Final Blog Assignment

Learning about the international early childhood field had many personal and professional consequences.  The first would be that it opened my eyes to the world around me.  So often we get caught up in our own little world and we forget that there are other places to look for inspiration and information.  The second consequence of international learning was that my knowledge-base and resource pool have grown.  Instead of only using my community and the people I know, I was introduced to the idea of looking abroad.  It would be foolish to assume that the United States is the only place to look for information on how to run early childhood programs or care for young children and their families.  I now realize I should be looking to others outside of my little bubble.  The third consequence was an unintended consequence.  I realized that international contact is extremely difficult, albeit beneficial.  Out of my group, only one person was able to establish contact and she had issues maintaining contact due to the time differences.  When you do gain an international contact, I think it’s important to keep up with them often in order to maintain that contact.

In the future, I hope to gain and maintain more contacts outside of my comfort zone.  This may mean international contacts, but would also include people from different walks of life, different states, and different programs.  Learning from others is so important!  Having connections with professionals from different backgrounds makes you a stronger teacher as an individual. 

UNESCO's Early Childhood Care and Education Website

As my attempts to make international contacts never quite worked out, I will be again working on the alternative assignment.  I look forward to reading about what my classmates have found out from the people they were able to connect with outside of the United States, though.

This week I looked at UNESCO’s Early Childhood Care and Education webpage.  According to the website, “UNESCO advocates for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programs that attend to health, nutrition, security and learning and which provide for children’s holistic development.” 

The first thing I chose to explore was a news article entitled International Day of the Girl Child.  The article talked about empowering girls, through education, to help them avoid poverty, violence, and discrimination around the world.  The article touched on issues that I don’t think of often in the United States, especially the idea of very young girls getting married.   

Next, I looked into the section called “Access and Equity”.  This section talked about different programs put into place to ensure that all children have access to quality care.  In some cases, this means redistributing wealth or thinking about things in a different way to accommodate poor families.  The aim should be that all children have the chance to learn no matter what their family background or economic status.

Finally, I chose to look at the page about “Quality”.  UNESCO’s view is that early childhood programs and early care should teach the whole child.  This type of ease into learning will help children transition into more formal instruction in older grades.  While there are no universal standards for what makes a quality program, they believe that there are some things all programs should have.  Individuals working with young children should be adequately trained and the programs should be checked up on regularly.

This website had great information on access, equity, and quality.  On top of that, there were many great news articles on related topics.  I found many new, interesting, and thought-provoking facts and areas to explore on UNESCO’s site this week.

Sharing Web Resources

This week I was able to explore the Society for Research in Child Development on a deeper level.  The first thing I did was follow some outside links from the website.  There is a section called “Publications” that has many professional journals and articles related to research in child development.  Some of them led to interesting information, but many of them required a subscription to the SRCD in order to access them.

One area of the site that I chose to thoroughly search was the area entitled “Policy and Media”.  This section included information on policy updates in research in child development.  There is also a section within this section called public comments.  The public comments section is a great place to learn the SRCD’s stance on many issues.  It contains their “press release” answers on many topics.

There was no new newsletter from the site.  This site sends out quarterly newsletters so there has not been anything new since January.  I went back to the January newsletter to look for information on equity and excellence in early care and education.  Since we had not yet covered that topic I thought there may have been something I overlooked.  I was unable to find anything in the newsletter that I haven’t already covered in previous blog posts.

This website has been a difficult one to have chosen for these assignments.  Without a subscription, I worry that this website does not have enough substantial information to be included as a choice for the “expanding resources” section of our course’s blog assignment.  

Getting to Know Your International Contacts - Part 2

I have still been unable to contact any international teachers or early childhood professionals.  My plan is to continue to try and make contact throughout the course, but it is not looking good.  The alternate assignment that we were given is to explore podcasts.  Neither of the links provided for the World Forum work.  Each comes up with a message error and will not open the webpage.

This week, I explored Harvard’s “Global Children’s Initiative” webpage.  The Global Children’s initiative aims to, “meet the needs of all children and a critical investment in the roots of economic productivity, positive health outcomes, and strong civil society in all nations, from the poorest to the most affluent” (Harvard).  I looked into the Global Children’s Initiative Fact Sheet as my next course of action.  I found the section on mental health to be very interesting.  It stated that mental health problems are massively under addressed.  Harvard has come up with three programs to address this problem within different countries. 

Another interesting section of the website spoke about applying the science of early childhood in Brazil.  The program allows Brazilian scholars, policymakers, and civil leaders to work together towards to a common goal.  This made me think of last week when we learned about people outside of the early childhood field having an interest in early childhood issues.

This website has a wealth of information and seems to be very well organized.  It is a great resource and has practical solutions for current issues facing the early childhood field.

Resource:

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/