Reflecting On My Experience With Professional Contacts

During the eight weeks that I have spent in this course, I have had the pleasure of speaking with and learning from early childhood professionals in other countries, the UK and Ireland in particular. This opportunity allowed me to learn the following things:
1. The early childhood education is viewed differently in other countries. I found that early childhood education is valued more in other countries and is held to a higher standard.
2. In some other countries, early childhood teachers are held to the same educational standards as elementary school teachers. They are required to have advanced degrees and get paid along the same scale.
3. Free Pre-Kindergarten is very prevalent in other countries. I learned that the UK, Ireland, and Finland have public Pre-K programs, among many other European countries.

One goal that I have for early childhood education, is to bring public Pre-K into the United States. Showing the importance of early childhood education, along with statistics of other countries that use public Pre-K, will bring awareness to this issue. Once our nation realizes the importance of early childhood education, and understands the value it holds and sees how other countries view it, maybe we will take a step in the right direction.

More About My International Contacts

This week, only one of my international contacts got back to me. I so appreciate Chris Hussey of The British Association of Early Childhood Education. He has taken time out of his busy day week after week to assist me with my assignments for school and I can't thank him enough.
This week I asked him about issues related to excellence and quality that his area is currently facing, and he sent me a number of articles that we very helpful and informative. One thing that the UK is currently debating is the question: Should early years teachers have qualified teacher status? Some people think that they should be on the same educational level as primary and secondary school teachers, while others think that it is not necessary.
Another hot topic in the area involves child:teacher ratios. A proposal was recently submitted to increase child:teacher ratios and as you can imagine, professional in the field are not very happy about the idea.
Much like in the US, school readiness is an issue that continues to come up. Many think that early educators should push more academics to ensure children are prepared, while others prefer the learning through play approach.
You can read more about the topics currently in the news in the UK here:

http://www.daynurseries.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/26/Debate-should-early-years-teachers-have-qualifed-teacher-status

http://sheila-nutkins-author.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/debate-about-ratios-and-qualifications.html
 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10307682/Failure-to-acknowledge-the-concept-of-readiness-in-education-this-is-the-tragedy.html

 Regarding the requirements for educators in the early childhood education field, it is my understanding that a minimum of an associates degree is required. Chris did inform me, however, that Finland and a few other countries are requiring a masters degree and that more and more countries are moving towards that requirement.

Chris just completed his masters degree and is currently pursuing his PhD in early childhood education! He told me that there are very few grants and scholarships available so most people must pay for this education themselves. Therefore, most people, himself included, work full time while attending school and will take around 4-5 years to complete. I admire him so much for his dedication to our profession!

This assignment has really allowed me the opportunity to expand my professional contacts and I have enjoyed learning so much about my profession in other areas around the world. It has helped me see that a lot of other countries value early childhood education so much more and that we need to get our country on that same path!

More About CCW

This week I got the opportunity to further explore the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW) website. They provide a lot of outside links that are really helpful, most of which are regarding rules/regulations/laws in the child care industry. They also have links to educational sites and child advocacy groups. Many of the resources that I use daily as a preschool director, such as the website for NAEYC, Zero to Three, and NACCRA are listed on the CCW website.

I chose to take a deeper look into the News to Use tab on their webpage and looked at Latest News. It led me to an article in American Educator titled The Economics of Inequality. It also led me to the CCW newsletter, which I didn't realize that they had, from May/June 2011. This tells me that this website is no longer active/relevant since they do not update their information. This is really unfortunate because I enjoy this organization and appreciate what they stand for.

While the information on the website is not current, I still find it to be a very good resource. The links that it provides contain some excellent resources for early childhood education professionals. And in the News to Use section of the site, there are some superb articles. There are several articles regarding the standards of preschool, incorporating Pre-K into the public school system, and a very good NAEYC article about the importance of quality preschool education.