Perspectives on Diversity & Culture

Most people I talked to thought of culture as relating to a group of people, a country, a civilization, or a specific group such as a religious group.  They indicate that they believe these are a set of norms, traditions, beliefs, values, or customs that have been accepted and are typically followed by those in the group.

I see culture as more encompassing than that, and more individualized than that.  It is everything that makes up who you are.  It is the traditions your family holds, the patterns of behavior, the ways you deal with certain things, and the morals and values you uphold.  Culture is also the roles you take on each day, between being a family member, a member of your community, and how you fit in and act in your work environment.  Culture is what makes you who you are.  It is not what is on the outward appearance, but what is felt deep down, what you come up with through your experiences and learning, it is what defines you as unique, special, and individual.  Part of my culture was rooted within me as a child, but other parts of my culture were created through my experiences, associations, and gained knowledge.  While I believe some things with culture can pertain to a certain group of people, I see it really coming down to the individual and the way they typically behave and feel that defines their culture.

As I asked about diversity, people referred to diversity looking only at ethnicity and race and seeing these being mixed in one geographical location.  One person I asked did go beyond ethnicity and included religions, interests, political beliefs, and things they enjoy doing in their free time.  I felt this last answer was getting closer to being diverse.

One of the things I took pride in when my center became NAEYC accredited, was the inspector told me we had the most diverse staff in our center that she had ever seen and she had been an inspector since NAEYC began.  At that time I thought about diversity.  I could tell what she could see from the outside.  We had people working for us of all ages, from the young twenties who were college students to the veteran who had been there almost thirty years and everything in between.  We have both male and female staff.  We have several different ethnic backgrounds and languages spoken by the staff.  I have teachers of various physical abilities.  This outward diversity was easy for others to see.  I also began to realize the large amount of diversity that was present through observations.  The ways the teachers are the same, and the ways they are very different.  Our curriculum allows the teacher's own style to come out through a framework that guides their teaching, but doesn't have everyone do things the same way.  The classrooms are all arranged differently, they study different themes, they focus on different areas, and run their classrooms and activities differently.  This is diversity, looking at all the ways we are the same as someone else as well as all the ways we are different.  It is taking those pieces of our culture and being able to see how much we are alike when we may seem very different.

As I talked with others, I was actually surprised at the vagueness that came from their responses.  I spoke with someone of the opposite gender as myself, someone much older than myself, someone of a different ethnic background and who came from another country than myself, and another person just slightly older than me but in a very different profession.  To me, this was a diverse group of people, but it seemed like their answers were very similar.  The person who was much older than myself had a much broader view of culture and diversity.  After talking with these four people I wondered, Do people see culture and diversity on the surface rather than really individualizing it to a person?  I grew up in a family of ten, but we still have a lot of diversity within our own family culture and the way we do things. I think this is to really recognize how different everyone is and understand that just because one person of a certain group does something one way, doesn't mean everyone in that group will act or feel the same way.

My Family Culture

There are not many things I can't live without.

If there were some type of emergency, something that caused me to have to evacuated indefinitely to another country with a culture very different than my own, there is only one main thing I would really want to take.  I would want to have my scriptures with me that have been written in my home language and marked up and studied.  I know that these bring me closer to  my God, who understands me and my needs wherever I am in the world.  This is enough to survive.

Should there be additional room for me to take more things, I would take my music and a way to play it.  Music brings me comfort and peace and there is music for all my different moods.  While I may be able to find music in another culture, I am attached to the music I am accustomed to and would turn to that to bring me additional comfort in times of trial.

The third thing I would bring with me is my computer with a way to access the internet.  I love to research, read, and increase my knowledge.  This is my source of growth.  While I know I can live without my computer, it is my way of reading and staying up to date.  I love the convenience and incredible amount of information that can be gleaned from my computer.

When I Think of Research ...

I went into a class on building research competencies, thinking it was going to be complicated and really not understanding the value research can have in the field of early childhood.  Instead, I learned that it really wasn't all that complicated and that the results could have great benefits and really make an impact in the way we work with children.

