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.