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.

EDUC 6162 - week 8

I am a big fan of international experiences, be it through travel, food, festivities, movies, friends or colleagues. So to have been able to connect with professionals in the same field but in other parts of the world, and learn from their experiences, was a real pleasure for me.

When we studied poverty, I learnt very quickly how much it differs worldwide. What we define as poverty in America, may not be poverty in other parts of the world. Similarly, what is acceptable and expected in some parts of the world (such as children working before the legal age) is considered unacceptable in other parts of the world. This leaves us with a great thought provoking exercise of what is right or wrong, and which children are happier, and is poverty a relative term?

Similarly, I found that issues and trends in general, are very different worldwide. We may be addressing diversity and changing demographics in the USA, but in some parts of the world they are simply addressing child survival. Survival from war or disease, but it remains a basic issue that we no longer have to worry about in the industrialized world.

The third thing that is also very evident to me is government policies on childhood and early childhood education. Although there seems to be a global movement towards educating children early, there is a huge variety of support from a government level. Where some nations provide childcare and preschool education to all children, others do not; and just like maternity leave is so different globally, so is child education.

One goal that I would set for all my colleagues is to embrace and learn from the variety of approaches and opinions about early childhood. We have a lot to learn from each other, and so the more open minded we are, the more we can learn. As we prepare ourselves for diversity in the USA, we need to reach out to other cultures and nations to see what we can learn from them. We should always ask ourselves, why do they do things in a particular way, why do their children not attend preschools, why do the grandparents raise the children, and so on and so forth.

 To my colleagues in this course, I would like to say thank you for all your input, discussions, blog posts, comments and questions; because they make the learning process so much more interesting. A big thank you to my international contacts as well, for taking the time to reply to my emails with enthusiasm and details. Dr. Williams, thank you for your teachings on such an interesting course, and all your input on each topic; it has been a pleasure.
I would like to invite all my colleagues to stay in touch and stay connected to the international world, as we expand our knowledge in early childhood. There is so much to learn...

EDUC 6162 - week 7

Juliet Perrin, who is an early years educator in Thailand with the Regents School, replied to this week's assignment with interesting information.

In Thailand there is very little continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers, and so educators struggle to stay current. The schools that are interested in flying in a professional for CPD courses, cannot afford to do so for their limited number of educators, and sadly there is little collaboration between the schools to share costs and resources.
She explained that in order to stay current, teachers have to be self motivated enough to read journals and online resources. Her concern was that there isn't any hands on CPD available. She also explained that they had in-house CPD courses but she was not sure of the quality. 

Juliet had also worked in Turkey and she found that it was the same issue there, where she had very limited CPD courses to attend. Her experience of going back to her native country, England, after her work in Turkey, was that she "was out of the loop".

I would also like to share with you my experience with regards to teacher excellence in an international setting, because I work in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). When we established the nursery that I currently manage, in 2006, there was only one nursery that offered a Montessori certificate but no college, vocational school or any institution at all that qualified teachers or assistant teachers. That was very limiting and we had to recruit, train and develop teachers based on several criteria, but rarely could we demand qualifications.

In addition, there was no professional development opportunities at all, and so we initiated our own monthly courses/workshops to educated ourselves and stay current. We often invited colleagues such as speech therapists, occupational therapists, physicians, and others to share their expertise with us. In addition, if a teacher was passionate about a topic or issue, we asked her to conduct a workshop and educate the rest of us.

Now nine years later, there are two institutions that offer certificates for teachers, in the city. Both institutions offer a large variety of workshops on a monthly basis as well, there are several conferences annually for education and our governing body has required that all staff are qualified and offered professional development  annually.

What a huge leap forward for the early years education sector in Dubai, and how wonderful it has been to watch this happen. Now the task at hand is assessing the quality of these courses, and the implementation in every program of the government regulations.

My discussion with Juliet was that although many criteria for an excellent, high quality teacher are the same world wide (passion, dedication, creativity, patience, knowledge and so on); the professional development aspect of professionalism, in my opinion, should be region specific.

If the UK, or the US has 'hot topics' that all teachers must learn about, they may not be hot topics elsewhere in the world - and vice versa. What may be a current issue in Dubai, may not be so in Thailand, or Prague or the USA.

If I hear from my other international contact in Prague, I will update my blog.

EDUC 6162 - week 6

On the NAEYC website, I decided to search the link titled "For Families", and I found a wealth of information. On the home page of the NAEYC for families, there is a newsletter families can subscribe to, there are topics featured for 'families today', there is a book featured, and there are links on various learning and development issues. Also on their home page are links for families to look for NAEYC accredited programs, and general guidelines regarding what to look for in programs. The word quality is seen repeatedly.

I found this link very much in line with our current studies of excellence and equity. NAEYC seems to define high quality, with guidance for parents and equal opportunity for anyone navigating their website.

I also found several articles featured for parents regarding school readiness, so I feel that it is a hot topic for the NAEYC. It is tackled from various aspects, but with a clear goal of preparing parents so that they can help their children succeed in school. There is a blog for parents which can be accessed through the For Families site, and lastly I was thrilled to see that they had a link for music.

It is obvious to me that the use of Spanish is being promoted by the NAEYC, and so they are setting an example for programs and professionals in the field. This is a great effort that addresses the barrier of responsiveness that we studied this week. Even in the music link, Ella Jenkins songs are featured and one out of the three has Spanish incorporated, and the second out of three has French incorporated. I found those fabulous ways to promote additional languages.

On the NAEYC home webpage there is the link to their annual conference. That webpage has listings of all the sessions during the conference, with details of each one. It is incredibly organized and thorough. There are several sessions that address the bilingualism issue, which is directly related to the responsiveness barrier, once again.

After another fun and interesting exploration of the NAEYC website, I found that they emphasize school readiness, play and nature play, reading, languages other than English and quality of early childhood programs. Most of which are issues we have studied over the past few weeks.

EDUC 6162 week 5

The center on the developing child, at Harvard University has a global children's initiative which is described on their website (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/). There are two things that I noticed immediately, upon reading through the webpage, and they are that most of their projects were targeting early childhood, and that child survival was a key issue.

In our study of issues and trends in the United States, something as basic as survival is not a concern anymore for children born and raised in America. This insight is quite an eye opener; to realize that it remains a concern in other parts of the world. So when we are striving for excellence or equity in the care for children in their early years, their survival often takes precedence in a global scenario.

The global initiatives by Harvard University address three issues: early childhood development, child mental health and children in crisis and conflict situations. Children in conflict suffer tremendous consequences, and survival becomes a priority but development, mental health, education and long term effects cannot be ignored either. Two studies are being conducted by a Harvard faculty which study these concerns long term: Adults who were child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and children raised with HIV positive parents in Rwanda. Insight on these realities for children who grow up in conflict or toxic stress, is again an eye opener of the issues globally compared to the USA.

It does not take long to realize that the issues globally are quite varied, and can be very different from the issues in America. In Zambia, the Harvard initiative is studying the impact of an anti- malaria effort, on child development. Another insight on how children in developed countries don't need to worry about such obstacles to their development, but this mosquito transmitted disease can be detrimental in other parts of the world.

Since I had not heard back from my international contacts, I started to study this initiative, as well as the article in the journal Current Issues in Comparative Education, Volume 11. I have learnt that early childhood care and education was the topic of discussion in the 2008-2009 edition of the online journal, and globally we find issues that are similar to the USA, like teacher training, but many issues that are quite different, such as survival.