Final Blog for EDUC 6162

Throughout this course, I listened to many different pod casts from educators around the world. While I would have enjoyed exchanging e-mails with educators in different countries, I know firsthand how difficult it is. My experience in Ghana taught me that the Internet isn’t always as readily available, or a top priority, like it is here in the United States.

Three consequences about the international early childhood field are; funding is not always high in some areas of the world, there is a lack of necessary tools in some areas, and acceptance of differences and disabilities is not always high in all parts of the world.

My wish for the field of education is to bring international awareness into teacher preparation courses. As an undergrad, it was not until I was immersed in a global setting that I had heard anything about education in areas other than the United States. This experience ultimately made me a better, more aware, educator. I think it would be very beneficial for our future educators to learn about how things are done in other parts of the world.

UNESCO- Early Childhood Care and Education

Since I chose to do the alternative assignment, this week I was able to visit the UNESCO website (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), and explore the early childhood education section. Three new insights that I gained from this website were:

1) Important conditions are that learning environments should be well-resourced and that child-staff ratios should reasonable. The notion of a reasonable ratio differs across countries, but fewer numbers help children to generate peer communication and engage together in project and group work according to their affinities and interests. The presence of sufficient numbers of staff also ensures that each group can enjoy the support of a trained professional who will lead children toward the attitudes, skills and knowledge valued in a particular society. In Sweden, for example, national statutory requirements for child-staff ratios do not exist, but the average across the age group 1-6 years is 5.6 children per trained staff member. In the pre-school class for 6-7 year olds, the national average is one teacher + assistant for 13 children (UNESCO, 2004, September).

This is something I believe should be put in place in the United States. We have classes with upwards of 30 students with only one teacher. We cannot possibly reach every student, and attain to their specific needs, without extra support and help.

2) Even with higher levels of education, work in early childhood services may still be less socially valued than, for example, teaching older children in school. A high proportion of students taking the new integrated Swedish teacher education, in which they need only choose their area of specialization after starting their course, are choosing to specialize in teaching school-age children. Preferring to work with older children may reflect the continuing lower status of early childhood work, and the inferior employment conditions that still apply to teachers in Swedish early childhood centers compared to schools (UNESCO, 2004, October).

This boggles my mind that Early Childhood teachers are valued less. In my opinion we should be valued more because this is such an important age where the children’s minds are like sponges and they learn the basics that will carry them through their educational journey.

3) Brazil has a mandatory education fund for primary education called FUNDEF (Fund for the Development of Primary Education and Teacher Development). The scheme, which requires 60% of the local governments’ – the states and municipalities – education budgets to be spent on primary education, helped increase net enrolment in primary education from 92.7% in 1994 to 96.4% in 2000. This increment of net enrolment, which brought the country closer to the ideal of universal primary education, is significant, given that the growth rate of enrolment normally slows down at the higher level. More importantly, the fact that it is mostly the children from marginalized populations who benefited from the initiative makes FUNDEF a politically important achievement (UNSECO, 2003, October).

References

UNESCO. (2003, October). Mandatory Funding for Early Childhood Education: A Proposal in Brazil. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137406e.pdf

UNESCO. (2004, October). The Early Childhood Workforce in ‘Developed’ Countries: Basic Structures and Education. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137402e.pdf

UNESCO. (2004, September). Curriculum in Early Childhood Education and Care. Retrieved April 21, 2013, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137401e.pdf

Sharing Web Resources

The website I have been looking at these past weeks is the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators.

1) Outside links: The NAECTE website has multiple links to related organizations such as; the Association for Childhood Education International, Council of Exceptional Children, Education Commission of the States, National Association for the Education of Young Children, etc.

2) When I looked at the annual conference section of the website, I found out that the NAECTE meets twice a year. They have a fall conference and June conference, with their fall conference being the main one. They have information on the upcoming conference, as well as overviews of previous years conferences.

3) The NAECTE e-letters are sent every season (fall, winter, spring, and summer). They contain information about the association, but do not contain outside links.

4) The Association has its own by-laws, policies, and position statements on education. These statements and positions talk about teacher preparation and providing children with a quality education.

5) While I enjoy looking at this website, I wish that it contained more information, issues, trends, and research on current early childhood education topics. If you are a paid member, you can access the members’ only section and view different manuscripts. I wish that this was available to anyone.

International Early Childhood Systems

This week I listened to Meridas Eka Yora speak about the devastation that was caused after the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. The tsunami killed 250,000 people, and left 500,00 homeless. After this horrible event, Yora opened up three boarding schools for children that were orphaned in Aceh, Indonesia. Listening to him speak about what these children went through really opened my eyes to how strong these children must become. They relive the trauma everyday, with some so affected that they still believe they will find their family members some day. Something that he talked about that really hit home is how the teachers first must be fathers and mothers to the children, and educators second. When the schools first opened, they hired many psychologists but soon found out that the teachers were the best psychologists for the children. I feel that educators everywhere play this role, whether their students have survived something horrible or not. Hopefully, we create an environment where our students feel safe and loved and can talk to us about anything that may be bothering them or that they may be feeling. Not only are we educators but; nurses, therapists, parents, friends, and providers as well.

In exploring Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website, I gained these three valuable insights:

-As part of its Global Children’s Initiative, the Center is launching Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância, its first major programmatic effort outside the United States. In collaboration with local experts, this project aims to use the science of child health and development to guide stronger policies and larger investments to benefit young children and their families in Brazil. This project represents a unique opportunity for the Center to work with Brazilian scholars, policymakers, and civil society leaders to adapt the Center’s programmatic model for the local context in order to catalyze more effective policies and programs that will, ultimately, foster a more prosperous, sustainable, and equitable society (Harvard University, 2013)

- While a large number of studies have investigated the impact of early childhood experiences on children’s developmental, health, and educational outcomes in developed countries, relatively little evidence is available on early childhood development in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this knowledge gap, 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 launched the Zambian Early Childhood Development Project (ZECDP) in 2009, a collaborative effort to measure the effects of an ongoing anti-malaria initiative on children’s development in Zambia. In order to measure the full impact of the anti-malaria campaign on Zambia’s human capital development, the ZECDP created a new comprehensive instrument for assessing children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development before and throughout their schooling careers—the first assessment tool of its kind in Zambia. Completed in May 2010, the Zambian Child Assessment Test (ZamCAT) 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 (Harvard University, 2013).

-    Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), “A Good Start,” is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile, to improve early childhood education through teacher professional development. The idea is to improve the quality of educational offerings for four-to-six-year-olds, particularly in the area of language development. This project is also designed to intervene in critical health areas that improve school attendance as well as socioemotional development, and it seeks to involve the children's families in their education (Harvard University, 2013).

References

Harvard University. (2013). Applying the Science of Early Childhood in Brazil. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. Retrieved April 6, 2013, from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/applying_the_science_of_early_childhood_in_brazi/

Harvard University. (2013). Un Buen Comienzo. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. Retrieved April 6, 2013, from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/ubc/

Harvard University. (2013). Zambian Early Childhood Development Project. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. Retrieved April 6, 2013, from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/global_initiative/zambian_project/

Yora, M. (2013, April 6). Episode 6: Meridas Eka Yora [Audio Podcast]. Retrieved from http://worldforumfoundation.org/wf/wp/current-work/world-forum-radio/