Culture and Diversity

Their definition of culture

One friend said culture is about how people live and do things in their specific ways. Another friend said culture is the language, food, history about the family, and what kinds of lives they live. The last friend said culture is about children’s education, how they are raised by their parents, and their own traditions and customs and the holidays they celebrate.

Their definition of diversity

The first friend said diversity is about differences between people coming from different places. They might speak different languages and eat different food. The second friend mentioned diversity as people’s different races, their languages, and their different ways to doing things. The last friend thought diversity is also about different language, food, and values.

The aspects of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course are included as they all mention languages, food, and ways of doing things. These are mainly the surface culture. Only one friend mentioned about people’s values could be different with diversity, and it belonged to deep culture that I have studied in this course. By asking people’s definition about culture and diversity, I found out that the way people perceive with these topics are still basic and on the surface. As an early childhood educator, I need to dig deeper into my families’ culture and find out their deep culture so that I can better support their children in learning their own cultures and diversity. 

Week 2 blog post

If my family and I were to move to another country permanently, I would choose first a dictionary from my own language to the second language because to preserve my home language in both reading, writing and speaking is one way to preserve our own culture. The second item I would choose is a book about my own country’s history as we need to keep in mind of our own history so that we know who we are. The last thing I would choose is also a book about dishes in my culture, because food is an important of culture.

I would explain to others that the dictionary is to make sure that I won’t forget my own language because my home language is my culture. My country’s history and food are very important in preserving my culture so that’s why I chose these two books.

If I could only keep one personal items upon arrival to the new country, I would be very sad and anxious because giving away any of these items would feel like giving up my own culture. I would be panic and didn’t know which one to keep because all three items meant so much to me as my culture.

Culture is very important to everyone. To be asked to give up your own culture is painful. As a result, early childhood educators should support families in preserving their own cultures because culture is valuable and priceless.

Reflection and thank you!

Through this course, I have gained valuable knowledge about research. I have learned that deciding research topics would need to be carefully considered over and over again. From week one to week seven, we have carefully reviewed what we have learned and refined/modified the research topic. Every time I modified my research topic, it became more specific and related to what I want to do. Moreover, research should do no harm to children in any way. Researchers sometimes want to receive the intended results and might ask wrong questions or present inappropriate activities to children. One more thing that I learned about the research was to have children consent to the research, not just the parents. Children have the right to decide whether they want to be participate in the research or not. 

I want to thank the instructor, all the colleagues and classmates for helping me throughout the course. Through discussion board, I have learned colleagues’ thoughts and supports/ideas and these have enriched my mind about early childhood education. I have learned a lot about research during the course and hope to use the knowledge to support my children and families.

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.

Learning about the international early childhood field

After learning the issues and trends in the early childhood fields and discussing with international early childhood educators, I have learned that every countries has their own issues, and some are very common in most countries. I have also become more familiar about the cultural difference and the impact it has to young children and their learning and development. I have become more aware of different cultures and tried to involve different cultures into my program as much as possible. I am glad that I can get into contact with international early childhood educators and learned from them about the issues and trends in the early childhood field in their own countries.

One goal related to international awareness is that I need to be more aware of the impact of diversity and how diversity has influenced children's learning and development. Every culture has its own style so by discussing with early childhood educators from different cultures and combining the useful information together, we can better support our children in their growth internationally.