanou, 2014).  When re-reading their title, I felt that although the issue is quite interesting, the author lost me by not using a simple and clear research question, or hypothesis.

Other articles discuss children playing in the wild woods during child care and how the teacher influences that experience, another article reports on a project that assessed children in Australia as to who and what they perceive as safe.

One interesting review article discusses the research methods and participant-researcher relationship as related to Vygotsky's social constructivist approach. I found the abstract difficult to read, although the research seems to be of scholarly quality.

It was very exciting to read the abstract for a study done in Portugal. All the terminology that was in the abstract is now familiar to me due to our course: the study was cross sectional, and quasi-experimental with a sample of 103 children. The study found that families who did enroll in an intervention program, had greater gains in various variables measured for themselves and their children.

Altogether by reviewing the website and the journal published, and because I live in a multicultural city outside the United States, I could not compare the research emphasis to what it would be like in the USA. The topics all seem familiar. The one thing that was obvious to me is that the research approaches and methodology seems to be exactly the same as what we are learning in this course. This tells me that there is an international/global method to conducting research which makes a study of high quality and when published, scholarly, as well as replicable and valid internationally.

References

European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA), 2012. http://www.eecera.org/

Stephanou, G. 2014. Feelings towards child–teacher relationships, and emotions about the teacher in kindergarten: effects on learning motivation, competence beliefs and performance in mathematics and literacy. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, Volume 22, Issue 4.

EDUC 6163 - week 3

A potential positive contribution to childhood is related to their health and fitness. I would very much like to study the effects of technology on the health and fitness of children these days. Unfortunately, my belief is that children are leading more sedentary lives these days partly due to technology and their attraction to television, playstations, X-boxes, ipads and so on. One could measure the fitness level of children at a particular age, by using professional athletic trainers to assess them through exercise routines and heart rate measures. Children that spend less than an hour a day on a screen versus those who spent more than one hour a day on screens. The same comparison will take place for the difference between 2 hours of screen time and then 3 hours of screen time. The fitness assessment is the tricky part in this study, as well as keeping all factors similar for the group studied. For example, a child who spends 3 hours a day on a screen but plays 5 hours of sports on the weekend, is likely to be more fit than the child who spends less than 3 hours of screen time but does not exercise at all.

The fitness level that we are assessing is based on the activity of children as a replacement of sedentary screen time. Free active play, such as riding bikes and hide and seek contribute tremendously to fitness and gives children a sense of autonomy and freedom that also contributes to their overall mental health.

I think the benefits to children are tremendous, that if they spent more time playing actively than on a screen, they would benefit in physical and mental health. Perhaps the lesson is mainly for parents who find it easier to leave their children hour after hour sitting in front of a screen rather than actively engaged in play which stimulates the body and mind. Promoting healthier and happier children is certainly beneficial to childhood, as well as the long term effects on those children's futures.

The challenges to such findings is for parents who have no choice, either because they live in neighborhoods that do not allow for free play, or they work long hours and do not have the capacity to take their kids out accordingly.

To end this thought, I did a google scholar search on this topic and found several research articles that address this topic. The screen time was related to obesity, BMI, fitness level and more. My findings tell me that this is a hot topic, but one that has already been studied and may not need much more investigation; however investigating it further in early childhood may be beneficial.

EDUC 6163 - Week 2 - My personal research journey

I am very excited to be exploring a research topic which I am interested in, as an assignment for our course. There are several topics that I am eager to explore, which include: the way we educate boys and how it affects their experience, the unintended consequences of live in hired help in the UAE on children, are the children of pilots and other careers that demand a lot of time away from home similarly at risk to single parent children?

I decided to explore my first interest and I have narrowed it down to "What teaching methods have been researched and/or implemented that take boys' nature into account? and how has that affected the experience for boys and their teachers?"

The 10 -15 children that are of concern to me annually due to behavior or discipline reasons, turn out to be about 90% boys every single year. So a few years ago, I asked myself if it wasn't our expectation that was the problem and if there was something we could do differently for those 10-20% of the boys at the nursery that struggle with following the routine and expectations.
Now I am very excited that I will research this topic, and it coincides with our monthly staff development workshop and a change I am implementing at nursery as a pilot program.

My two children are also boys and I find that the year their school reduced recess, they struggled significantly. Once it was reintroduced, I could feel their concentration improve. I also have a few theories about boys that we see in traditions in tribes and several cultures globally.

The research will be most interesting, and I would be very interested to get any recommendations from my colleagues and classmates.