Web Resources Sharing

The website that I have studied in the past weeks is called International Step by Step Association(ISSA).

The section that interests me the most lately is the section of the newest news in early childhood field. It shows the clear picture of the trends in this field, and issues that are closely related to this topic too. This week, when I was looking at it, one article caught my attention. It is about the new publication on diversity and social inclusion. The theme of the article is “All children and adults have the right to evolve and to develop in a context where there is equity and respect for diversity.” (ISSA) It addresses the importance of everyone in the early child care communities should be open-minded, be communicable, be respectful, and develop their own identity. I think it is really importance for the professionals in this field. If we want our children to respect the diversity, we need to be the good examples to show how we behave when we are dealing with the diversity issues. 

It also redefines the definition of diversity, competence. I would like to talk about the definition of competence that it mentioned in the article here, as I think it is a really good point. I used to think competence means someone has certain knowledge or skills to perform a task, now I know how narrow my thought was. In early childhood education, we want children to be competent which means we want children to gain the knowledge and skills that they can apply for the usage in their later life in a long term, and the quality of it depends on people working with children, families, and communities. Therefore talking about practitioners, competence is a continuous process that comprises the ability to build on and contribute to a body of professional knowledge, acquire both practical and reflective skills and develop a professional attitude. I am glad I can have a better understanding of what competence is, so I can integrate myself in the future. Learning is endless.

The website has the information of the meeting that ISSA hosts in Turkey to discuss about the quality in early childhood education field. All the members from 15 countries share their own ideas and concerns about the quality of early childhood education programs. They all agree that high quality early childhood programs need the politicians and economists to support. We need them to give more funds to this field to gain more resources, to train more qualified teachers, and to make early childhood education more accessible to every child in the world.

The trend that I have learned from the website is more and more professionals see the development of early childhood education as a mission of the whole nation. It is no longer just a task that a group people can handle. Children are the future of our country, we need support from various people, organizations, and communities to work together to make the early child care a right for every child, and make it affordable for parents.

References:

Diversity and Social Inclusion-Exploring Competences for Professional Practice in Early Childhood Education and Care. Retrieved from http://www.decet.org/fileadmin/decet-media/publications/Diversity-and-Social-Inclusion.pdf

http://www.issa.nl/index.html

The insights of poverty in India

I might have no luck at contacting my contacts, so I have to do the alternative for this assignment.
I visited the website www.childhoodpoverty.org and there are four countries in particular for me to choose from. Since I come from China, so I would like to know something else about some other countries. I chose to study India.
India has the second largest population in the world, but it is the home for the majority of poor people in Soutted  Asia too.
In the past five decades, India has tried various ways to eliminate the poverty in the country to meet people's basic needs, and the poverty line declined from 54.9%to an estimated 26%. However, India's social services are facing major challenges. A growing population, industrialization, and a globalizing economy are stretching the education system in India. It is getting harder and harder for them to provide effective and high quality education to children.

There are more or less 400 million people in India are between 0-18 years, and many achievements have been made in health and education for those children. However, India still has the largest number of working children in the world. Their living condition and health care should be paid more attention in the future.

The poverty situation differs from the state to state. Some states are really rich, so they do not have a severe poverty problem, but some states are struggling with the fight against the poverty. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger. In India, they do not have enough middle class families to keep the balance of the society. It is kind of the dangerous for a steady developing country. The government is practicing the policies to create more job opportunities for citizens, paying more attention to the people in the poverty by offering them more education programs and the health care. The government has the anti property program which aims at increasing the rural employment, self-employment, and food subsidy program.

From all those, we can tell the India government is not dodging the problem of poverty, and they are doing their best to solve the problem.

The website and the association that I chose is International Step by Step Association. Here is the link: http://www.issa.nl/.

This association focuses on promoting the equal access to the high quality education and care for all children, especially in the early years of their lives. It was established in the Netherland in 1999, and the core members are the 29 nongovernmental organizations. ISSA supports a wide range of programs that provide a comprehensive set of educational services and advocacy tools intended to influence policy reform for families and children, with a special focus on the years from the birth through primary school.

One thing caught my interest is the equal access section of this website. It talked about the Roma children in Europe who cannot have the equal access to the high quality education, and what the organization does to offer the high quality programs to those children, and they turn out to be the great students as others at the same age in the mainstream programs. When I was reading it, I realized that the difficult of accessing to the high quality education for minorities happens everywhere. Since the demographic changes and the cultural diversity, instead of burning the bridges for those people, we are supposed to build the bridges for those children to be involved in the mainstream society and education. We should consider the diversity in our teaching and programs to cater to the cultural diversity to make children and their families realize that they are respected and valued. We do not have to learn all sorts of different languages, but we can have the assistance from the people who speak the minority language to help us teach and know the children better in our class. One point which is significant to me, and it mentioned in the article too is the high expectations for all the children. Although more and more children in the classrooms are sharing various languages, we need to give the same high expectations for all of them to let children reach their full potential. I have experienced the high and low expectations for children with great language and cultural diversity. The children with high expectations from the teacher perform one year ahead of the others with the low expectations from the teacher. In this case, I learned that children’s potential is great, and as a teacher we should not have any bias to low our expectations for them. Children can learn the best under the teacher’s high expectation.

In this section, it also provides some suggestions for the early years teachers to teach effectively to the classes with the cultural and language diversities. For example, it encourages the multilingualism in early childhood education. In my current school, English is the official and teaching language, but Mandarin, Spanish, German, French and Korean are offered to the students as home language activities. Children can learn their home language by doing those activities twice a week to reinforce their home language skills. It points out the importance of training the new teachers to be familiar and flexible with the new situation that is the cultural and demographic diversities in the classrooms. Teachers should be proactive to the situation of the change in the classroom in the past 20 years. The curricula and programs should change according to the change of the students as well. 

after this week’s study, I noticed the difficult for the minority children and their families to access to the high quality education, especially to the early years education programs. At the same time, schools are facing the huge change of the demographic and cultural diversity in the world now. Not a single culture can dominant the school now. In this case, the curricula and the programs should adjust themselves to the new environment and situation in the world. We should be more open-minded to the children with a different culture or language background. We need to be the models for the students to see that we respect and value the children with diversities. Actually cultural diversity offers the teachers more resources and materials to make learning through fun.  

The process of contacting the contacts

I have tried to contact the representatives of some organization from the different parts of the world, but I do not know whether I will have a chance to hear from any of them any time soon. I tried to contact the people from Cambodia, Czech, Netherlands, and Hongkong, but I have not heard any responses from them yet. To this point, I think I should go the the second option, but I am still crossing my fingers to wait for their e-mails in the next a couple of days.

I had a look and study at the World Forum, and I noticed that I can be more open-minded and be more involved in the early childhood field. I am no longer only caring about the children in my class, in my school, but also I start to realize that early childhood education is a global issue that all the professionals need to work together to improve its quality and exists in the world. 

The organization that I chose to research is International Step by Step Association, it aims at improving the quality early childhood education to all the children in the world. I chose it, because it has the sub links about other countries too. I can have the general idea of the situation in the world, and also I can learn the situation about the certain country that I am interested in as well. As I  am studying the early childhood education, and I am really into the children’s age between the birth and the primary school, I found that this is a great website for me to learn the newest trends in this field, and I can have the access to learn from other professionals in this field too. It has quality resources that I can refer too, and it has its online shop that I can choose the books that are relevant to my teaching.

I think I will keep waiting for the emails, but I also value the option two to have a global view of the early childhood field.