The topic for the research simulation I have chosen is shyness in preschool age children. Throughout my teaching career I have often had shy children in my class and done my best to help them develop skills that allow them to feel more comfortable interacting with their peers and the other adults at school. Through my studies I have been learning about the importance of social/emotional development and its connections to all other areas of development. More importantly the effects of not having appropriate social awareness skills can have on emotion health in middle childhood and beyond (Berger, 2009).
This topic is of particular interest to me this year because of a child I have in my class. She joined our class in September two mornings a week and has just begun to answer my direct questions with one or two word answers within the last month or so. She spoke to my co-teacher for the first time this week. At home the only person she really interacts with is her mother. She never talks to the other children, but will play alongside them. None of the shy children I have worked with in the past have taken this long to begin communicating in the classroom so it has made this topic one of great interest to me.
The simulation process so far has reduced my anxiety level a bit. Knowing that we are going to work on this in smaller steps has been helpful. Learning that there are several ways to conduct research that is valid is also helpful because some research designs seemed very overwhelming to me. I am still concerned about formulating the research questions for my study as the topic is very broad in my thought processes right now and I am still unsure of the direction I want to go in.
One thing that I found very helpful when looking for literature on my topic of study using the Walden library was to use a variety of search terms in the database fields. Using shyness AND preschool children produced different results than using reducing shyness AND preschool children. I entered the same terms in different databases which provided me with different results also increasing my choice of research to learn from.
Any helpful tips on locating quality research are greatly appreciated. If a fellow student is doing a closely related topic I would love to share resources that I find with you as they may be more helpful for your line of inquiry than mine.
References
Berger, K. S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI would like to hear more about your topic about shyness among young children. I have similar case in my class too. I noticed that children whose first language is not English tend to be more shy and passive than a new comer that speaks English. I was thinking if culture plays an factor in the shyness of children at a very young age.
Perhaps you may also want to consider culture's role in the shyness of children.
I believe most of us are still figuring out a way in formulating our topic for research. We just need to take it easy and work one step at a time until we reach our destination. Thank you for your post. Looking forward to your research. Good luck to you Michele.
Michele, I would be interested in reading the results of your study. This is something that we deal with in our Head Start program a lot. Especially in children have not interacted with anyone on a daily basis except members of their own household.
ReplyDeleteMichele,
ReplyDeleteThank you for mentioning the tip of switching the order of our search parameters. I will have to try this in the future. Wish I had known that earlier. I found an article during my literature review this week that you may want to read. I will email you the link.