Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Story

As we learned more about how research could be ethicial and unethical, we know that there are times that research could be impacting a child or the participant life while it may be the results could benefit to others. However, there are also great reserach samples that have positive effects on children and families. For example, the research “Preschool to kindergarten transition patterns for African American boys” (Iruka, Gardner-Neblett, Matthews, and Winn, 2014) was a great longitude study where the researchers start to collect data of selected groups from birth to the child attends  kindergarten. The procedure of this study was not harmful to children or families. It is a data collection method which the research give a questionnaire to the childcare providers or teachers about the child’s socio-emotional development during each visit from birth to kindergarten.  

The goal of this research is to gather informations on the patterns of African American boys transitioning into kindergarten based on their language, academic, and social skills collected in preschool and kindergarten. Moreover, they want to examine the extent of family socio-economic status, parenting and parent’s education level may affect their children.

Some of the findings in this research are:

• Family income and parent education were related to parenting processes and children’s academic and social skills with the exception of kindergarten social skill.
• Parenting practice (e.g. literacy practices) and interaction (e.g., cognitive stimulation) were positively associated with many child outcomes.
• Over 50% of African American boys in the study were either stable or showed marked improvements during their transition into kindergarten when families and teachers are working together (Iruka, Gardner-Neblett, Matthews, and Winn, 2014).
• Almost 20% of boys were struggling in their academic when the families are not working with the teacher and the teachers are not individualize their teaching style to fit each child’s need.

  I am excited to learn about this study as it is related to my work and something that I want to learn more about to support families. My program serves diverse population, and compare to other ethicity, African American families tend to have less parent involvement or participation in our program. We did workshops that they said they were interested in through the result from the parent survey, but their attendance is still low. It might be becaue most of them are single mother who needs to take care at least 2 or more children , so it could be challenging for them to involve in their child's learning without other supports. However, with these result, we can show parents that it is critical to actively involve in their child’s education and working with teachers together. As a program, we could think about other ways to support these families to increase their willingness or abilities to support their child by maybe provide parenting workshops and childcare supports while they are in the workshops. It make a huge difference to a child’s life when they receive the mutual supports from home and school.

Referece

Iruka, I., Gardner-Neblett, N., Matthews, J.C., and Winn,D. (2014). Preschool to kindergarten transition patterns for African American boys. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29 (2), 106-117. Retried from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200613001075

The Beginning of My Research Journey

                My passion is always in supporting cultural diversity in the early childhood field. As our society became more diverse, there is no doubt that racism and inequality exist along with the growing diverse population. As an early childhood educator, I believe we have a responsibility to provide a positive environment to support children to success. In additionally, it is important for educator to support this new trend of growing diversity population by helping children to learn and appreciate their identity while respecting other cultures. 

I am a true believer of play-based environment and believe that children learn the best in a secured environment that they are familiar with. The story that I am going to bring, push me more to promote diversity in the classroom. I had a Hispanic student, Osmar (fake name) who just moved from Mexico less than a year, he was a very social and happy boy always likes to ask questions and use his limited English vocabulary to communicate with his peers and teachers. In the second year, because of father’s job, the whole family needs to move to a different county. One day, Osmar’s mother called me and crying for help. She said Osmar did not talk as much now after he moved to a new preschool and Mom did not feel welcomed in the school. Mom expressed that the classroom has a very academic  setting which she somewhat like in the beginning, but later on she felt something wrong with the classroom as she does not see anything that she could relate to. Osmar does not speak much because the teacher does not encourage him to express himself. Mom felt like the teachers are not being patient with him as he is learning English. I helped Mom to find other school that value diversity but because it was almost the end of school year, there was no vacancy.  

This is a sad story, which also stimulates me to learn more about how a cultural diverse classroom supports children from diverse population. The research chart from last week’s assignment reduced my stress about research. A quality research should have a clear title for each key paragraph or task such as participant, methods, discussion etc. It helps audience to better understand the research and easier to find the information that they want to know. 

I am still learning how to narrow down my subtopics to make it measurable and wondering if my revised subtopic of “how a a cultural diverse classroom supports children from diverse population” is clear and measurable? Perhaps, the research could measure a classroom promote diversity and compare with a classroom who only focus on academic? I would really appreciate if anyone could share any article they know would support my research. Good luck everyone on your research!

Insight and Goals

I really enjoyed learning new information and other country’s early childhood field from my international contact, Ms. Yu. I appreciate her honesty and passion to her career and to the children and families.

  

One thing that I learn from Ms. Yu is to think outside of the box when supporting children and families. For example, she would not mind to do home visit to learn more about the immigrant families, which was not required by the school. A responsible educator would take extra steps to learn about the child’s family background, as it is where children learn and develop their attitude and values. Therefore, it is vital to learn about the cultures, values and background of the family we serve. I would encourage my teachers to learn about the families by doing icebreaker game in the family meeting and prepare set of questions to get to know the families.

