When I Think of Research

When I Think of Research

In this course I have learned that research is ever growing, ever learning. It never stops and no one research hold the absolute correct answer to an issue. How can it? People are forever changing, the world is forever changing. What research does is provide a number of solutions to one problem during that moment of time in the world. My entire outlook of research has changed and my predictions were correct. Research can be quite difficult and even when it is a subject you are passionate about. Frustrations can kick in. Research is not for the weak and it is definitely something that you embark on with a true passion for the problem and the resolve. When conducting research it takes a lot reading, doing the same thing multiple times, refining questions, finding the best way to research etc. Some of the challenges I faced were, obviously, frustration and boredom. I honestly knew this would happen since I do not have experience reading so much information with numbers and so on. Frustration sat in when I was trying to form the research question. I just could not seem to get my wording together, but finally at the end I got it and that was an awesome small win for me. Reading so much information in a short amount of time with background information, a list a mile long of references and then researching those references along with reading the same information over and over again allowed boredom to set in. Which is why I stated earlier that you must have a heart for the problem and the resolve. My passion for answers is what guided my through and every time I hit a "boring" moment, I remember why I was doing this research. My perception remains the same that the fact of the matter is that early childhood professionals are some the hardest working, selfless people I know and it I can seem to be unrecognized at times. 

Research that Benefits Children and Families Option 2

If I possessed the means and knowledge to conduct my own research I would conduct a study on childhood obesity in low-income areas, how to prevent it and how it could help those low-income communities in a positive way. As we know childhood obesity is a growing epidemic and a lot of early learning programs are beginning to take the initiative to introduce healthy foods to the students they serve. What I would I like to do is to speak with families and learn their concerns with healthy foods (i.e too expensive, not enough tasteful options, time consuming, etc.) I would find out what is the reasoning behind buying unhealthy foods, where does the relationship with food stem from, or do they simply not know what to look for or what is considered healthy. Bringing families in together and teaching children and their families about healthier options, building a better relationship with food could be something that connects school and home, a consistency children need. Families can see how the school cares and build a great partnership, thus bringing a positive change to the community and families.

Your Personal Research Journey

The topic I chose to further research is High Quality teachers with the subtopic being compensation. Prior to this course I had already began research on the compensation of teachers across the country then narrowing it down to just my state. The reason being is that I have had experience working in the field and the pay is not all that great, especially if you are trying to provide for a family. During my time working in preschools, this was one of the topics that came up in the break rooms a lot. While teachers loved what they did, they couldn't understand why their pay wouldn't increase, even with them gaining more education it didn't seem that raise once a year was barely budging.

With me having experienced that and knowing what I know now, I have decided to help make a change in that specific area. One way in doing that is finding organizations that share the same cause. I came across one of NAEYC's programs, called Power to the Profession. It's a national collaboration to define the early childhood profession by establishing a unifying framework for career pathways, knowledge and competencies, qualifications, standards and compensation. I am still researching ways to get involve, but that is a start.

Also, I look up salaries through indeed.com which has all preschool positions and the national average salaries of each position. I also found a site that had a list salaries for preschool teachers in the TN area.



Resources

http://www.indeed.com/salary/Preschool-Teacher.html
http://www.naeyc.org/profession
http://www.earlychildhoodteacher.org/jobs/tennessee/

Final Blog

Unfortunately, I was not able to get in contact with an international contact person. However, I did enjoy the alternate assignments and gained a lot of information from them. I even got to explore of the site I suggested which was Education Week. I absolutely loved sharing what I learned and learning from my colleagues as well. Learning about other countries and their early learning field has been disheartening, yet humbling. While some countries certainly take pride in their teachers and the field there were countries who were seriously lacking in resources. It is something that would make you grateful for what we have and to see it is not that bad, however, improvements are always great.

UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education”

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization

This site had some interesting topics, however, because of what we have studied throughout this course I was drawn to access and equity, quality and investment and financing. These three have been key issues when going to drawing board creating high quality learning centers. All three must come together meet everyone's needs. That includes students, families and early learning professionals.

