When I Think of Research...

Building Research Competencies has been a very informative course on this journey towards the Master’s degree in early childhood education. Some of the insights that I have gained from this course include strategies for perusing research articles efficiently to determine whether they include what I am researching or not. I have also learned how to narrow down a research topic to specific related subtopics and incorporating a literature review for a research project. I now realize that there are ethical risks and challenges that must be considered when undergoing research with children. Finally, one insight I received from this course was that based on the topic covered in the research, the design which includes the methods of data collection, participants, location, and method of analysis all must be of such a quality to ensure validity.

As I began this phase of the journey in the quest to build research competencies I believed that research would involve an inordinate amount of reading that included numerous scientific information and vocabulary that would be difficult to understand. The placement of the guide to reading research early on in the course was key to overcoming a fear of the process. Otherwise, I was clueless to the research process, so everything else that I was exposed to was new to me.

I have learned that a researcher needs to be organized in the planning and continually throughout the execution stages of the research process. The design of the research must be driven by the question to be answered. I have also learned that when researching children ethical considerations are crucial. As adults, we sometimes have the tendency to see children as little extensions of ourselves. As a professional researcher, however, we must recognize the unique individuals that children are, and listen intently to hear what they have to say. Traditional research has not considered the power relations with children, but the realizations that “children are capable of making decisions about participating in or withdrawing from research” is slowly being acknowledged in recent research. (Mac Naughton, Rolfe, & Siraj-Blatchford, 2010).

The greatest challenge that I encountered during this course was articulating my research topic and narrowing it down to specifics that could be researched in a reasonable time frame. I was able to overcome this challenge by reading through a number of researches that were related to my own and using them as guides to what I really wanted to learn. Despite having completed a number of courses, I sometimes have a rather narrow perception of the early childhood professional as an educator, advocate, program director, administrator, or even college professor. Somehow I had not given much thought to the research aspect of the field, although it is through research that educators and other professionals in the field have access to the information and finding out what is the best practice currently. It is this information on which much of what goes on in the classroom is based on. I am therefore of the belief that whatever role you play in this great field, that you should be involved in some aspect of research for the benefit of our children.

Before I close out this post, I must say thank you to my peers who are on this journey with me. First, I must say thank you to Dr. Dartt for firstly being accessible, and then also being accommodating, understanding, and helpful. I would also like to acknowledge Debra and Shari for your words of encouragement to my blog posts.  Finally to Altrenia, and Jessica, keep those interesting discussion posts coming I really enjoyed hearing your points of view. I wish for all of you success as we embark upon the final half of this journey. Success to you all!

References

Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010).  Doing Early Childhood Research: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice (2^nd ed.).

New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies Open University Press.