Secondly, from the conservation with Ms. Yu, I learned that in order to provide equity education to children, we have to be very sensitive to the child’s need and the family’s need as well. Since we are not familiar with other’s cultures, our perspective to the values and needs of others may not suitable to the actual needs of the families. For example, some families may not feel their culture is represented in the classroom when teacher already put books and toys reflected to the cultures. Hence, to ensure the environment reflect to the culture we serve, teachers and director needs to communicate with families to understand how their cultures and how we could provide a secure environment to make them feel comfortable.   

Lastly, I would like to keep up with the research related to early childhood education to enhance my knowledge and support my team. Ms. Yu inspired me to keep up with the latest research when she talked about how she aware of Hong Kong does not support children’s social emotional development but she learned about it from other country’s research. Educators should also learn the childhood development perspective and research from other countries to enrich their knowledge, which they may find new findings or good strategies that may beneficial to their own professional development or their career.

                I believe that racism and inequity happens everywhere in the world, children are innocent and they do not learn bias if they never expose to one or experience it. We cannot control bias outside of our area, but we could control our environment such as school and home to promote equity and acceptance. Globally, we should have a discussion forum to share ways that we promote anti-bias and equity in the early childhood field. Moreover, I believe in inspiration, we should also share success stories of how we promote equity make a difference in a child or family’s life.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

        

My professional partner, Ms. Yu, expressed that the issues regarding quality and early childhood professional in Hong Kong, China, are the opportunities for continue professional development and quality care in low-income population. In the last conversation we had Ms. Yu expressed that there are growing numbers of immigrant moving to Hong Kong who speak different dialect than Hong Kong people. These immigrants are poor and they moved to Hong Kong because of the free public education that they provide. Hong Kong currently do not have any support system to support teachers or not much resources to support these immigrant families to adopt to their society.   

Ms. Yu expressed that Hong Kong is a fast pace city and very competitive. Although she tries to put her curriculum into play-based and inclusive for the immigrants to feel more secured, her school does not support her much. Their education system focuses more in academic than the developmental progress of the child. Some of Ms. Yu’s professional goals are to advocate for the importance of children’s social-emotional needs and to advocate for new immigrant’s right. However, their professional development usually is related to academic and not how to support the child to build confident or social-emotional needs such as strategies on how to make curriculum to support children in mathematical skill, critical thinking etc.  


 
 Ms. Yu said she is positive to the education system in Hong Kong  and believe that the government will develop more supportive resources for new immigrants and professional development for teachers in the near future. However, she think that a professional development to help teacher recognize their values and/or equity sense is important. If a teacher do not value equity or being bias, it will effect children’s values which will affect their values and attitude toward others too. 

      



 I really appreciate Ms. Yu’s honesty and willingness to share her thoughts regarding Hong Kong’s education system and her goals. Interestingly, I have similar goal and beliefs as her. I believe that teacher’s commitment is the most valuable and important element to inspire children and their families. If a teacher do not have confident on a child, the child and their family would feel it and it may effect the child. On the other hand, if a child fails or fall behind other’s progress, but the teacher is encouraging and trusting the child could do it,

Sharing Web Resources- Part 2

I chose the Childcare aware of America web site to explore further. Child Care Aware of America is the nation leading voice for childcare who works with state and “local Child Care Resource and Referral agencies and other community partners to ensure that all families have access to quality, affordable child care” (NACCRRA, 2014). They have ongoing projects to increase quality and availability of child care, comprehensive training to child care professionals, research, and advocate for child care policies to improve the lives of children and families.  There are many sessions in the web site: about us, connect with us, about child care, news, program & services, public policy, conferences, publications and storefront. 

I chose the “about child care” session and found the important resources for child care such as the State Child Care Licensing session showed some basic licensing requirements- licensing, background checks, child/staff ratios, and etc. Other important resources: State Child Care Fact sheets & state information, child demographics, cost of child care, poverty, quality matters, school-age matters, school readiness, supply, workforce and parent perspectives. Each of these session contains resources, links, reports that related to the topic. I particularly like the quality matters topic because it contains reports and links help families to understand the importance of quality care and how the Quality Rating Improvement System (QRIS) works. This resource helps families to choose quality care also help professionals to improve their child care. 

Zero to Three, National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families, also is a very resourceful web site that I have been following. It provides many topic related to child care quality, resources for parents such as how to find quality care and resources to find popular child care in your local area (Zero To Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families, 2012a). They also provide links for parents to find affordable child care. I would continue to follow this web site as it has so many resources supporting parents in parenting. 

References

National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (2014a). Retrieved from: http://www.naccrra.org/about-us

Zero To Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families (2012a). Retrieved from http://www.zerotothree.org/early-care-education/child-care/