"Countries often promote alternative services for poor children with limited or no access to mainstream early childhood services which can be cost-effective and pedagogically innovative, but often raise concerns about sustainability and quality". This statement was written under the access and equity section of this site. It startled me because even as one of the most wealthiest countries we still are unable to provide quality care to children poorer neighborhood. We set out to create programs that will those families however, that information is somehow lost or is never given to them. Then when services are provided the question of is it sustainable or is it a good school providing what children need to be grade school ready? We should be doing  much better in the U.S.

When it comes to high quality it is stated in this topic, quality, " High quality childcare, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, promotes motivation, confidence, good cognitive and linguistic development and school readiness." Our children have seem to lost the motivation to go school, they have lost an interest in learning which unfortunately shows in their low performance that leads to low-self esteem and lack of confidence in self. High quality childcare shouldn't even be up for question. It should be a standard for anyone opening a school that will service preschoolers.

Investment and financing is an age old battle it seems when it comes to early learning education. According to the article, we are not clearly not the only ones feeling this struggle to receive resources to provide better care. "The greatest difficulty faced by countries in their efforts to expand and improve the quality of early childhood care and education is the mobilization of resources." That is why it is now up to early learning professionals to really push for better finances and resources. We have to continue to show why early learning is such a great investment.

Sharing Web Resources

Education Week

I have been subscribed to Education Week for quite some time, but never truly explored the site until these blog assignments. This week's issue has been eye opening, so I wanted to see what articles were on the site that dealt with equity issues. Came across the title, "Oregon's 'Equity Lens' Frames Schools' Take on Bias." Immediately I was intrigued, because quite honestly I don't think of Oregon as being a place where diversity would be on the rise. However, I was wrong.

In the article, "Oregon's 'Equity Lens' Frames Schools' Take on Bias" talks about the rise of number of children of the African American race, immigrants and hispanic students are growing rapidly in schools. They noticed a difference in achievement with children of color vs white students. "What they saw was sobering but not surprising: Despite attempts to close achievement gaps between students of color, immigrant students, and low-income students and their more affluent white peers, wide disparities persisted in student performance on state tests, graduation rates, school attendance, and college-going rates" In efforts to increase this achievement gap they adopted an "equity lens" "public policy statement explicitly acknowledging the salience of race and ethnicity in contributing to disparate student outcomes and committing to narrow achievement and opportunity gaps from cradle to career through a focus on race and ethnicity." While I do applaud the effort in Oregon and I want to see the positiveness int this article, it sits a little uneasy with me. It could be the wording.

I encourage you all to read the article and give your feedback. It is quite informative.


Resources

Superville, Denise. Education Week: Oregon's 'Equity Lens' Frames Schools' Take on Bias. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/06/01/oregons-equity-lens-frames-schools-take-on.html?qs=equity

Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative”

Due to me not hearing from my international contacts, I got explore Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website. The first thing I saw was that 200 million children do not reach their full potential developmentally by the age of 5. This is largely due to impoverished communities throughout the country. However, the Center on the Developing Child works globally to build a broader movement to achieve breakthrough outcomes for children around the world. They center promotes innovation in countries such as  Brazil, Canada, Mexico and as well as across a broader international platform called Saving Brains.

Saving Brains is partnership led by Grand Challenges Canada, Saving Brains seeks to improve outcomes for children living in poverty through interventions that nurture and protect early brain development in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.  This organization/partnership has been quite intriguing and I just kept following links until I got to the official website of Saving Brains. I see that they have quite a few innovations that geared towards early brain and child development.

What stuck out to me was their Kangaroo Mother Care innovation. Kangaroo Mother Care improves survival, and potentially neurodevelopment, in preterm and low birth weight infants in hospital settings but its coverage remains low and the impact on brain development has not been comprehensively evaluated. This just had me to think that throughout this program it has been repeated how important that child/mother bond is and how it affects so many things before the child is even born. This is a prevalent issue in India where this innovation is being presented and tested. India has high low-birth weight with their infants which I discussed in a previous post. With this initiative they expect a 3 point increase in motor and mental developmental scores of low birth weight, an improvement in breastfeeding rates by 20%, early care seeking and reduced morbidity by 10% and community workers trained in counseling for KMC and breastfeeding support. I encourage you all to check out the website.

Kangaroo Mother Care

Resources 

http://www.savingbrainsinnovation.net/projects/0725-03/#innovation-summary

http://www.savingbrainsinnovation.net/projects/0725-03/

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2010). Global children's initiative. Retrieved from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/