When I think of Research...

This course seemed a bit intimidating at first.  I loved how things were broken down week by week, though.  The layout of the course made a big project seem very doable because it was presented in small steps.  One challenge that I encountered during this course was restating terms in my own words during our weekly charts.  It seems like such a silly, easy thing but once I have read a definition it is often hard for me to think of a new way to say the same thing.  I tackled this problem by trying to give concrete examples of the terms each week.  Not only did this help me to define terms without simply quoting a book definition, it also helped me to remember the terms more easily.

One way that my perception of an early childhood professional has been modified is that I have realized that all teachers are researchers.  We may not all have 12-page essays with research companions to show our work, but we all conduct research on some level.  Putting a child on a behavior sticker chart and keeping track of their progress is one way we do research.  If we notice the data is staying the same and there is no improvement we know to move on to the next technique.  Teachers are always trying new things and keeping track of their successes and failures to work towards reaching all learners.

When planning a research project, I realized that there are many decisions to be made.  Every little aspect of a research project involves major thinking and many choices.  The nature of research is that each person is looking to find different information and goes about it in a different way.  I struggled a bit with this in the beginning because I tend to be a very black or white type of person.  It seems that there are no real “right or wrong” answers in research.  Your decisions shape your research and while some choices might be better than others there are no real cut and dry rules.  It caused me to do a lot of critical thinking!

I have gained many new insights from this course.  One invaluable lesson that I learned was how to read a research article.  Without the first week and the documents provided in this course I would have felt very overwhelmed.  I was so pleased to find that there are many aspects of a research article you can skip over.  Practicing the method of what to skip and what to read (and re-read) has helped me to become a better student and a more knowledgeable early childhood professional.

Research Around the World

I chose to explore the website for Early Childhood Australia.  When I looked into current issues I found many budget issues both on a small and a large scale.  Funding for early childhood years from the government came up in many places as well as funding for preschool.

Some interesting topics I found were re-thinking how they allocate money as parents pay more and more for early care, new standards for care are already showing positive outcomes in children’s lives, and an article about quality childcare being more important than cost.

My favorite find on the website was an article called “Fight Against e-bullying Needs to Start Early”.  This immediately caught my attention because social media is on the rise, but I was interested to hear what it had to say about the impact on our youngest learners.  Their stance is that as soon as children are introduced to technology, they should also be educated in proper online etiquette and the socio-emotional ramifications of their online behaviors.  While the article notes that cyber bullying is usually not prevalent in the early childhood years it is never too early to start educating young children.  I agree that this is becoming a bigger issue and needs to be addressed.  The article didn't give any practical applications or steps to go about educating young children, but I found the idea interesting.

One noteworthy observation I made while exploring the website is that there are many similar issues happening in Australia that we are also facing in the United States.  Allocation of government funding as well as adhering to best practices as early childhood educators are both heavily talked about on the site.