Research Around the World

I chose to look into research on the Early Childhood Australia website. This year I have a girl in my class whose father is Australian and we spent several days in class learning about that country. The family was kind enough to share cultural books, as well as Australian children books. The class favorite was a book of photos of their classmate and her family in Australia, the photo of her petting a kangaroo was astonishing to them.

Early Childhood Australia publishes the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood (AJEC) it is the longest-running major journal in the early childhood field. (Australasian refers to Australia, New Zealand and the neighboring islands in the South Pacific Ocean).

You need to subscribe to have full access to the journal articles but I was able to access the index and abstracts for the most current issue, Volume 36, published on December 4, 2011. Several of the research studies were topics that are of interest in the United States such as parental views of the influence of television on the development of young children. The Australian study by Garvis & Pendegast found that very often if a TV program is rated educational parents do no further investigating on their own.

Another study by Colmer, Rutherford & Murphy looked at attachment theory and primary caregiving in early childhood settings. Utilizing the primary caregiver as a partner to intervene with families where there are disruptions to the parent – child attachment. I found this idea very interesting and a new way to look at the importance of primary caregiving and I wonder if it would work in child care settings here in the US.

Play is the focus of much research in the US and a comparison study conducted by Reynolds, Stagnitti, & Kidd conducted in Victoria, Australia found that children from low socioeconomic areas that attended school with a play-based curriculum gained more social and language skills than the children that attended a traditional school.

Noteworthy information that I found is that there are a lot of changes happening in early childhood education in Australia this year. As of January 1 of this year, the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) is working to implement high –quality early childhood education and care for all children. Australia as a nation has recognized the importance of rich preschool experiences and veiws it as a way to close the widening gap between children who are doing well academically and those that are not. The Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 was passed with an understanding that a strong cognitive and language base leads to later educational success. May we in the US get our policy makers to develop this understanding!

References

Colmer, K., Rutherford, L., & Murphy, P. (2011). Attachment theory and primary caregiving [Abstract]. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. 36.

Early Childhood Australia website http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/  

Garvis, S., & Pendergast, D., (2011). Warning-Television viewing may harm your child’s health: Parent perceptions of early Childhood viewing habits [Abstract]. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. 36.

Reynolds, E., Stagnitti, K. & Kidd, E., (2011). Play, Language and social skills of children attending a play-based curriculum school and a traditionally structured classroom curriculum school in low socioeconomic areas [Abstract]. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood. 36.

Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

 In 2001 the U.S. Department of Justice implement a project called the Safe Start Initiative. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention started the initiative in the hope of mitigating some of the effects on children exposed to violence. Current estimates indicate that in the United States as many as 10 million children have witnessed or been victims of violence in their homes or communities.  Children’s exposure to violence has been linked to lower academic achievement, as well as, increased anxiety, depression, and anger. Increased alcohol and drug abuse is also a result. The project was divided into several phases.

 In 2011, The RAND Corporation researched the effectiveness of phase two of the project and found positive results. Phase two involved the implementation and evaluation of a range of interventions to help children and families cope with the effects of children’s exposure to violence at 15 sites throughout the country.

Because of many obstacles in collecting data, forming strong conclusions was not possible. What was learned for future implementation, is the type of obstacles practitioners using these types of interventions will face and how to modify their approaches.

Despite difficulty in data collection researchers were able to identify that many of the programs were successful in establishing their individual program goals. The programs were able to develop procedures to increase identification of children exposed to violence. Also, communication and coordination among service providers was established. Services gaps for children and their families were addressed through interagency and communitywide partnerships. Overall awareness of the effects on children who are exposed to violence was increased, as well as, the need to respond to it with effective interventions.

As we are continuously reminded of the violence in our communities and schools by daily news reports this is an example of research providing effective techniques and increasing community resources to help reduce some of the consequences for the children and families exposed to the violence. May we someday be able to stop all the violence!

As a student learning about research and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of creating a research simulation, I was reassured to find out that this project was still considered successful and useful information was gathered despite the researchers having difficulty with data collection.

References

Jaycox, L. H., Hickman, L. J., Schultz, D., Barnes-Proby, D., Setodji, C.M., Harris, R., Acosta, J.D., & Francois, T. (2011). National evaluation of safe start promising approaches: Assessing program outcomes. Retrieved from The RAND Corporation website: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2011/RAND_TR991-1.sum.pdf

U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. (2001, April). Children’s exposure to violence: The safe start initiative. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/fs200113.pdf

My Personal Research Journey

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.