Research Around the World

This week I chose to explore the website of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA). To tell you a little bit about EECERA, "EECERA is an independent, self-governing, international association which promotes and disseminates multi-disciplinary research on early childhood and its applications to policy and practice. EECERA is a non-profit organisation, wholly-owned and subscribed to by its substantial and influential world-wide membership. It generates its own revenue, receives no external funding and thus ensures its independence, radical attitude and innovative openness." You can find their website at www.eecera.org.

When navigating the website, I cam across the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, which is proclaimed to be one of the most prestigious early childhood journals in the world. When searching their journal article database, I quickly learned that their trending topics in the field are much like ours. The first article I cam across was an article discussing the battle between children learning through play and academics. This reminds me of a constant conversation that I, as an administrator, have with parents regularly.

 Another topic that caught my attention discussed learning and teachable moments during outdoor play. It caught my attention because this is something that I am constantly stressing to our teachers. I explain how children should still be learning even when they're outside, it should be an outdoor classroom. I really find this article informative and it puts my thoughts into well expressed words. I plan to print it and present a copy to my teachers tomorrow.

Technology in the classroom is also a hot topic in Europe, as it is here. I chose to use the influence of technology in the preschool classroom as my topic for my research simulation, so I found it really interesting to read this article. The article does not discuss the effects that technology could have on children's behavior or sleep patterns, as I am interested in investigating, but rather the influence that it plays on children's social interaction, which is also a very intriguing point.

Overall I learned that Europe seems to be facing the same, exact issues that we are facing here in America. I really find their journal to be a valuable resource and have favorited this site so that I can stay current on hot topics and continue to print articles that are of importance to my staff.

Research and it's Benefit to Children

Research is conducted every day in the science and medical fields. The most important research, in my opinion, is the research that helps create cures to diseases and medicines that help people live quality lives.

 One thing that I find to be a very interesting topic, is the increasing diagnosis of children with autism. The number of children with autism continues to go up every year and there is still no known cause. If I could conduct research that would benefit children, I would choose to conduct research to find first the cause of autism. I think if we can find out what causes autism, then we can reduce the number of children diagnosed with this condition. After finding out the cause(s) of autism, I would then work to try to find a cure for it. Autism is such a complex condition, since it is a spectrum, children can vary from very high functioning to very low functioning. I think it would really benefit children, families, and the world if we could find out why this is occurring, how to prevent it, and ideally, how to cure it.

My Personal Research Journey

With a new year comes a new class, and in this case, a new research topic! My broad topic idea for this research simulation is to see how early childhood education benefits children overall. After thinking about this topic, and what more I would like to learn about this, I broke my topic down into three subtopics. They are:
1. To see how early childhood education benefits children's verbal skills
2. The influence that early childhood education has on children's empathy, manners, and overall social skills
3. The influence of technology in the preschool classroom - the pros and the cons

My task now, is to choose one of the subtopics to focus on for the remainder of this course. Each of these topics interests me, so this is the hardest part for me so far. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on these subtopics. Which one do you think will benefit families and the ECE field the most and why?

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and look forward to us all helping each other out these next 8 weeks!

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.

More About My International Contacts

I have talked about one international contact that I have made, Chris Hussey, who works with the British Association for Early Childhood Education. I'm sure that he is very busy and I have not heard much from him in the last couple of weeks.
Since then, I have made another international contact named Martina Carter. Martina is an early childhood specialist who works with Early Childhood Ireland. Martina informed me about the different subsidy programs available for families in Ireland. She explained that preschool aged children can attend preschool for 15 hours per week for one year, free of cost. I found this really interesting and it is similar to what the UK has in place. Early childhood education seems to be valued higher in both the UK and Ireland than it is here in the US.
I currently have messages to both Martina and Chris regarding the standards that their preschool programs use, school readiness, and their opinions on the achievement gaps in their countries. I look forward to seeing how their achievement gaps rank against ours here in the US. I suspect that they are much lower since the children in both countries receive free preschool. I will update as soon as I hear back from them.