To share your knowledge and experience with the world is to make a difference! This blog is dedicated to sharing knowledge and real life experiences that make a difference in the world of education.
The consequences that I have encountered through learning about the international early childhood field for my professional and personal development is that:
1. Education is diverse, it does not just exist in the classroom but it exists all over and the more we create diversity in education, the more we open up the children to learn.
2. Another consequence is that I got a chance to see how education is presented in other countries which helps me to make my classroom environment and strategies better.
3. The third consequence is that I have found that there are soooooo many organizations out there that support kids and educators internationally and having a international connection can be very important to professional and personal growth in the field.
1 GOAL FOR THE FIELD RELATED TO INTERNATIONAL AWARENESS OF ISSUES AND TRENDS AND THE SPIRIT OF COLLEGIAL RELATIONS:
One goal for the field is to connect and communicate and share ideas better with each country to help each other create a stronger early childhood system across the world.
UNESCO is an organization that focuses on creating diverse networks to:
Mobilizing for education: so that every child, boy or girl, has access to quality education as a fundamental human right and as a prerequisite for human development.
Building intercultural understanding: through protection of heritage and support for cultural diversity. UNESCO created the idea of World Heritage to protect sites of outstanding universal value.
Pursuing scientific cooperation: such as early warning systems for tsunamis or trans-boundary water management agreements, to strengthen ties between nations and societies.
Protecting freedom of expression: an essential condition for democracy, development and human dignity.
When I first looked at the site the one thing that popped out to me immediately was the “Culture” tab at the top of the website. I clicked on the site and I saw another tab that immediately sparked my attention…the “Culture for Sustainable Development” tab so I clicked on that. One key think that put it all together for me was when I read
“Placing culture at the heart of development policy constitutes an essential investment in the world’s future and a pre-condition to successful globalization processes that take into account the principle of cultural diversity.”
The UNESCO organization is targeting culture to build development for children. This is a new idea that I have gained and I must say that it should be added to my professional goals to be more diverse in teaching as well as making culture a focus in the classroom for my students.
The second insight that I gained was the use of media. The UNESCO has a multimedia section under their resources tab. As I explored this area of the site, I found different multimedia uses of getting information out such as a photo bank, radio collections, and stories on video as well as news.
I explored the photo bank and the awesome part about this was that it allows you to choose the region, country, place, theme, and year to see the photos during that particular time.
The UNESO organization also has a portion on the website for publications. This part has books, guides, periodicals, audios, and etc. in addition, it has a library archives which I chose to explore and I found so many different pieces of information and one thing that stood out to me was the “In Focus” video for the month. Take a look at it below
I love how this video is done in South Korea and they get different ideas on learning from the student’s perspective.
From exploring the website, the main thing that relates to my professional goal is the diversity in learning. That is definitely a tool I want to be able to reach my students with.
I got to this website by going to the “Public Policy” tab, then scrolling down the page to the “Resources for Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships” tab, then that page has a number of outside websites that are on this topic.
On this website it gives great information about grants offered to Head Start Programs, how to apply for those grants, what the evaluation process is for the grant applications received how to set partnerships with the community and Head Start Programs.
FEATURED UPDATE
One area of the Zero to Three website that caught my attention was the “Featured Update” portion of the site. This was found towards the bottom of the homepage on the right hand side. The featured update was “Response to the President’s 2014 Budget Proposal.”
“Washington, D.C. – ZERO TO THREE applauds the President today for making babies and toddlers a priority in his 2014 budget proposal, with a substantial investment in early learning.”
The link above also gives you the whole article on this topic. Some things that interested me the4 most from this were:
“A groundbreaking moment for babies and toddlers in this country –especially those who are at risk and may lack the positive early learning experiences they need to succeed in school and life,” says Matthew Melmed, Executive Director of ZERO TO THREE.”
“The budget includes $1.4 billion to expand the comprehensive supports offered to the most vulnerable families through Early Head Start – which for almost 20 years has proven it improves both child and parental outcomes. The plan would provide $200 million in 2014 specifically to create more high-quality child care options for babies and toddlers with working parents, using Early Head Start’s quality benchmarks, expertise, and resources.”
“The President’s plan also extends and expands home visiting — which has been warmly embraced by states, communities, and parents — to reach more families where they live, with information, guidance, and encouragement.”
