My Family Culture

If I was ever in a circumstance of being a refugee and was instructed to bring only three items with me. I would select a family album, an old family Bible, and a crochet blanket. A family album is filled with photographs of my family, myself, and older family members (grandparents, great grandparents).  An old family Bible was given to me when my parents divorced. It is white and 3 inches to four inches thick. It has my parents and grandparents' writings in it. Lastly, a crocheted blanket was made by my mother as a Christmas gift to me and my husband. Nothing beats a hand-made gift. It is about king size and has my favorite colors (maroon and dark blue).

A family album is something that I love having. Every picture tells a story. I could elaborate the story by looking at the pictures and walking the memory lane. My grandmother always did that when I was a child. She described the setting, the persons, and how much they loved me. I would do the same. It makes me feel connected to my family.

An old Bible has my father's last name engraved on it. My grandparents passed it down to my parents on their wedding day. Even though my parents divorced, my mother believed that I should have it based on the birth order (I am the oldest). One day I went through the Bible. I found an old photograph and a letter in it. I left it where I found it. It is kind of a treasure. Bible itself is about God and lessons that I learn to understand God and myself better. This would help me becoming a better person.

A crocheted blanket is important because it came from my mother's heart. She made it with her hands. It keeps me warm during the cold nights. Everyone in my family knows that I get cold easily just like my aunt. It's hereditary. I learned how to crochet from my mother.

If I was told to sacrifice two items, I would let blanket and Bible go with wretched feelings. It is a piece of who I am, but I know that I can find a blanket and Bible. Also, my blanket would keep someone else warm. The Bible would teach someone else. I carry verses in my heart and I will always find a Bible somewhere. Family album cannot be replaced, so that is something I would keep.

From this experience, I realized that I am sharing things that my parents and grandparents shared with me. Whatever I've learned and practiced are part of my whole being. If I ever was told to change to be like everyone else, I would defy with honest heart.

When I think of Research....

Research had always been a topic that cause squirm among the lots of us. I know it had made me squirm one too many times. Since I took the course that focuses on research, I find that it is essential for all of us to practice and build our research competencies. We often become uncomfortable with research, because we do not have extensive knowledge or resources to utilize. After taking this course, the ideas I possessed of the research changed from prestigious to common.  What I meant by that is the fact that research often accompanies an image of a person with certain status and intelligence to perform research. However, I learned that any one can perform research as long as s/he has the goal and motivation to complete the entire work.

Research requires careful plan and detailed designs. Research certainly takes time to develop. One has to be able to visualize the focal point of the research. Otherwise, it flops. Planning, designing, modifying, or maintaining research absolutely requires a lot of organizing skills. One has to be willing to remain abreast of the progress until it reaches completion. The challenges I encountered while learning about research were being able to comprehend qualitative and quantitative. Understanding how a method functions takes addition efforts. Also, it takes a lot of practices and extensive knowledge to determine which approach to pursue and develop solid research.

At last, learning abut research helped me understand how important it is to develop ideas and verify the results that may or may not improve Early Childhood Education, Early Childhood professionalism, and many others that are involved in Early Childhood Education field.  Our lives are constantly undergoing the changes. Therefore, it is necessary to appreciate and show gratitude toward the researchers who work hard to find proofs that can easily change our lives for better or worse.

Research Around the World

Research around the world is amazing and unending learning experience. For this assignment, I decided to explore European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA): This international early childhood organization publishes a well respected journal. All back issues are accessible from this site and are fully searchable without charge.
http://www.eecera.org/

Here is what I discovered:

1. The current international research topics focused on how to teach and to learn for both teachers and children, the influence of play on children (especially with adults attitudes), and how children's cortisol increases or decreases. 

2. What surprised me was how common the topics are across the world. The world wide commons show that "we" are struggling to present a final proof of what we can do to "fix" the problems. Exploring an international website helped me to realize that there are common research topics that I could follow and compare to learn more about the impacts on children in other countries than United States. Then I could compare the results between a country and United States to see if there is any particular reason for the differences or similarities. 

