Reflecting on Conducting Research

Reflecting on conducting research……………

This course has been a challenge for me because I had never embarked on the idea of creating a research study or the steps required to even start a project. It was easy to think of the topic I wanted to research relating to early childhood.  But establishing research questions that would lead to a hypothesis was difficult. I knew I wanted to use the quantitative method of conducting my study because I am familiar with creating questionnaires, interviewing and during observations. I have learned the importance of variables and their difference but again understanding the different in an independent and dependent variables has not quite registered to me. The fact of the extraneous variable was easier because I know if I add to a variable such as medication it could cause an error in the validity to the study. I knew the ethics of keeping family information confidential and private is important even in the field of early childhood but in research I need to keep a tight reign on how I collect, store and share the information I gain from conducting research with children and families.  

I can’t end this post by saying I fully understand the research process and all that has to be done to ensure the outcome is valid or even measureable but I have gained an understanding of why research is important in early childhood.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the remarks, feedback and awesome post during this course. Dr. Ferrari thank you for the guidance and support you gave to help me gain and understand of the different research designs and how to choose the right one for the topic I wanted to do a research study for.

I wish you all the best,

Shelia

 

European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA)

  The website I visited was the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) . EECERA is a non-profit organization, wholly-owned and subscribed to by its substantial and influential world-wide membership. It generates its own revenue, receives no external funding and thus ensures its independence, radical attitude and innovative openness. It is an independent, self-governing, international association which promotes and disseminates multi-disciplinary research on early childhood to determine how it applies to policy and practice.

EECERA seeks to sustain and develop the rich tradition and legacy past European researchers such as Frobel Steiner Vygotsky and Piaget. These were some of the many early childhood pioneers that have impacted the lives of young children. They aim is to continue looking forward on ways to explore new paradigms, methodologies, concepts and applications in the ever-changing context of early childhood studies. Its reach and interest is resolutely international and, whilst wanting to identify with Europe’s pluralist and diverse cultures. Their mission is to learn and to share in, the equally rich early childhood traditions and concepts of the World.

One of the research articles I found interesting is “Ethnic habitus and young children: a case study of Northern Ireland”. This article presents the findings of an exploratory survey of the ethnic attitudes and identities of a random sample (n=352) of three–six‐year‐old children in Northern Ireland. The survey represents one of the first of its kind to explore how young children's awareness of ethnic differences develops in contexts where ethnicity is not marked by visible, physical differences. In drawing upon the notion of an ‘ethnic habitus’, the article shows how young children from the two majority ethno‐religious groups in the region – Catholic and Protestants – are already acquiring the cultural dispositions and habits of their respective groups even though, at the earlier ages, they have little awareness or understanding of what these dispositions represent. The article shows that young children are capable of developing ethnic identities and prejudices in the absence of physical cues and discusses the implications of these findings for practice as well as for understanding the effects of racial and ethnic divisions on young children in other social contexts.

I think this was a good article for early childhood educations to know about because being aware of the diversity of children we serve and their ethnicity does impact the interactions with peers. Please visit the website below read more about this very important topic.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13502930902951460