Final Blog - Reflection

The three consequences of learning about the international early childhood field for my professional and personal development would be:-

• Learnt a little bit more about the issues in other countries
  
• Learnt about their cultures and outlook in early childhood field
  
• Learnt about how others tackle their issues in their own context of surroundings.

 I feel its good thing that each and every professionals in early childhood field should open their mind, eyes and ears to issues and trends all around the world. Its beneficial to know what others are doing to curb and manage issues and trends in their country. That way, others can learn and apply what may be appropriate to solve issues in their own country. 

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

 I was not able to get any response from my international contact for some time. Hence, I decided to review the UNESCO website to get some new ideas or insights on issues related to international early childhood education.

 First, I found out that Vietnam has a successful pro-poor early childhood education policy in place. This policy helps to establish and run quality early childhood services for the poor community. This initiative has become a big success as the policies such as these are regulated by the Ministry of Education and Training. Thus, it is easier to implement and monitor such policies. The states have a big interest and committed in pursuing by investing accordingly to enhance the quality of early childhood education.

 I also found out that "In 1993, the heads of state and government of nine high-population countries – Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan – launched the E-9 Initiative1 aimed at achieving concrete progress in basic education. The Initiative calls for the education ministers of these nine countries to meet every two years to review their progress. The topic chosen for the 5th E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting, held in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2003, was early childhood care and education (ECCE). This note presents some highlights of progress achieved in ECCE access in the nine countries. In Brazil, the problem of inequity may have to do with an ineffective distribution of public resources, while in Indonesia, the absolutely small amount of public investment may have been a cause for inequity" (UNESCO, 2004).

 And finally, "in the National Education Policy for 2004-15,1 the Government of Gambia announced a plan to create ECD Centres for 3-6-yearolds on the premises of primary schools in the most disadvantaged areas. The plan aims to optimise the existing school infrastructure and workforce for early childhood" (UNESCO, 2006).

It seemed to me that the issues of excellance and equity in early childhood care and education exist in all parts of the world particularly in countries where the majority of the populations are from poor background. Some of these countries are putting in a lot of effort in making a difference in this sector. There is a lot others can learn from these countries especially like in my country, Malaysia. I hope to be part of this inititave and make a difference in my country.

Sharing Web Resources

 An outside link on the website brings me to information on Zero to Three's Annual Conference which will be held at New Orleans, LA on December 7^th till 9^th 2016. This conference was formerly known as National Training Institute which was “carefully developed to meet the education and networking needs of professionals working with infants and toddlers in Early Childhood Education, Early Intervention, Mental Health, Early Head Start, Child Welfare, Parent Education and Pediatrics” (Zero to Three, 2016).

 Under the section of Maltreatment, I have come across a tonne of information on “The impact of Trauma”. This section explains a lot about how much young children are affected by the things that takes place around them and how to help them to deal with it. There are articles on this page which explains how and when can we help to change the outcome of traumatized children, how to help them to cope with the trauma, on the methods of treating very young children who have witnessed traumatic events and gives a wealth of information on trauma resources which can create awareness to all levels.

 The latest newsletter talks a lot about what we have been discussing this week in this course which is excellence and equity in early childhood field. This newsletter focuses on “ efforts to: improve the capacity of home visitors to address maternal depression, increase cultural competency and equity in the early intervention system, evaluate the effectiveness of family child care networks that have the potential for improving family child care quality, and create competency standards in early care and education programs” (Zero to Three, 2016).

 This website contains a valuable tool which gives valuable information on how “infants and toddlers are doing in your state and to analyze existing state policies and funding choices” (Zero to Three, 2016). The survey questions in this toolkit will gather data to give you the correct information on how the young children are doing in your state and what are the existing state policies available as well as the funding choices in the state for early childhood care and education. I think this is a very important and relevant tool for this week's topic of discussion. Through this toolkit one can see how the equality or inequality and excellence of early childhood care and education in each state are.

 There was an issue on the website talking about the high statistics of children with challenging behaviors being expelled from preschool. In this article, the authors put together a table on “specific examples of strategies used by mental health consultants working with children at risk for expulsion” (Zero to Three, 2016). I found this table of examples to be very useful for early childhood professionals like me as sometimes as a teacher it can be quite overwhelming to have so many different types of behaviors to deal with in a classroom and having some sort of guideline to help with this is beneficial for the teacher and the students in discussion.  

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

 My international contact have shared a lot about his work on early intervention for children with mental health issues. From what I have learnt, Dr Amar have mentioned that currently there is poor system to recognize and offer routine early intervention programs on a regular basis. Schools and teachers are not equipped well enough to identify and refer student and the parents to specialists in the hospital to do the early interventions. The schools are also not equipped and offer special programs which targets these students. The school program is standard across all levels. He finds this a bit concerning as this clearly an issue of excellence and equity in early childhood education.

 I had also browsed through the Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/) just to broaden my knowledge. I have learnt 3 insights from it and they are:-

1. “ Lowered stress tolerance and heightened stress reactivity in adulthood can negatively impact key parental capacities such as emotional attentiveness, distress tolerance, decision-making, and sensitivity to children’s cues. Because children's emotional health is closely related to the environments in which they live, in some cases, the best intervention strategy for young children with serious behavioral or emotional problems is to focus directly on the needs of those who care for them”
2. “No specific population group can be exclusively targeted for intervention in the early childhood years, either by income, ethnicity, family risk factors or other traditional risk factors. Vulnerability cut across all groups”.
3. Studies done on cell biology, neuroscience and birth have revealed that our knowledge on early years has expanded tremendously.