What I Think of Research...

Taking this course has been both exciting and challenging at times.  I have always been a hands on kind of person and loved the experiment part of science, a good detective novel or working out problems with a pencil and a piece of paper.  I enjoy the process of solving for X and finding the solution.   As a child I loved word problems and learned how to pay close attention to all the factors within a problem.  I learned how to use deductive reasoning and problem solving to come up with a possible solution.

However, the paperwork part of research, the part that deals with sorting through everyone else’s research, is not strength.  While I truly appreciate having learned how to recognize a reliable source and got a lot of really great research pointers from everyone, the hours of sorting through the write ups of other peoples experiments is hard for me.  I guess it is my impatient side coming out.  If I can’t perform the experiment myself I want to be able to find the answers I need quickly.  I get easily frustrated with the overabundance of information on the internet that comes up when I Google a particular area of interest.  99% of what comes up is not applicable to what I am looking for so I often find myself going back to old text books or lecture notes that I know have the information that I am looking for in them.  The problem with that is that often these sources are on the edge of being outdated.  In this electronically driven world I need to be able to find current information on subjects of interest and to do that I have to be patient and sort through the overabundance.  No matter how much I dislike it. 

 
Overall the opportunity to look closer at research has given me a reminder of how important research really is for our profession to continue to grow and how the little research projects and experiments we do daily within our classrooms are so important.  Thanks everyone for all your help and support in learning the best way to play on both my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to research. 

Best of luck in all your endeavors!

International Research

European Early Childhood Education Research Association

www.eecera.org

I looked into the EECERA web site and found that many of the research topics that we are looking into in this country are similar to those being researched in Europe.  Issues like equity and diversity, the importance of play and working with parents and families are all currently being researched.  In addition they are looking into the importance of men in the lives of children and are trying to create a more gender balance within the field of early care and education.  Having done a little research into this topic myself, I found it very interesting how they are going about attempting to create the gender balance.  In addition to conducting these research projects some governments have funded programs specifically designed to start bringing more men into the field.  They are hopeful that providing training, recruitment and retention of men for the field will encourage and provide more opportunities for a man’s influence into the lives of young children.