When I Think of Research...

The first thought that comes to mind is "time", and how little of it I seem to have these days.

The course of study at Walden University that I am just completing is Building Research Competencies.  I have learned a great deal from this course on what goes into the educational research process.  The amount of time spent on research can vary depending on the type of study being conducted and the participants in the study.  Research is valuable to the field of early childhood education to show the importance of children getting an early start to promote healthy educational growth and development.  Throughout this course I have worked on a research simulation pertaining to the value of parental involvement in the early childhood classroom.  Should this research project actually be carried out I believe it would show that the more parents are involved in the classroom the greater the benefit to the child.

I have a greater appreciation for research and the research process.  For many years I have read journals and research projects not really understanding them or the work that goes into them.  Thanks to this class my ideas about the nature of doing research have changed.  If my curiosity was sparked I would be inclined to get on board the train to conduct a study myself.  Work is never as much fun or enticing when it's something you are learning to do, as it is when you set out on your own to do it.  I believe that is the driving force behind many early childhood researchers is their passion for the field and the to see it thrive in the future.  Without the research to show that early education has benefits many programs would seize to exist.  I have a new respect and understanding for educational research and how it is used.  It for more than writing a paper for college. Often it's hard to see past that when burning the midnight oil.

Careful thought is put into the planning of how to begin the research process.  Planning a research process can take a lot of time, in and of itself.   Once a general topic is chosen it must be broken down into smaller subtopics before a research question can be formed. Determining who the participants will be and what method of research to use all depends on the data the researcher wishes to collect and the amount of time they have to collect it.  Also, the availability of resources and convenience to the researcher has to be considered.

There were many challenges that I encountered while preparing my research simulation project.  I would think I was just getting everything narrowed down, then I would realized it needed to be changed.  I looked over the criteria for what had to be included and what could be left out.  I would readjust and begin again.  That's what good research is all about, being flexible.  Each week when I learned new terms it was a challenge for me in not only understanding them, but applying them to my research simulation project.  This was probably the most difficult for me.  I was able to push through and as time went on I understood a little more all the time.

 My perceptions as an early childhood professional have been modified as a result of this course on research.  I see the need there is for research in the field, but also how much goes into the research process.  Without research in the field of early childhood we would not be in the field we are today.  In recent years, there as been tremendous growth in the field and I believe we owe it to professionals and researchers in the field who are dedicated to the success of young children and families.  These people like myself and other in this course have a passion for this field and a drive to do what ever is necessary to see it thrive.

I have had my share of struggles in this course, as it was all a very knew learning experience for me.  I have enjoyed, as always reading others blogs and discussion comments.  It's always interesting to see others point of view.   I look forward to continuing my educational journey in this field with others who are as passionate about it as I am.

Research Around the World

 A Continuation of Sharing Web Resources
International Research Topics

 There are many current topics of research published in the Early Childhood Australia's ECE WebWatch online news journal.  

• What parents consider to be high quality childcare.  This research was conducted through a survey.  Surprising to me was that only 22% listed quality education as important.  52% said the relationship between the child their family and the educators was the most important. 
• Research has been conducted through the University of Canberra t discover whether children in urban settings could identify which food products are a result of farming, and whether they are plant or animal products.  This was done revolving around where they believed yoghurt was from.
• Students from wealthier backgrounds tend to perform according their genetic abilities, children from lower SES can achieve more when they are enrolled in early childhood services. 
• Research on domestic violence and children examines the motives and backgrounds to 'filicide' - parents who kills their children. 
• Preventing childhood obesity - what kinds of interventions will prevent and counter childhood obesity and the associated problems with health and wellbeing.

 These are just a few of the current research topics offered in through Early Childhood Australia.  More on these topics and others can be found at ECA WebWatch.

Surprising facts/ insights/ new ideas from ECA  

 The international Criminal Court began it's work in 2002 and has just had it's first conviction of a warlord enlisting boys and girls under the age of 15 for war.  This sends a strong message that the rights of children are recognized internationally, and people who abuse children will be identified and punished.
Congolese Warlord Convicted, in First for International Court

The government in Australia is taking a strong stand with families with young children.

• Offering dad's two weeks paid parental leave
• Rebate incentive for families hiring nanny's
• Investing in parenting centers 

New Ideas for partnering with families can be found through their website with the use of their online learning video series Partnering with Parents.  This is just one of many available videos.  I found this one very useful. 

Noteworthy Information

Beginning this year 2012 there is a new early childhood reform act in Australia and many changes are being made there to improve their early childhood programs and services.  This will take place over the next several years.  I am a subscriber of their webwatch online journal and I was highly recommend a subscription to it.  It doesn't cost anything and is very informative of events there and around the world.  This is also noted on the sidebar of this blog under expanding web resources and at the link below.
January 2012 - Media Release - Biggest reform of Australian childcare begins today

Research Benefits for Children and Families -- An Uplifting Story

About Fourteen years ago a cousin of mine was born with a "hole in her heart", this is medically defined as a congenital heart defect.  It basically means that there is a defect in the wall between two of the heart chambers.  This is not uncommon and babies are born with this defect all the time.  There are different sizes of holes and this determines how it may be fixed.  In some instances the hole may close on it's own as the child get older.  (This has been linked to genetics.) 

