Week 8 When I Think of Research...

The insights I have gained from learning about research is to analyze the different types of research and what do they mean. I did not realize that there were different types of research. My ideas about the nature of doing research has change is when you start off doing the research you have to have a topic and then from there you have to do the subtopic and brainstorm the main points to form an outline.

The planning, designing and conducting the research in early childhood did I learn is respecting the justice and fairness in everyone regardless of their age, gender, and culture. I also learn to have a consent form in place of doing my research and keeping my personal bias to myself and do not let interfere with my research.  The challenges I have encountered was analyzing between the quantitative designs and the qualitative designs. The ways did I meet them is doing the assignment and reading the different materials in the textbook to give me a better understanding of what they mean and examples of how to use them in a research. My perceptions has been modified as a result of this course is to analyze more better of my topic of doing my research, learning who is going to be in my research, learning about the independent and dependent variable. It made me think in deep thoughts and was very challenging.

I just want to say I really enjoyed everyone from these past eight weeks. To my colleagues and Dr. Darragh I felt like I learned a lot from your comments and post on blackboard and the blogs from this course. I do not like to say good bye, I will say to all of you I will see you later, and I wish everyone much success!!!!

The website I chose to look at was European Early Childhood Education Research Journal.

Many of the issues they are researching are similar to early childhood issues here in the US. Some of their articles include, Introducing children's perspectives and participation in research, Early education for diversity: starting from birth, The influence of play context and adult attitudes on young children's physical risk‐taking during outdoor play, The dynamics of early childhood spaces: opportunities for outdoor play? What's so interesting outside? A study of child‐initiated interaction with teachers in the natural outdoor environment, Togetherness and play under the same roof: children's perceptions about families and The social and cultural contexts of second language acquisition in young children. This journal covers many issues. There are studies on topics ranging from diversity to professional development. I noticed that some of the more recent issues focused on a specific topic. One focused on children between ages zero to three and another covered different aspects of children’s learning outdoors. The other thing I noticed about this journal is that it’s very diverse. There are studies done in many countries and not just the European ones.

Since I’ve already taken the Trends in Early Childhood course, I was not surprised by the things I found on this website. I had already learned that many issues in the field are similar in most parts of the world. One thing that I have noticed after talking to my international contacts from the last class and by looking at this website is that they are much more concerned with children having outdoor time. Here in the US, many school age children don’t have recess. Since the journals were mainly talking about younger children, I wonder if there is a push to get school age children outdoors as well. The other thing I have gained from this assignment is another useful resource for articles and information. Here is a link to their most popular articles as well.