I have always thought of research being boring and long drawn out, but as I was able to come up with my own project and propose questions for research that were important to me in the field of early childhood, I became so excited that I wanted to fulfill the research project itself.  I wished my class would extend for a longer period of time so I can actually conduct the project.  I can see how valuable the results could be and I am trying to find a way to conduct the project on my own.  This is a very different view than I had from the beginning.

I have learned that there is a specific process that one must go through just to set up a specific research project.  Steps and rules must be well thought out and followed.  I had to learn different methods of collecting data, different research methods and types of experiments, lines of measurement and analyzing of the data, how to choose study participants and requirements, how to prove validity, and many other things.
I realized in the planning process that there were things I needed to further define before I could conduct the study, and even now I do not have enough information to actually conduct my study.

One challenge I have encountered in designing a simulated research study is the need to define general terms.  My research study intends to answer the question "Do children with large emotional vocabularies demonstrate higher levels of self-regulation and prosocial skills? To successfully answer this question, I needed to be able to define specific levels of emotional vocabulary, how many words should children know at age 4 & 5 and how many words is considered low, medium, and high.  Next I had to define what self-regulation and prosocial skills look like.  To do this I needed to find specific assessments that could be used to determine children's skill level in these areas.  This challenge took time to research myself and find something that matched what I was already thinking, or time to develop something myself that could be understood by others and easily duplicated.

While I realized research is not necessarily complicated in my mind, it is time consuming just putting the research project together before the research can actually be conducted.  There is lots of prep work and thinking.  In the end, I believe the outcomes and results greatly help to increase professionals knowledge and practice in working with children.  If I could use this study to provide ways to increase a child's skill to better control themselves and to react appropriately to others emotions, I could really help advance the field of early childhood and provide a much needed support for teachers of all ages.

Early Childhood Research Around the World

The field of early childhood is ever growing, but all around the world, professionals in the field have similar questions, similar concerns and issues, and conduct similar research.  I have been studying about schools in Europe, specifically Finland, England, and Portugal for my own search to find quality in early childhood education.  I decided to study the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal (EECERJ) to learn about topics being studied there. (http://www.eecera.org/journal/)

At first I was surprised at the topics in the most recent published journal in April, 2014.  They included: literacy development, science instruction, professionalism, barriers to learning, education models, nature and outdoor classrooms, afterschool programming, stress and sensitivity of caregivers, and temperament.  Of these ten items, I am currently studying, training, and researching five of them in my current profession and an additional two of them personally.  It should not be surprising that these are concerns and issues in other parts of the world as well, but helped me to feel that I was not alone in my search to find answers to make early childhood a more meaningful experience for all.

This compelled me to go back one more issue, to the February, 2014 issue.  The article topics in this issue included: brain development and academic rigor in early childhood, influence of parents playing with children, social-emotional prevention programs, kindergarten mathematics, science for birth to age four, the Deluge, programs for children with autism, character development in children 3-6, early education and professional choice, and parental concepts on quality. A few of these are similar to the April journal, but they all are very different.  Again, I found that these are areas that I am studying both professionally and personally (although can one really say they are studying something personally when it is in their professional field and helps them ultimately grow as a professional?  It may be more correct to say I am studying them on my own, but not because I see a current need in the organization I work for, although even then it wouldn’t be entirely true).

It is comforting to know that all around the world people are learning about young children and how we can best meet their needs and help them to grow and develop in the best ways possible. There are many professionals in the field who truly are doing all they can to highlight the importance of early childhood and to help other professionals in the field in their journey to help children become all they can become.  There is a vast amount of research and knowledge that has been shared all over the world, I am grateful to have found this research journal to add more interesting facts and information to the areas of the world that I have already been studying.

The last thing on this website that caught my attention was the early childhood conference.  I love to attend the early childhood conferences in my local area as well as the NAEYC conference held every year.  I have known that conferences happen all over the world, but I take pride in seeing and understanding that the topics they will discuss are similar to the ones we discuss here as well.  I would love to one day be able to travel through Europe and observe and learn about the field of early childhood all over the world.

