More things about my professional goals

I had a thorough read of the website  http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/quality/. I found a couple of things that are related to my professional goals.

First of all, it has a section about quality in early childhood education. There is an article talking about the language in Papua New Guinea. I am the person who respects and values the diversity in my community, and in this article, it talks about the education reform in PNG. The official language in this country is English, but there are only 50,000 people use English as their first language, while 5.2 million people living there. PNG is the world’s most linguistically diverse nation. Government has realized the problem, and the education reform has started too. The key elements of PNG’s education reform are the encouragement of early education in the vernacular languages and a gradual bridging to English as a language of wider communication. It also includes the development of a culturally relevant curriculum and materials. It emphasizes on the importance of teaching vernacular language in the formal education system, especially in early years education. I believe it shows the great respect to the minority groups in the country, which is good for the country’s development. Once people in the country feel they are respected and valued, they will be more open-minded to accept new languages and things. People also can reintegrate themselves back to their villages’ education system if they fail in the secondary entry exam. I should say this is a great step for PNG, the authority shows the respect to the diversity in the nation. I think all the other nations with many minority groups can refer to what PNG does to consolidate the education in their nation to make more people feel respected and valued.

The second insight that I have gained from this website is about the curriculum. When I said that I would like to be a life long learner to provide high quality teaching to children, in this website, I found something new to me too. We used to design our curriculum about early childhood education very detailed, and we put emphasis on the content and cognitive goals, now it summarizes the key points of being a good program. It is more like a concept based guidelines instead of a content based one. I think in this way, it gives teacher more space to try out various teaching methods to apply to their teaching and adjust the ways of teaching according to children’s age and learning progress.

The third insight I have gained is about the workforce in early childhood education. There is a demand of qualified teachers, but there are challenges to get those teachers too. Early years teachers are not respected as a professional as other professionals, so many experienced teachers move to a different career. They are not payed well, and they do not get enough training to integrate themselves. Those make the high quality of early childhood education is so hard to reach. No qualified workforce makes high quality education impossible. Therefore, many people have realized the importance of certified workforce in early childhood education, but who is going to pay for their training, salary resources and so on is another question to be answered. Early childhood education is becoming more and more popular in all countries, but the quality of curriculum and the professionals are the big concerns in the communities.