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/

Sharing Web Resources

When I began to explore the newsletter from the Society for Research in Child Development this week, I was drawn to an article about policymakers and research.  The article talked about how the individuals in charge of our decision-making need more substantial, research-based information.  Instead of creating more policies, the author suggests they should be investing in the work of social science researchers.  It went on to say that federal funding should be allocated to this area to help the long term effects of issues like poverty.  How can we solve a problem if we only work to make programs to aid once someone is impoverished?  Their idea is to try to get to the root of the issue instead.  This article seemed particularly relevant to our work in this course.

One article that made me think in new ways was about taking on grad school with two small children.  The author talked about what a juggling act it is to be a mom and try to grow professionally.  Each new course brings new struggles with how to balance life, a full-time teaching job, and grad classes for me.  This article made me really think about my fellow classmates with children, though.  While I have many things on my plate, I do not have little ones expecting me to care for them.  It makes it a lot easier for me to schedule my time and finish my coursework.  It was a good reminder that things will always be busy, but you need to be able to prioritize the things that are important in life.

The first article I mentioned urged politicians to back researchers and social scientists.  This is one way that politicians can have early childhood agendas on their radar.  It will help them in the long run to be able to work towards a solution for issues like poverty.

While the website and newsletter contain great information, I found this week that there were many roadblocks if you are not a member of this organization.  All of their excellent scholarly writings and journal articles are available online – but only if you are a member.  Membership runs about $140 a year depending on where you are in your education.  I would love to be able to shell out that kind of money and access the site in its entirety, but that isn’t a feasible financial option for me at this point.

Getting to Know your International Contacts

I was hopeful that I had found a great way to get connected with an early childhood professional outside the US, but it has proven to be a bust.  My college professor from Cameroon, Africa no longer keeps in contact with her old friends and colleagues abroad.  She did, however, give me the email address of another college professor that makes many trips to China each year. 

When I contacted this professor, she initially said she would be happy to help.  She runs a program that allows college students at Eastern Michigan University to do their student teaching experience abroad in China.  The program started the year after I graduated, but it sounded very interesting!  She told me that she had many contacts that she could connect me with but wanted an overview of what I needed from them before she would consent.  I explained the blog assignment and told her I would need to be in email communications with the EC professional weekly.  She thought that was too much to ask of one of her students or colleagues and decided she could not help me.  I tried one last time and told her that I would try my best to look ahead at the assignments and consolidate my questions to one or two emails.  She said she was hesitant to ask for a favor from a student or colleague without knowing the exact specifications and decided not to help me.  What a disappointment!  I was very excited when I found her as a resource but quite let down when she told me she could not help.

I decided that I was going to need to do the alternate assignment but was again disappointed to see that the links we were given did not work.  I feel like I've done so much and have very little to show for it!  Since I got the error message “URL not found on this server” for the World Forum Foundation and the error message “Google could not find this website” for the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy page, I moved on to yet another option.  I explored the Save the Children website as a very last resort.  Save the Children is working in 120 countries around the world to give kids a healthy start.  The organization has a place for people to donate to their fund.  You can donate to sponsor a child or you can purchase things like animals, food, or even soccer balls.  One donation idea that I thought was very cool was “Wedding Favors”.  A couple donates to the fund instead of having favors for each guest at the wedding.  In exchange, Save the Children sends cards to place on tables that thank guests for the donation in their name and detail what their monetary donation means to the life of a child. 

Sharing Web Resources

The organization I selected to explore during this course is the Society for Research in Child Development.  Their website is: http://www.srcd.org/  The focus of this organization is to, “stimulate research in child development…[and] disseminate research findings” (Society for Research in Child Development). 

After reviewing the website, I went on to read the organization’s newsletter.  There was a section devoted to new teachers participating in service learning that I found to be quite interesting.  The newsletter talked about professors assigning more authentic service learning opportunities to students going into education.  They urged that instead of having the participants keep track of the number of volunteer hours they earned professors should give projects that encourage interaction and learning.  I thought this was a great point.  When I did my undergrad work I was required to do observation hours in a variety of settings.  The classroom teacher simply signed off that I was there.  Encouraging volunteers to become active participants instead of passive observers is a great idea.

I was expecting to find a bit more about the new research on best practices, etc. while reviewing the website and newsletter.  In the weeks to come, I hope to explore more so that I can fully utilize and appreciate this new resource.

Society for Research in Child Development.  The Roots of SRCD.  Retrieved from: http://www.srcd.org/about-us

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

Establishing Professional Contacts

For our blog assignment this week we were challenged to make contact with two early childhood professionals outside the United States.  I began wracking my brain for individuals I knew before moving on to the resources provided.  The first person I contacted was a professor I had in my undergraduate studies at Eastern Michigan University.  Her name is Dr. Baiyee and she is originally from Cameroon, Africa.  She knows many people from many different backgrounds.  It is my hope that she will be able to help connect me with individuals who many help with the blog assignments for this course.  I am waiting to hear back from her.

When I was unable to think of anyone else, I delved into the weekly resources.  I used the OMEP website and emailed a woman from Finland and another from Sweden.  I have heard great things about the educational systems in these countries and would be interested to learn more.  Neither woman has contacted me yet, but I am hopeful that even if they are unable to help they may be able to point me in the right direction.

Expanding Resources

This week I explored some different resources and finally decided on one that I’d like to look at throughout the course.  I chose the Society for Research in Child Development.  I chose this organization for two reasons.  One is that I am a firm believer that we need to stay current with information regarding best practices and what works for children.  The second reason I chose this organization was that often Early Childhood makes people think of fun, play, and little ones.  While these are parts of Early Childhood, I think it’s important that we still present ourselves as professionals.  I had a very close family friend tell me this week hat she thought it was crazy I had to get my Master’s degree…who needs a Master’s degree to teach Kindergarten?  I think if we were able to present more resources and research to back up our good practices people may take our field more seriously.