“The President’s plan helps parents utilize what science and evidence-based practice has to offer in order to give babies, toddlers, and young children the best start in life.”
E-NEWSLETTER
I normally do not get a newsletter from Zero to Three, but I do get emails from them frequently about resources for early childhood development such as: Behavior Has Meaning Wheel Set, ZERO TO THREE Let’s Play App, I’m Here For You Now board book, or the Little Kids, Big Questions podcast.
EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN CARE & EDUCATION
Another portion of the website that add to the understanding of equity and excellence in early childhood is the “Rally4babies” section under the “Join Us Take Action” on the middle left hand side of the homepage. Although this tab leads to a different webpage; http://rally4babies.org/ it is still a part of Zero to Three.
The following video is one that gives some great insight to what the program does and how it provides excellence to early childhood development.
Also, this site provides information on the Strong Start Act:
”The Strong Start for America’s Children Act of 2013 is a robust beginning toward giving young children the best start in school and in life. In addition to a new federal-state Pre-K partnership, this birth-to-five bill focuses on these important early learning opportunities for infants and toddlers:
“Gives Early Head Start programs the ability to reach more eligible children through innovative partnerships with child care programs to improve quality.
Allows states to use 15 percent of their Pre-K funding to provide high-quality child care settings for infants and toddlers to help minimize the learning gap among low-income children well before they enter preschool.
Endorses the expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs that have been shown to have a range of positive impacts on parenting and early development.”
In addition, their “Early Learning Info” tab has some featured resources that we can look at to get a better understanding of issues and trends in early education such as school readiness, policies for infants and toddlers, early head start, etc.
The one thing that I liked the most about this tab was that it had a short video about language and literacy development for early:
These insights have definitely been helpful in furthering my understanding of equity and excellence in early childcare.
The 1stinsight for me was to even learn about the Global Children’s Initiative. I think it is awesome that Harvard’s center on the developing child to create a resource that helps children globally.
“The Center’s commitment to global work represents both an acknowledgement of moral responsibility to meet the needs of all children and a critical investment in the roots of economic productivity, positive health outcomes, and strong civil society in all nations, from the poorest to the most affluent.”http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/
Their focus is on 3 main areas which are
reframing the discourse around child health and development in the global policy arena by educating high-level decision-makers about the underlying science of learning, behavior, and health, beginning in the earliest years of life;
supporting innovative, multi-disciplinary research and demonstration projects to expand global understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track; and
building leadership capacity in child development research and policy—focused on both individuals and institutions—in low- and middle-income countries to increase the number and influence of diverse voices and perspectives that are contributing to the growing global movement on behalf of young children.
The 2ndinsight that I gained from exploring this website was that Brazil’s policymakers have implemented a course in the science of early childhood.
“Drawing on the latest research in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences as well as institutional and leadership development strategies, the program provided attendees with the knowledge and tools to design and implement more effective public policies and social programs. The program culminates with participants developing science-based action plans to strengthen early childhood policies or programs in their jurisdictions.”
This is what policy makers in the U.S. want to do to help train better educators for the future payback.
The link below shows a short video of how well Brazil went through this course as well as their optimistic outlooks on what this course will bring to the children of Brazil.
The 3rdinsight that I gained from exploring this website was the “Zambian Early Childhood Development Project.” This project was so amazing to me because the Zambian Ministry of Education, the Examination Council of Zambia, UNICEF, the University of Zambia, and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University came up with a way to measure effects of children’s health and educational development from the exposure to disease in their country.
They created a “new comprehensive instrument for assessing children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development before and throughout their schooling careers”
This was called the Zambian Child Assessment Test (ZamCAT) and it
Combines existing child development measures with newly developed items in order to provide a broad assessment of children of preschool age in the Zambian context.
It also includes in the assessment things like HOUSEHOLD IDENTIFICATION, RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE TEST, LETTER NAMING TASKTACTILE PATTERN COMPLETION TASK, PATTERN REASONING TEST, BLOCK TEST, SERIAL RAPID NAMING TEST WITH RAN-PICTURES, NAME WRITING, etc. a sample can be found in the link below
file:///G:/ZECDP%20instrument.pdf
I thought ALL of this information was amazing and I did not know that these kinds of efforts were being made in other countries to help child development. I must say that these are some interesting ways to get involved with research to come up with solutions to ensure that the children succeed and increase future payback for their countries.
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