Yet, there are research topics that focus on children of the conflicted (ie: religion conflicts, war, etc). Because we, who reside in United States, have not yet experienced or record some topics focusing on children of the conflicts. This led me to wonder if the civil war in United States had huge impact on children's developments. Unfortunately, this was more than 100 years ago.   

3. A newsworthy information that I discovered was the conference. I did not realize there is a conference for researchers. EECERA provides annual conference. It sounds very curiosity.  Other than its curiosity, conferences offer tremendous supports to researchers by discussion, build relationship, and unity. I think these are excellent qualities to offer. 

 

Research that benefits Children and Families---Uplifting Stories

There are two research that I am very familiar with, especially its effects on the deaf community.

Numerous of researches study the association between hearing loss and language development. Here is one of many research examples that focused on the precise issue:   http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/106/3/e43.full.pdf+html.

It is important to acknowledge that at estimate of 90 percent of deaf children have hearing (normal hearing ability) parents.  Generally, parents often find themselves unsure about what communication mode to communicate with their "deaf" children and this lead to delayed language developments. Some parents place their children at deaf residential school by the time they are three or four year old. Parent-child relationship becomes distant and difficult for some. Many research like this one demonstrate the significant impact on language development by identifying hearing loss, communication mode, and family involvement level at certain ages. The younger the child is, the better his/her language development is when parents are involved in child's learning experience (ie: early childhood program placement, communication mode selection, and family involvement). When the child has all positive influentials, child has a higher reasoning ability and vocabulary by age of 5.

Another type of research has been very effective and unbelievably amazing is called genetics of EVA. This research has been around for some time and National Institute on Deafness and other communication disorders is well known for genetics research. Please go to  http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/genetics.asp for further exploration. This research institute discovered that there are more than about 60 identified genes leading to hearing loss. There are approximately 10 percent deaf children born to deaf parents and several deaf generations.  From my experience, there are good number of people who do not know how they became deaf at birth. This genetic tests help these people identifying the causes. One of my good friends became deaf at age of 4 unknowingly and to normal hearing parents. Years later, his daughter was born hearing, but she lost her hearing unexpectedly at age of four.  Finally, they went to take genetics screening to identify the causes. The father and daughter learned that they have this particular genes that cause them to lose their hearing at age of four without illness of any kind.  This is truly a mystery.

NIDCD helps children and families identifying the problems to receive services earlier to prevent severe language development delays.

Some of you may wonder how I became deaf. I was born a normal hearing baby, but measles attacked me at age of 8 weeks old and damaged my hearing.  Measles typically cause a very high fever, which would be considered dangerous for a 8 week old infant. Fever itself burned my cochlea nerves.  My parents did not know what to do with me at first. Fortunately, a good physician referred them to speech and hearing center where I learned to speak and to sign at age of four months old. I was also placed in early childhood education program full time at age of 2. I was taught to write and read at age of 2. Even though I had early interventions, I continued to struggle with language development because there was not much of family involvement and my family is hearing. The family often forgot I was deaf.  These are normal incidents, but greatly effected my developments.  Regardless the obstacles, I am fortunate to have parents who were willing to learn to sign and give up their  dreams so that I could have high quality education.

I strongly believe that the earlier, the better is a way to go. Research do help us all in many ways.

Your Personal Research Journey

I am in pivotal point of my journey, because I am abundantly learning about issues and trends relating to early childhood and children. This has brought me to a point where I am realizing that the early childhood interconnection within the deaf and hard of hearing community is not in its strongest position.   This led me to come up with a chosen topic for the simulation: Young Deaf Children and their Early Education: Quality, Equity, and Accessibility in Early Childhood Education Programs for Birth to Three

An idea of researching early childhood education within the deaf community has always intrigued me. However, when I performed an actual simulation, I experienced some moments of doubts.  Then I decided to do some scholar search on website and discovered limited numbers of good research that I could refer to for my study.  Obviously, this led me to reconsider how to rephrase the topic and the subtopics even though I clearly identified the subtopics. 