A little over 50 years ago, her father's brother was also born with a congenital heart defect.  At that time in 1951 there was nothing that could be done for this condition.  Parents, (my great aunt and uncle) were told to not let them get active.  They were basically left on bed rest most of the time.  According to my dad, there were many trips to the hospital. They lived in a small town where the nearest hospital was in St. Louis, MO.  They had a pediatrician that came to the home regularly to see about him.  His heart eventually gave out from this condition, and he passed away at the age of 9 in 1961.
 His brother's daughter, whom I mentioned at the beginning, was also born with this condition many years later.  At this point open heart/"beating heart surgeries" had become somewhat routine.  Due to the research from the 1950s to the mid 1980s early 1990s, the congenital heart defect his daughter was born with was able to be repaired.  The doctors were able to go in through her foot to repair the hole.  She is now a healthy striving, sports playing fourteen year old preparing for life in high school.

Through the many years of open heart research there were many failed attempts at repairing the heart.  There were many times they thought they had it, but were actually failed attempts.  Several patients lives were extended, but very few surgeries had lasting affects until the 1990s.   I am sure during this time there were risks in the research on children.  However, now because of the risks parents took with other children before her took, there are children like my cousin who go on to lead normal lives.  

More research related to this topic and other topics on the heart in children can be found at www.childrensheartfoundation.org

My Personal Research Journey

This assignment has been a difficult one for me to take on.  I have so many topics that I am interested in when it comes to early childhood education.  As I have mentioned before, when I set out to be a teacher I was not in the field of Early Childhood, but rather Elementary Education.  My passion since beginning in Early Childhood education as a Pre-k teacher has grown tremendously.  The subtopic I will be focusing on for my simulations in the following weeks will be families involvement in the Early Childhood environments and educational process.   This year I was given the challenge of working with a Hispanic child and her family.  Through my personal work with them, the other families in my class, and previous class learning I have become more familiar with the importance of making families feel welcome and wanted.  Through this simulation process I hope to learn more about this topic.

Simulation Process..... is a work in progress

I am nervous about this process and praying I can find my way through it.  It is similar to research papers I have done in the past.  The research chart was a bit trying for me, I have always had trouble putting things into my own words.  I believe it is because sometimes I have enough trouble trying to understand what is being said.  At first I was unsure if this was suppose to be from the text book or actually about our own research, so that left me feeling confused.   I hope it was from the textbook, if I'm not correct I would really appreciate someone letting me know.  Even though it may put me behind.  One thing I gained was that of making a folder on the computer to store research articles.  This was a helpful suggestion I found from the text Ch.2.    I have them in two places.  I have a folder on my desktop and I also have a folder in the ESBO library. This is where you can folder any articles you look at through Walden Library.  It keeps you from having to remember where an article is and how you found it.  Also, in searching on the library site I have found it helpful to use more then one Database at a time to search.  You will get more of a variety of results.  On the what type of research will I do section of the text.  I want to think I am more inclined to use triangulation as a research approach.

Open for Suggestions

I have fretted over this and I know I am not alone, which is comforting.  I would love to hear suggestions about where to look for research on this topic.  I love personal experience conversations, first hand knowledge has always inspired me.   I know we are all searching and I hope I can be of help to everyone by sharing some of my experiences in this field.

By the grace of God and working with the wonderful classmates I have come to know, I know that nothing is impossible.  Everything that I do is to make a difference in education and the lives of families and children.  That makes it worth it!

Learning about Early Childhood Internationally has....

Three consequences of learning about 

the international early childhood field

1. It has made me more aware of the inequities in the field.  Theya re wide spread with some programs just starting out and other programs adopting curriculum.  Also, the age variance among programs, what age is considered early childhood in various countries differs.  In Azerbajan where my global contact was located for the Issues and Trends course, stated that early childhood there has only recently been considered education in the last 5 yeasrs. 
2. Teacher quality is different everywhere and everywhere teachers are pushing to be heard.  In Azerbajan they do not have a quality teacher system in place in education.  That is, there entire education system.  I realize the importance of having quality programs in place with quality teachers.  The importance of sharing this information with parents.  In order to make it more available to parents efforts will need to be made to get the word out there about the importance of early care. Efforts like this are being put into practice in Australia with the new Education Reform Act, just passed this year to be extended over the next 10 years to improve quality in teaching and education.   I will advocate more for quality programs and quality teachers, knowing what I know about where early childhood is and where it needs to be here and internationally. 
3. The issues of poverty internationally are very much surrounding us and affecting our future generations.  Poverty no longer means not enough food or no shelter.  Learning about this has given me a new meaning of poverty and how many people are truly affected by this.  Poverty is not always about what is visible but also about what is invisible.   With new websites and numerous organization locally and internationally I believe partnerships efforts are beginning to form to help prevent poverty and stress in many places. 

