International Early Childhood Education

Over the past several weeks I have been looking at quality early childhood care and education both in the United States and internationally. It is through this research via it be through international contacts, professional organizations, newsletters, blog posts, videos, or pod cast this has consequences both for the profession and myself personally. These consequences can be both positive and negative.
1. They say knowledge is power, but it is actually what you do with the knowledge that is power. When you aware of an issue you have a choice to act or to ignore. It is through the action of those working in the field that we will begin to see change and this change will impact the globe for years to come. There are so many opportunities to become part of the international world of early childhood education to help improve the lives of children everywhere.
2. We live in a global world and that means an increase in communication of needs, issues and successes in the field. We need to communicate with one another and collaborate for change.
3. As humans we tend to make comparisons and I have seen this in many of my readings and research. We compare the systems of early care and education in countries around the world. We need to use this comparative research to determine what systems and standard yield the best results for children and create a universally recognized set of criteria in which to measure quality and effective programs around the world.

I have though a lot about where my career is taking me in the field and as my life situations have changed over the past several months I feel that I need to begin to look beyond my local community and have a larger impact on the field than I can do at the local level. I don't know what this looks like right now, but it is something that I will be spending a lot of time looking into.

United Nations and Early Childhood Education

This week I have been struggling with the idea of quality in early childhood programs. As a nation we the United States has not developed an agreed upon standard that defines quality in early childhood education. If we as a developed nation can not agree what quality care looks like how can we help develop policies and support developing countries in providing quality early care and education. The United Nations has a website dedicated to Early Child Care and Education at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/.

The United Nations website discusses the lack of a universally agreed upon criteria for quality in early care.The greatest hindrance for including the United States in increase access to quality care bringing together resources both public and private to support services as is the case in Singapore, where most preschools are run by for-profit corporations and registered with the Ministry of Education that provides support for low income families. Most children in grade 1 in Singapore have had at least one year of preschool. There needs to be some degree of collaboration between the public and private sectors.


While exploring the United Nations website I came across a policy brief that really made me think about how we determine the value we place on early care and education. The Brief entitled What is your image of the child? discusses how our view on children shape ideas and policies on early childhood education. If we don't view the child as whole, able, and complete then we approach early care different and place lower value on the investment of early care. 

I do feel that the view of early care is changing around the world, but it needs to start in the field itself. Teachers need to look at what their views of children are and the value they place on children and early childhood education. If we view ourselves as more than mere babysitters, then we will raise the quality in our own classroom and then we can begin to change the field.

Digging deeper in the field

I often ask myself, am I doing enough for the children and families I serve on a daily basis, lately this I have changed this to wonder if I am doing enough to help the field of early childhood education? What contributions an I making and how can I become an advocate for change? As I searched deeper into the NIEER website I had those thoughts and questions in mind. This week I looked at the videos on the website and watched several videos on the benefits of and barriers to quality preschool education. There was one video that really struck me, it was titled The State of preschool 2011: On the edge of crisis, this short video showed that while enrollment in preschool has increased funding has decreased. This lack of funding means lack of access and a limit to quality. This has been a key area that needs to be addressed by individuals working directly with children daily. Teachers and program administrators need to follow quality standards and become strong advocates for Universal preschool and national standards for quality.

Here is the link to the video

http://nieer.org/publications/nieer-videos/state-preschool-2011-edge-crisis