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.