When I think of research...

I want to take this time to thank my fellow classmates for the support and incite over the past 8 weeks. I have truly appreciated every comment and have learned so much throughout this course.

The insights that I have gained about research through this course is that I need to be as scared as I use to be about research. With accurate planning,  understanding how research works and what type of research I want to study it can be done successfully. I use to think that research was so difficult and time consuming but I learned that I was doing it all wrong. This course as helped me be able to successfully organize my research and execute it effectively.

I learned through this course that it is all about the planning and designing of my research that will help make it successful. If I plan properly and design the research in the right way it will help all of the research fall into place. I have also learned that I have to have extra time in case I find a different outcome or research does not go exactly as planned.

I think the biggest challenge that I had was coming up with an appropriate topic and subtopic. The topic of kindergarten was such a broad topic that I had to break it down to find out exactly what I wanted to study. There was so much information and so many questions that I wanted answered that I had to use what I felt was most important. Once I was able to sort out my topic and subtopics everything else fell into place nicely.

I think that my preceptions of early childhood professionals have been modified because I now understand how much hard work and dedication they have to have to the field. Research is not an easy task and I now understand how much hard work, time and dedication goes into the work that they do. This course has really helped me appreciate the early childhood professionals.  I would love to contribute to research and study parts of early childhood that I found the most important.

Research Around the World

The website that decided to look more into was Early Childhood Australia. When looking at the research topics and media releases that have been recently released I found some very interesting topics.
One of the topics that I found was how the early years education is missing from the federal budget.The article talks about how the government keeps talking about funding early childhood but continues to nickel and dime early childhood education. They also discuss how the income for teachers needs to be raised, this is something that I think all countries need to take into consideration, finding education and their teachers.
Another article that I read what about preschool attendance in children ages 3-5m and how these children were not reaching their full potential because they were not fully attending. The country is trying to make their education more affordable and let parents pay less out of pocket for their children to attend quality preschools.
An incite that I gained from looking at this website is that they are having similar issues with their education system that we are. So many times we are focused on our own country and how we are being told that our education is lacking but other countries are having the same problems. Just as we are trying to fix our own problems they are also trying to fix theirs.
This website also had great resources to read up about. You could read about babies and toddlers, school readiness and sleep habits, even about behavior management. You can sign up for their newsletter for more information or just go and look through all the great topics.