Research Around The World
In my last course at Walden, I spent a great deal of time navigating through the website of the Early Childhood Australia. So, for this course, I decided to browse through a different organization's website.
This week, I browsed through the website of European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) -
http://www.eecera.org/
I was able to see that in their journal (EECERJ), they get to publish researches of a wide variety like: birth to age three, children's and parents' perspectives on diversity in education, outdoor play and learning, professionalism, and leadership and management. I was drawn to one whole issue dedicated to children's perspectives and participation in research. This issue interested me mainly because this is a topic being discussed in my current course.
It seems like all over the world, researchers are seeing children and their participation in research in a new light. Children are now given more value and respect.
It is nice to see that this organization provides some articles and issues for free for the public. By doing this, people who might not have enough finances to purchase journal articles will get the opportunity to learn through the resources available. To think that their journal is even indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information.
Beginning a Journey in Research: A Reflection
Research truly scares me as I know it is a commitment that requires time, energy, priority and dedication. Don't get me wrong, I love learning about researches and find new researches important in teaching; but, conducting them myself is a completely different story. Nonetheless, I will try my best for I know this is also for my own personal and professional growth.
As a teacher educator, I decided to explore how teacher education programs prepare Early Childhood Professionals for this course's research simulation. This is a very broad and complex topic so I will focus my study on just 2 teacher education programs in my country. Hopefully I will be able to study; 1. The University of the Philippines Department of Family Life and Child Development (UP-FLCD) which is where I graduated from and taught in for 7 years, and 2. Roosevelt College Center for Teacher Education (RC-CTE) which is the institution I currently teach in. Specifically, I want to identify the similarities and differences between the 2 programs especially since one (RC-CTE) follows the mandate of the Commission of Higher Education while UP-FLCD has their own charter. I also want to explore what courses the graduates from both programs found most useful for their current teaching profession. In addition, it would also be nice to determine if they (the graduates) found that their programs lacked any course that they think would have helped prepare them as an early childhood professional.
As I constructed my research chart and begun my application 2 paper, I felt overwhelmed. I found it difficult to choose from the 3 sub topics I determined last week as I am equally interested in all of them. But as Naughton, et.al (2010) stated, we also have to look at what is workable given the short amount of time that we have. I hope that the topic I chose can be finished in a few weeks. Another concern I came across is more personal in nature. Being 9 weeks pregnant, I have been experiencing great nausea and vomiting that lasts the whole day, leaving me at times incapacitated with lesser time and ability to focus on work and on this research. I am looking forward to better days... Nevertheless, I am committed to try my best in the meantime...
