Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This week I walked into a conversation concerning a husband and wife.  The husband is white and the wife is Asian.  As the other people were visiting about this couple one of the people said, “I wonder if she is a mail order bride.”  Even though the person they were talking about was not there to hear the comment it still made me feel very uncomfortable.  I just shook my head no and at that time exited the conversation.  I felt the comment was inappropriate and I did not want to continue to be a part of the conversation.   

Another example of a microaggression that I have observed before is when I have been out to dinner with a couple and the husband said to the wife “Are you really going to eat that?”  The wife was a little over weight and was going to eat a certain type of dessert.  The wife decided against eating the dessert when her husband made that comment.  It made me angry to hear him say this to his wife.  If I was his wife I would have then ate two desserts!

This week I realized that even if the person you are saying something about is not there to hear the remark it can still be offensive to the people who are there and hear the remark.  These experiences were a good reminder to remember to not judge other people and that your words greatly impact the people around you. 

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I chose to interview three people.  Two were family members and one was a coworker.

1.  58 year old woman

“Your culture is your lifestyle.”

“Diversity means different, change and different skills.”

2.  50 year old woman

“Your culture is your environment, the way you grew up.”

“Diversity means different.”

3.  36 year old male

“Culture is the attitudes, norms and customs of a segment of our society.”

“Diversity is a collection of varies cultures to make up a larger society.”

Derman-Sparks and Edwards (2010) said, “culture refers to how particular groups of people live” (p. 55).  The people I talked to agreed that culture was your lifestyle and the environment you lived in.  They also believed that culture related to a group of people.  When it came to diversity I found it interesting that the two women said diversity meant different.  When I was first asked about my concept of diversity the word different was the first thing to pop into my mind.

None of the people talked about social identities.  This isn’t necessarily surprising to me because prior to this class I would not have thought of social identities.  I now know the importance of social identities and see how social identities influence your individual diversity.  Also none of the people really dug into deep culture.  I believe you really have to put some thought into understanding your deep culture.  If culture is not something you really talk about or think about you are probably not going to reach understanding your deep culture.  

After thinking about the other people’s definitions it is important to me to have a deeper understanding of culture and diversity.  My own culture is not something I have really spent much time thinking about until now and I am still realizing new ideas.  I do believe that really understanding your own culture can help you be more open to the cultures of other people.  Recognizing your own social identities can help you better understand yourself and others.   

Reference

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

My Family Culture

There are not many items I would feel I would need to take with me.  As long as I had my family that would be all I needed.  If I had to choose three items the first one I would choose is my wedding ring.  I would take my wedding ring because it is an item that is with me everyday and represents the bond between my husband and I.  It represents our love and dedication to each other.  I would also take my beautiful cross necklace my husband bought me before we were married.  It is special because my husband gave it to me and it represents my faith in my savior.  The third item I would take with me is a small photo album that contains pictures of my children.  Pictures are items I truly do cherish and many times are not replaceable.     

In the end if I could only keep one item I would keep my wedding ring.  It is the only item out of the three that is with me everyday and was given to me on such a special day in my life.  After really thinking about this assignment, I feel that material items are really not that important to me.  Spending time with my family and creating memories is what is most important to me.  Having these strong relationships creates memories and you can always take memories with you no matter where you go.  If you don’t have relationships what do you really have in this world?

When I Think of Research . . .

I have gained many insights from taking this course.  “Research is about uncovering and enabling the emergence of new understandings, insights and knowledge” (Mac Naughton, Rolfe, & Siraj-Blatchford, 2010, p. 3).  Questions can be answered and new questions can arise from quality research.  I have learned that quality research is research that is reliable and valid.  I learned that when you conduct research it is important to look at the risk/benefit equation.  This refers to the greater the benefit to be gained from a piece of research; the more risks are acceptable (Mac Naughton et al., 2010).  I have also learned that consent to be a research participant is essential.  It was also interesting to me to look at the guidelines for quality online research.  The importance of the guidelines and checking my online resources will be something I will remember in the future. 

In regards to planning, designing and conducting research data triangulation was a new concept for me.  It was also a concept that I found beneficial to research.  “Data triangulation involves using different sources of information in order to increase the validity of a study” (Guion, Diehl, & McDonald, 2011, p. 1).  I also learned important information regarding interviewing children in a research study.  Spending time in their classroom and having informal conversations with children are important before you try and do any formal interviews.  “It is important to take advantage of informal opportunities to elicit responses from children in unplanned conversations as well as formal interviews” (Mac Naughton et al., 2010, p. 246).  The researcher also needs to give children multiple opportunities to express their thinking through formal and informal conversations.  “The researcher who wants to interview children effectively will structure those interviews to provide multiple opportunities for children to say what they know and what they think” (Mac Naughton et al., 2010, p. 246).

