Research that Would Benefit Children and Families

I  do not have any stories to share as I have never done any real research before and I have also never been part of any real research before.   I wish I have been because I would love to be part of such a great experience.  I look forward to any of my colleagues sharing any great research stories this week.  So I have went with option two and I am writing about another topic that I would love to research but did not choose as my topic.

If I was able to do any type of research, on any topic in the field of early childhood education without causing risk to children and that would make a huge impact it would be on whether or not lack of passion on a teachers end or lack of involvement on a parents end has more of a negative impact on a child’s learning.  This is not something that I have ever done research on nor really read up on.  I think that a lot of people are consistently blaming parents for the lack of learning and education that their children get.  Just from a quick search on google scholar I can see that there are lots of literature reviews and studies that have been completed on parental influence but has anyone ever looked at the difference between the two? Who really has more of an effect on a child’s learning? The teachers or the parents?

If a child has a natural love for learning and they have teachers who are passionate about what they do, will a parents lack of involvement really make a difference? It may, it may not.  This is something that I have always been curious about.  It is not what I chose to do have my simulation research in this course because the path I want to go down is professional development and training.  Therefore I chose to research that.

Research shows us that many factors can influence a parent’s role in their child’s education such as work stressors, poverty, lack of education themselves, and other factors (Usher, 2012).  I am not disagreeing that parents and family background plays a large factor in children’s learning.  I just really would like to know if parents have a greater effect than teachers do.  I would want to study a larger group of both and directly correlate the results to see the differences and/or similarities.

I do not believe that a study like this would cause any risk to a child.  I believe that there would be some unintended deception involved because I would want to make sure that behaviors of parents and children were authentic.

Usher, A (2012).  What Roles Do Parent Involvement, Family Background, and    Culture Play in Student Motivation?  Center on Education Policy, George Washington  University, retrieved from www.googlescholar.com, January 23, 2015

Barriers to Obtaining High Quality Professional Development in the ECE field

I have always had a passion for early childhood education and with that passion I have been obsessed with professional development and training.  Up until November of 2013, I worked most of my career (20 years) in the field of child care and early learning.  Most of that time, I was a center director.  NYS does not have a great plan or requirement for professional development and training for childcare or early learning programs.  he NYS requirement for child care teachers is 15 hours a year which I would say is super low.  However, it is a matter of how you are required to get those hours.  There is no real accountability of who is doing the training and what resources are being used to train the teachers.  At the organization I worked at, I was responsible for training my teachers.  Now, as much as I love training and professional development, I did not have access to many resources nor all the correct knowledge that I needed to train the teachers on some of the required training’s.  I felt as though I was often doing them such a disservice.  Long story short, this is why I am here and in this program at Walden.  I left my career to finish my Masters Degree and pursue my passion.  I want to learn more in depth about the field of early childhood education, about issues and trends, theories, training and professional development.  I enrolled in the “teaching adults” program because I want to become a certified trainer for NYS and I want to make professional development my career path.  I want teachers to want to continue to learn and to be as passionate about it as I am.

So far in this research process, choosing my topic was easy. I narrowed it down to barriers in professional development because I always hear so many excuses of why teachers can not train or develop themselves (money, lack of resources, lack of time, etc)  I want to show them how much those barriers actually do not exist.  I have found some literature on my topic but not an abundance.  I have a feeling that if I was to complete a full research study, I would be doing a lot of hands on research in schools, day care centers involving lots of interviews and data collection to see what teachers feel and to compare/contrast the programs who have solid training and those whom do not.

As you are all early childhood professionals from all different parts of the field, I would love hear different opinions and professional perspectives on what my research thoughts entail.  What are your feelings on professional development and training? How does your state compare? If you are a director or administrator to you feel you should be the one doing all the training?

I look forward to hearing from some of you!