Monday, April 16, 2012

Building Research Competencies

Some insights that I gained is understanding quantitative and qualitative research types. I have been so surprised at the attitudes of researchers with children. I was not knowledgeable that children were such a “non-person” until recently. I do think that consent and respect of the child as a participant in a research project is a necessity.

I have learned many lessons about planning, designing, and conducting research in early childhood. I have written many research papers in my college years but have never studied the details. It has helped to learn why I did the things that I did in doing research and the things that I should have or could have done to make it easier.

Equity is beyond equal, meaning fairness and justice. Children are having the right to fairness and justice in their lives. Research in Early Childhood has changed my knowledge about the issues and trends that are being studied.
Thank you to my classmates for your support, your conversations, and your participation in class. Thank you to Dr. Davis for being so supported and helpful in my understanding of research. This has been a difficult class for me and I entered it with trepidation.

Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Early Childhood in other countries

The Australian Early Childhood Advocate says:
Our mission statement:
Early Childhood Australia will advocate to ensure quality, social justice and equity in all issues relating to the education and care of children from birth to eight years. Our values are:
• The rights of children
• Leadership, excellence and respect
• Courage, honesty and openness
• Collaboration and diversity
• Justice
• Social inclusion of children
Early Childhood of Australia. retrieved from http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/about_us/about_early_childhood_australia.html

GHANA’S EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Government committed to early childhood education-Minister, The Minister of Education,
Mrs Betty Mould –Iddrisu, on Sunday said the Government considered early childhood education a priority as a long term solution to Ghana’ s economic and social problems……..She said: “our goal is that every Ghanaian and African child must be valued equally and our early childhood education and development service must meet their needs whether they live in slums remote communities or cities”
Staff Writer, Ghana News Agency

Retrieved from http://www.ghananewsagency.org/details/Politics/Government-committed-to-early-childhood-education-Minister/?ci=2&ai=38308.

I looked at a number of different countries and their attention to early childhood. All of them have much in common. The Australian mission and values very closely matched the one that was reported by the Ghana News Agency. The Minister of Education at a conference on Early Childhood pointed out the goal of the value of childhood education and how the services needs to meet the needs regardless of the child’s living conditions.

I see the goals and values of both are very much like those of the National Association of Education of Young Children. This is called their code of ethics which we have studied.
National Association Education Young Children. Code of Ethics http://www.naeyc.org/ecp/resources/ethics