One of the challenges in this course was the terminology.  I felt like the understanding research charts were helpful to really focus on different terminology and start to understand the meaning of the different words.  This course was challenging to me because there was so much new information and information that was hard for me to really wrap my mind around and fully understand.  I have a lot more respect for researchers after this course.  In my opinion there is an unlimited amount of research that can be done in the early childhood field.  It must be acknowledged that history has shown that research benefits children (Mac Naughton et al., 2010). 

References

Guion, L., Diehl, D., & McDonald, D. (2011). Triangulation:  Establishing the validity of qualitative studies.  Retrieved from http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FY/FY39400.pdf.

                                  

Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 

Research Around the World

I chose to look at the Early Childhood Australia website.  “Early Childhood Australia advocates to ensure quality, social justice and equity in all issues relating to the education and care of children from birth to eight years” (Early Childhood Australia, 2014).  This website contained a lot of information about early childhood education for both parents and educators.  This website also contained many publications. One publication called Research in Practice Series provides practical, easy to read resources for those involved in the early childhood field.  This is a publication that you do have to subscribe to for $70.00 a year.  The topics for the 2014 issues are the following: 

·      Ways of thinking, acting and relating about sustainability

·      Pedagogy:  Programs and relationships in practice

·      Professional partnerships in children’s services:  Working together for children.

This website also had a lot of great information for parents.  Under parent resources there were three headlines:  Children’s health and nutrition, Separation anxiety and Transitions to school.  Each of these headlines contained information concerning these topics.  I did notice that when I found something I was interested in learning more about many times it took you to an article you had to subscribe to or a book you had to buy.   

Reference

                                  

Early Childhood Australia. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/

Research that Benefits Children and Families

As I was looking at articles concerning the effects of research on children or families I came across the article titled Factors influencing parental consent for participation in clinical research involving their children in Egypt.  After reading the title I thought it definitely related to what we were learning about this week and would be interesting to find out the results.  The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of parents’ consent to participation in clinical research involving their child and to evaluate factors that influenced parents’ consent (Nasef, Shabaan, Mohammed, Kandel, Settin, Zedan, & Fouda, 2014).  In this study only 27.5% of parents consented to involving their child in research.  The most important factors increasing the chances of parental consent were if the research was a clear benefit to the child, if the parents received enough explanation of the research concept from the staff and to learn more about the disease.  One huge limitation of this study was that they “did not propose a specific type of research design to the parents or a specific pattern of patient disease, and this may have made our results more of a subjective parental opinion rather than an actual decision about consent or refusal” (Nasef, et al., 2014, p. 168).  I definitely believe if the parents had a specific type of research that was going to be done or if they truly had a child that would benefit from the research than more parents would consent to their child participating in the research.

In this article they also talked about children participating in a clinical asthma research in the United States.  The parents in this study identified the most important factors in favor of parental consent were learning more about the disease, helping medical knowledge, trials using new drugs, relationships with staff, financial benefits, free medication, encouragement by physician and free visits (Nasef, et al, 2014).  In contrast to the study in Egypt the use of new drugs or vaccines and research using invasive procedure were the main reasons for refusal by parents.  I thought it was interesting to see the differences and similarities in the two countries regarding what was important to the parents.

Reference

                                  

Nasef, N., Shabaan, A., Mohammed, S., Kandel, S., Settin, A., Zedan, M., & Fouda, A. (2014). Factors influencing parental consent for participation in clinical research involving their children in Egypt. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 20(3), 162-168.

My Personal Research Journey

As I was thinking of a topic to research the first one that came to mind was social and emotional development.  I knew I wanted to research something concerning this topic because I feel that social and emotional development is extremely important and can be challenging to teach.  This is my fifth year of teaching preschool but it is already my hardest year when it comes to children with low or few social and emotional skills.  Many of my preschoolers have very strong emotions and they do not know how to handle them.  I have chosen to look at what are the best ways to teach and encourage healthy social and emotional development in preschoolers.  I am hoping the information I learn from this research will give me the skills I need to be a more effective teacher.

Constructing the research chart has been informational but I still definitely feel like I am out of my comfort zone.  The research chart does help me to focus more on what I am reading and to really stop and make sure I understand what I am reading.  At times trying to find research that really pertains to my topic feels time consuming and discouraging.  I am definitely looking forward to all that I am learning but it can be overwhelming.  One article I enjoyed reading this week was called Practices for Enhancing Children’s Social-Emotional Development and Preventing Challenging Behavior. 

Reference

Corso, R. M. (2007). Practices for Enhancing Children’s Social-Emotional Development and Preventing Challenging Behavior. Gifted Child Today, 30(3), 51-56.