Quality, equity, and accessibility are the chosen subtopics for this research. Each of the three subtopics plays a major role in children’s earliest stage of learning. Quality is the most misunderstood aspect of child development for years. For this research, the quality of teachers is the focal point.Accessibility is necessary and vital in young deaf children’s learning. Disability and bilingual are unique and contribute to the greater part of learning within the early childhood program and its community.  There are insufficient settings offering programs for infants and toddlers with hearing loss.   Inequity in early childhood education has a greater impact on children’s education milestones. Children with disability are often behind in academic and have difficult time obtain appropriate services to meet their needs.

I would appreciate your feedback on my research process. 
Chrissy

Final Blog Assignment

Studying the international early childhood field through this course rekindled my passion to create a high quality education and service for children who are diagnosed deaf, hard of hearing, and/or deaf-blind.  The consequences of learning about Save the Children and many other international early childhood field:

1.  Gain Knowledge:  I find that gaining knowledge is critical in early childhood field. Knowledge opens doors for improvements, modifications, and continuing research. This applies to both professional and personal developments.

2. Domino effect is the second consequence. Because I am constantly learning and studying early childhood field in United States and have been shifting to world wide early childhood field, there is connection between children in United States and other countries in the early childhood field. This has domino effect through my learning and advocating. My part in early childhood field may be the most least impact, but it has ripple effect regardless on others.

3. Passion and Drive play large roles in my reasons for pursuing early childhood education. Now that I've learned some things about early childhood education through international websites, research, and so forth and this forced me to reconsider what I initially wanted to improve, especially for deaf/Hard of Hearing/Deaf-Blind children.  I realized that most international and United States organizations focus on children in general and there were not enough emphasis on serving children with disability. With rekindled passion, I am determine to explore the information and service that are available for young children who are deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind.

There is one goal for the field related to international awareness of issues and trends---I would like to establish contact with someone internationally who works with deaf, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind young children. This would help me to expand my knowledge. Perhaps, I would be able to have some training, if there is any.

Getting to know your international contacts --Part 3

Since I do not have much of luck with international contacts, I researched a webpage: www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/ for this assignment.

As I explored the website, I came across to several topics that appeared foregin to me. I decided to pursue two so-called foregin topics: Coordination Mechanicism and Cross-sectoral Coordination. These information was somewhat difficult to absorb, but I believe I understand the surface of these topics.

Coordination Mechanicism was mentioned under Goverance category in the webpage. Early childhood education does not stop with teachers. It goes further beyond director of the center. ECE involves a lot of different sectors such as regulation, funding, staffing, and many others at national and local levels. An imperative part of this is that it centers on the common vision. To create coordination effectively, sectors work together on one specific task at a time.

Cross-sectoral Co-ordination can be found under Goverance and in an article: Cross-sectoral- Co-ordination in Early Childhood: Some Lessons to Learn by UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood (January 2003, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001373/137394e.pdf). Because Early Childhood care and Education is the concern of government, education, social, and health sectors, co-ordination becomes necessary function to promote holistic development (UNESCO, 2003). Unfortunately, it is a difficult function even for developed countries at national level. There are so many responsibilities across sectors. Many countries opted integrating into one while others seemed to opt for division--dividing responsibilities based on age group of early childhood. Lastly, some opted for Coordination Mecahanicsm (COM).

A third topic that strike me---a common ground across the world focus on access and quality of early childhood care and education.  Access and quality do not merely occur in developed countries but developing countries. It shows that most people across the world share the same vision---high quality and access for all children is important in footing their education.

Now that I have read the information, I realized ECE is not merely a small program. It involves so many people, requires a lot of resources, and is high demanding. Every person who has a role in developing ECE, promoting holistic child-centered, recuriting high quality staff and funding the program has impact on children.
It's a bigger world than I thought.