When I Think Of Research...

Through studying early childhood research perspectives on theory and practice, I have come to understand that research is a process. It is certainly very involved and appears to be daunting, but breaking it down as we did and taking the process one step at a time paves the way for a more explicit understanding of the journey.  Although different researchers may follow different designs and have different perspectives and paradigms, the goal of research is to uncover new understandings and share that knowledge with others.  

My ideas about the nature of doing research have shifted. I was initially intimidated by the idea of doing research, as it felt overly scientific to me. My initial impression of what research consisted of was participants being 'experimented on' and then their results shared with the world through scientific jargon split up only be the occasional confusing data chart. This course helped me better understand how the process of conducting research works, which helped me better understand each step along the way. I feel confident now when reading research that I know how to pick up key information.

In planning, designing, and conducting research, I learned to take several important aspects into consideration.  It is essential that when conducting research in which young children serve as the participants, their well-being must be considered. If any harm may potentially be done to children, they potential benefits must far outweigh that harm.  Additionally, a researcher must consider the design that he or she will follow when conducting the research.  I feel that using a mixed methods approach is beneficial to research because it helps the researcher accumulate information in a variety of ways that will only increase the validity of the study.

When formulating my research simulation, I experienced the challenge of keeping a fresh perspective. For a research question to uncover new understandings, it is helpful for that researcher to look at the particular topic in new ways. Forming a research question that allows a researcher to do that is difficult. A research question must be very specific and take into consideration who the research will benefit most and how that research will be conducted.  Once I established my research question (although I did edit it several times), there seemed to be a more natural flow to the rest of my simulation.

As early childhood professionals, this course has helped me see how we are all interconnected.  In the past, I may have felt that researchers were superior to me as a preschool teacher.  Now I see that as a preschool teacher, I have a powerful skill set to help build a foundation and starting point that may help me produce quality research as well.  We're all in this together.  Of course teachers can learn a great deal from research, but researchers also learn a great deal from teachers.  I hope that viewing early childhood professionals as separate entities within the field disappears, and the gap can be bridged. This course help me see that there doesn't appear to be such great disconnect after all.    

Research Around the World

The mission statement of the ECDVU aims to further develop African leadership in the field of early childhood development.  As leadership capacity grows, so will the support towards the well-being of children, families, and communities, as well as broader social and economic development.

Many of the research topics that are currently being studied in the United States are being studied in Africa as well. Among these are:

• Program quality sustainability
• Developing quality in EC leadership
• Assessing program and service quality
• Culturally and developmentally appropriate practices
• Enriching family partnerships
• Enriching teacher training curriculum

A research topic that is new to me and caught my attention was:

• Strengthening capacity of grandparents in providing care to children less than 8 years old affected by HIV/AIDS

In reading more on the topic, I found that is the HIV/AIDS virus has affected 50 percent of all children in Uganda, mostly due to the fact that it is the leading cause of death among Ugandan adults between the ages of 15 and 45, leaving many children in foster care of orphaned (Nyesigomwe, 2004).  1 family out of every 4 in Uganda is taking care of foster children or orphans.  Still, many are left without adults to care for them at all.  Grandparents will care others.  While funding has increased to help fight the epidemic, most funding has gone towards prevention or treatment of the virus.  Very little has gone to supporting the children who have lost their caretakers.  In order to better support the well-being of young children in Uganda, more support must be given to those who are left to support them (Nyesigomwe, 2004).

References

Nyesigomwe, L. (2004). Strengthening the capacity of grandparents in providing

care to children less than 8 years old affected by HIV/AIDS. School of Child

and Youth Care, University of Victoria, 1-135. Retrieved from http://www.ecdvu.org/