Week 5 blog assignment

While exploring the website of early childhood Australia, I have found the research topics be very similar to the topics listed in the NAEYC website. For example, I am interested in different cultures and diversity, so I clicked on the link "A World of Difference". This book is about helping children build respect and understanding of themselves, and it includes issues and topics such as cultures, languages, regions, and so on. By exploring the website, I have found many popular topics that are related to current early childhood field, such as partnership with parents, play-based curriculum, and respecting diversity. It also includes articles about education system in other countries such as Singapore, New Zealand, and Korea.

I especially checked the book called "Learning and teaching through play" because "play" is my simulation topic in this course. I also looked at an article concerning about play, language, and social skills of children. There are many early childhood related topics that can be good professional development tools. The website clearly states the education scope of Australia. People can almost find everything they want to know about Australian early childhood education on the website. It includes good-organized information for parents and useful resources for early childhood professionals as well.

Week 3 blog assignment

When I was a practicum student and was assigned to one of the early childhood centers that included special needs children in the classroom, I observed a research in process. I wasn't completely aware of the research hypothesis, but the topic was about whether children growing up with special needs children would express more empathy and show more help to others. The research was conducted by a group of university students regarding children behaviors. At the time I was doing my practicum, the research was in the step of gathering data. The students stayed in the observation room, observing and recording some specific helping behaviors shown by the group of children (participants) they chose. These children did not know they were being observed, but of course their parents had been informed and signed the parent consent forms. The students chose to not inform the children because they wanted to observe the natural responses of these participants. Some other members of this research went to centers that did not include special needs children. After they gathered enough data, they would put these different sets of data together and compare them.


I didn't know what the research conclusion was, but I am very interested in this topic. However, when I thought of this research, I had a question that I wanted to clarify. Let say their research conclusion was positive, that children going to inclusive centers might express more empathy and show more help to others. How did the research minimize the affects of environment? These children show more help because they have seen special needs children and they know how to help. If we put other group of children (the ones that went to exclusive child cares) in the same environment, they might show the same degrees of help to the special needs children. The environmental factor could be the one that influenced the research results. But anyways, I think this topic is very interesting and I would like to learn more about this in the future.

My personal research journey

The research topic I chose was the importance of play and the influence it had to children's learning and development. I chose this topic because I want to let more people know about play.

My personal experience has had a great influence on me. When I was young I lived and studied in China. I was not allowed to play and everyone was focus only on academic results. When I moved to Canada, I was fascinated by the teaching styles here and it had given me new understanding about teaching, therefore I decided to make teaching my future career. Now I work in an international school in China and I want to show more Asian families about the western styles of teaching so that's why I want to do this research to let parents know the importance of play, so hopefully I will get more supports from the parents.

The researching chart is very helpful in conducting my research. I also had opportunities to check out some qualified electronic resources in the discussion board and some of them were useful in my topic.