The Perry Preschool Study

Research can be beneficial in the field of early childhood.  Take for instance the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study.  This research project studied the affects of high-quality preschool education for children living in poverty.  The research study identified 123 low-income African American children who were considered to be at high risk of school failure.  58 of them received high-quality preschool for two years prior to starting kindergarten and 65 of them received no preschool services.  These 123 children have been followed over a span so far through 40 years old.  There are significant gains in the children who attended the preschool program compared to those who did not attend the preschool program.  During schooling years, children who attended the preschool program performed better in school and had better attitudes towards school, had less disciplinary problems, and required less specialized services, overall saving the school money and resources. Into adulthood, those who attended preschool had less trouble with the law, had higher rates of holding employment with larger annual earnings, and maintained assets such as cars and a stable home.  They were also more involved in the lives of their own children and less likely to live off of others including their use of social services.

Overall, this study has shown that those who attended a high-quality preschool program had an economic return of $244,812 per participant.  This return on investment stems from crime savings, savings from education special services, increased taxes because they were higher wage earners, and reduced use of welfare services.  Certainly this study does not just prove that high-quality preschool is beneficial to low-income families, but this research project made significant impacts on those children and their families who attended the preschool program.  Children who possibly otherwise would not have been able to attend preschool because of their financial situation, were provided the opportunity to start on a positive educational path that had direct impact on their lives long term.  It is an impact that could carry on through generations as they stress the value of high-quality preschool for their own children.  Research projects such as this do benefit society, but more closely they benefited those who participated.

If we look at this from an ethical stand point, there are many other questions that come to my mind however.  Was this fair to the children who were put in the group who did not attend preschool?  What long term affects has it had for those who missed out on the opportunity.  Were families and children able to choose if they wanted to attend preschool or if they wanted to be in the group that did not go?  Did the children who attended preschool perform higher because they knew they were being monitored and observed over a life time?  Was more emphasis put on education because of the financial gains and incentives that were put in place while they were younger.  For those who did not attend preschool and saw the advancements of those who did, will it make an impact to their view of education when it comes to sending their own children to preschool?  While I believe this study showed great improvement in the field of early childhood, was it considered the fairness of those who did not have the opportunity to go, did financial incentives change family thought and emphasis on education, and was there generational impacts? 

Reference:
More information on this project can be found at http://www.highscope.org/file/Research/PerryProject/specialsummary_rev2011_02_2.pdf 

The High/Scope

Perry Preschool Study

Through Age 40

Summary, Conclusions, and

Frequently Asked Questions

Research Topic

I have chosen to research the benefits of children who develop a large emotional vocabulary in relation to self-regulation and the development of prosocial skills. I chose this topic because I believe that more educators needs to be proactive in supporting emotional understanding in children intentionally and incidentally.  I believe that we don't provide enough emphasis on teaching children to label, understand, and properly express both simple and complex emotions.

While researching different articles and previous studies that I could use in this project, I realized a few things that I had not considered.  I had not considered how gender or culture may affect children's emotion understanding.  I was hopeful to find lots of research that had already been done that showed relations between children who had a large emotional vocabulary and those who did not in their regular behaviors.  I wanted to be able to read about correlations in how they expressed emotion and how they were better able to display prosocial skills such as showing empathy for others.  However, I did not find very many articles or specific research that has been done with preschoolers in this area.  I am hopeful that with more research, I will be able to find additional supporting material.

I did find several websites however that were helpful in providing lots of information regarding building social emotional development in children.  There were many curriculums, training materials, and other resources that could be used, but not that specifically focused on building emotional vocabularies.  I hope to be able to find useable assessment tools that will be able to help track emotional development, vocabulary skills, expressive traits, and their link to behaviors.  I am open to ideas and suggestions from others!

A couple resources of previous studies I found helpful in this search are Preschool Children's Views on Emotion Regulation: Functional Associations and Implications for Social-Emotional Adjustment by Dennis & Kelemen, 2009 from the International ournal of Behavioral Development.  Another study is called Preschoolers' Understanding of Simple and Complex Emotions: Links with Gender and Language by Bosacki and Moore, 2004 in the journal called Sex Roles.  Both of these studies use puppets with children to role play different scenarios.

Building Research Competencies

Here we go on an eight week journey in learning to research :)