One Goal for the Field related to International Awareness 

of Issues and Trends & the spirit of collegial relations

I would like to continue to form international relationships with advocates and colleagues in the field to remain updated on challenges and changes as it relates to families, children, and educators in the field.  Regardless if relationships are made I will be able to stay abreast of new and changing information through a vast array of web-casts and journals issued in the field.   Through these efforts it will allow me to push to strengthen my advocating ability and teaching professionalism in early childhood. 

To My Colleagues Working in the Field in so Many Ways

Let's remain strong in our fight for equity in the programs and remember we are in this together, for our future, our children's future, and to make a difference in the lives of children, families and educators everywhere.

More News from Azebajan

Located two the left you will find Contacts World Wide.  More interesting news is located there.
Enjoy!   I have a had wonderful contact and enjoyed the conversations we have shared together.
Thanks you Ulviya!!

New from Azerbajan on Equity and Excellence in EC

Just received this today, but I have found it very useful and interesting.  Other information on the Global Children's Initiative can be found on the World Contacts on the right side of the blog.  

Dear Virginie,

Here are my responses to your questions:
Right now in the U.S. we are learning about and beginning to implement in some states what are called Common Core Standards.  These are individual standards for each grade level, that are the same in all 50 states.  Standards of course are like a road map that outlines what the students need to know to get to the next grade level.  The students in third grade and up take standardized tests to determine achievement of these standards in many cases.  I am a big advocate against standardized testing because I do not believe it works to show what students do and do not know.  It is slowly finding it's way into the early grades.  We have a touch screen computer for testing this year.  How the students perform on this will determine 15% of my teacher evaluation score this year.  Does the early childhood programs in your country have standards developmental, early learning etc.?
Do you all have any kind of formal assessments?
Early Childhood Education in Azerbaijan for a long time was considered as care, and just recently say during last 5-6 years it started to be considered as education. Even now there is little of understanding that early years-up to 3 years is also education. Early childhood education in Azerbaijan is divided into several periods: early years: 0-3 years, preschool years: 3-5 years, and school preparation: 5-6 years.  The most recent education law adopted by parliament –Milli Mejlis identified only 3-6 as education.  Now Institute of Educational Problems at the Ministry of Education drafted first curriculum for preschool education (in the text I’ll be referring to preschool education as 3-6 years) which covers 3-6 years. This curriculum is under expert review now, and soon will be piloted and then evaluated. There are no achievement standards for preschool education, but the development and early literacy standards were drafted. So until the pilot results are not evaluated our preschool teachers continue working without testing against standards. Introduction of standards as international trend was recommended by international experts particularly from the US. But no any formal assessment has been and will never be conducted in preschool education, and all local experts have agreed on that.

The achievement gaps in our country have been on the mend for quite sometime now.  Head Start was initiated because of this long before pre-k programs and may other early learning programs.  What are the achievement gaps in your country if any?  Is there anything in place to help bridge these gaps?
You know first of all access to preschool education in Azerbaijan is so low that discussing achievement gaps between various groups of children is not so much relevant because state can not ensure service provision to all children especially to those who are from rural area. Any formal assessment of gaps available has not been conducted. But according to anecdotal evidences children who enter first grade without preschool education face more difficulties in learning and social life than other children.


Do you think or believe that standards are the key to education equity?
It is difficult question. I believe that standards are needed for policy makers and politicians to justify 1) that public money were spent well and resulted with some measureable outcomes.; 2) standards probably are necessary to assess teachers’ work. I have never thought about linking standards with equity. I’ll think of that

I believe that our children need to learn to socialize and how to play.  In early childhood we know these are the basis for learning, it is slowly being taken away.  I think if we start with this and build on this we will begin to see educational excellence. Do you have any thoughts about this and are play and socialization important in early childhood in your country?

Play is a quite new concept in our preschool education and has been introduced like 5 -6 years ago. Yes, I agree that preschool education is slowly shifting towards more academic teaching traditions and move away from play. It is true about international trends but it is not so much relevant to our preschool education at present. However there are efforts to shape preschool curriculum like curriculum for primary education, but happily this has not been implemented.

Are there other types of excellence and equity in early childhood that you work with or advocate for in your country?

Public preschool formally provide equity and provide free of charge preschool services to all children. Informally due to lack of public kindergartens and growing competition for free of charge services among parents, and growing women’s employment there hidden inequality in service provision when better offs, better educated and urban families  get more services that opposite side.