Discussion about Culture

This week  I attended a diversity training and had a great conversation about culture and diversity with several of my colleagues. For many culture was described as the aspects of their personalities that make them unique. There was a general consensus that culture goes beyond race and ethnicity,  and can be described as the customs and values that unite a group of individuals.

Some of the aspects that were discussed as part of culture were religion, family values, respect for elders, views on parenting, education, the way we dress, food preferences, and political affiliations. Then we looked at the iceberg model of culture.

This led to more discussion of culture, and how some did not realize how we look at and view individuals with special needs. One person shared how he was always told that he needed to be tough and not to cry when he was hurt. He said that this was how it was for all of the boys in his family. He struggled when he had his son and wanted him to be sensitive and be able to express emotion, but felt pressure from his family to not caudal him and "make him tough".

As I listens to the discussion, I though about how my value system is shaped by culture. This includes how I approach problems and thoughts on illness. As an early childhood educator it is important to understand how families view illness.  For some families there is the belief that being cold can cause illness and bundle their children up. It is important to respect the differences of all families and in order to do that we need to understand our cultural beliefs and biases.

Family Culture

In the field of Early Childhood Education we are often asked to examine our family cultural views are the importance of cultural items. This week as I look at cultural and diversity I was asked if I needed to be evacuated to a foreign county what three small items would I take and why. This was hard for me to answer, because I don't feel that I have any tangible items that are of cultural significance to me. There are several things that are of sentimental value to me and my family, including pictures, but don't carry any cultural value to me, My culture is ingrained in me, it cannot be reduced to trinkets or items. It is who I am to my core, my attitude, ideals, and views on life, politics, parenting etc. These traits I would carry with me wherever I go. If I had to pick one tangible  item I guess it would be my wedding ring, I would take this because it is a part of my social identity and a way to hold my family close to me.

When I think of research...

Over the last several years there has been a growing understanding for the need quality research to benefit the field of early childhood education. There has been much political discussion on the importance of the high quality early childhood education, not only to support school readiness but also to support the future of our society. As I embarked on research I felt that only those advancing the field and work research universities in the field. As I read literature on my issue, I saw the importance of including professionals at every level in the process. Classroom teachers need to understand their role in classroom research, and that they are researchers investigating and discovering what the children in their care are showing them and each day. 

In planning research it is important to look at all of the factors and implications of the research topic. I learned that all research has intended and unintended consequences, and all of these need to be considered. As I looked at the why and how of working with children that have challenging behaviors I needed to look at several factors and take several things into consideration. This caused some challenges and I needed to continually examine my own beliefs and value systems to avoid bias in the process of design my study.

This has been a great process and has allowed me to grow in my own competency level in the field. I learned that every person in the field needs to be an active participant in advancing quality through research.

International Early Childhood Research

Around the world the field of early childhood education is booming with research about supporting the physical, emotional, and social development of young children. This week I spent time reading some of the research projects that were done by graduate students at the Early Childhood Development Virtual College in Sub- Saharan Africa. Many of these research studies were about parent education, engagement, and collaboration. These studies were conducted in different African countries, but all researchers understood the importance of the family in early childhood development.

As I explored the research papers and the ecdvu.org website I found that the trend was community building and working with the families, this is not only important internationally or in developing nations, but something that we need to spend more time researching how to support children and families in our own communities.

On the ecdvu.org website there are country profiles for the students who were part of the first Master’s program. I strongly recommend that when there is extra time in your day that you read some of the research as well as the country profiles.

Focused Research

This week I was asked to imagine that I had unlimited funds and resources to conduct research that would have a lasting impact on the field of early childhood education. As I pondered this I thought about autism research primary in developing therapies to address social-emotional impact of autism in girls as that is a subject that close to me, but as I thought about my week meeting several advocates for Head Start and knowing that many members of our Congress are not convinced of the lasting benefits of Head Start I decided that if I could I would conduct a longitude study on the positive effects of Head Start on low income children and the working poor.

Head Start currently serves over a million children a year providing more than just an early start for school, but also provide medical screenings and nutrition, as well as parent education. They provide a vital service to the country, but is already underfunded leaving several communities who are in the most need of quality early education without it, and programs currently in operation are always in fear of losing funding. If a long term study that looks at the the fiscal impact of Head Start be able to show policymakers that the return on investment on early care and education is worth the initial cost both fiscally and and on  society as a whole could be conducted I think that it would have a lasting impact on the field.

Research Simulation

Early Childhood Research

All early childhood professionals are researchers, we continually research and investigate what children are learning and how to add the the environment to aid in their learning. It takes time and practice to become a proficient researcher. Over the next several weeks I will be conducting a research simulation on working with young children who have challenging behaviors, specifically how the education level of a teacher impacts how young children develop self-regulation and the emotional language to work through challenging behaviors.

In my role as early education director I receive calls almost daily from parent who have children who have been asked to leave another preschool due to behavior problems. This increase is of interest to me as I plan and lead staff development workshops on how to support these children and their families.

As with most things assistance and support is key to success so in order for me to have a successful simulation I need and ask for support from my colleagues not only through literature, but from stories of challenging behaviors in different early childhood settings.

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

Global Initiatives

The Global Children's  Initiative is an organization that was established to use a collaborative science-based research  base to help improve the lives of children around the world. They have several partnerships with organizations  around the world. One of the partnerships  they have is with Nucleo  Clencia Pela Infancia  (NCPI). The NCPI is a Brazilian initiative to increase the knowledge of how lifelong health and wellness begins in early childhood.  The NCPI is working to build a scientific  community around child development  to work with with policy makers to improve the lives of all young children  in Brazil. The other important two task that  the NCPI is working on is to take the research to build social policy and build leaders in the field, also since it is a global partnership  they have to translate all research to Portuguese so it is accessible  to all Brazilians.

Being an early childhood  educator  in the United States it is easy to get caught up in the needs of our own communities, which is important,  but we need to become a global community and be part of a global  conversation about addressing the needs of young children around the world.