Final Blog Assignment

Three Consequences of Learning About the International Early Childhood Field

Consequence 1. COVID 19 and Early Childhood Education

One thing that I learned about is that The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in monumental changes to education throughout the world. According to UNESCO (2020), nearly 90% of the world’s student population-over 1.5 billion learners in 165 countries have had their learning experiences disrupted by precautions and policies implemented to stop the spread of the disease. It as the “largest simultaneous shock to all education systems in our lifetimes” (World Bank, 2020).This international health crisis has precipitated unprecedented, sweeping, and dramatic changes in the lives of children and their families, and early childhood teacher educators. Worldwide, the Covid-19 has also pushed the early childhood education system to the verge of collapse and mobilized leading early childhood organizations to advocate for Covid-19 financial packages to protect early education programs (NAEYC, 2020; Zero to Three 2020).

Covid-19 not only suspended normal childhood activities such as attending school, interacting with extended family and friends, playing outdoors, and exploring nature but also disrupted the consequent socio-emotional benefits that accrue from children’s engagement in these experiences. The shutdowns have also left many parents struggling to balance childcare and employment, and in poorer countries, the closures have made life even harder for many families with young children, for whom schools are an essential provider of a range of services, including nutrition, stimulation and the development of social, emotional and cognitive skills (United Nations, 2020).

Children are inherently vulnerable because they depend on adults to have their most basic needs met. When adults lack the resources to cope with the immediate, urgent, and multiple adaptive demands that pandemic places on a family and if support mechanisms do not exist, fail, or cease, it can lead to an unmitigated catastrophe for the very young. Listen to a message from the United Nations Secretary on

COVID-19 and Its Effect on Children

https://news.un.org/en/audio/2020/04/1065422

Local and international organizations have banned together to provide up-to-date information and guidelines on dealing with COVID 19. Community based organizations (CBO) play a vital role in maintaining community morale and cohesion. They can also serve as a crucial link between communities and local health and other officials, providing insight about the feasibility and acceptability of proposed mitigation strategies and informing authorities about resources and needs in their communities (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). International organizations and global advocates are pushing to ensure that the COVID 19 pandemic does not derail efforts for young children to continue learning and eventually return to a real classroom (United Nations, 2020),

The pandemic has also produce some positive, long-lasting changes, according to a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In a survey of educators and other stakeholders from 98 countries, some 77 percent of respondents said that they saw the introduction of new technologies and innovative solutions during the pandemic, 71 percent said that the challenges had led to an increase in student autonomy to manage their own learning, and 66 percent said they saw strengthened involvement and cooperation from parents (The National Center on Education and Economy, 2020).

Consequence 2. Investing in Early Childhood

Another thing that I have learned is that early childhood education is a priority issue and investment in other countries. Their investments in young children are the mark of strategic thought and wise allocation of capital.

In the United States caring for young children has long been considered the responsibility of individual families, not the government. Publicly funded child care has remained low on the list of programs receiving federal dollars. The federal money that is spent, mostly on preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds living in poverty (through programs like Head Start) and on helping states provide subsidized child care, is generally considered assistance for families struggling to make ends meet (Mongeau, 2018).

A study “The Early Advantage” (Kagan 2018, 2019) was conducted by Sharon Lynn Kagan, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and Yale University and funded by National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). This study looked carefully at countries that are serving young children and their families and concluded that the United States could learn a lot about early education from our international counterparts. The study also brings to light the striking new reality facing early education and care around the world and hopes it provides both pragmatic and philosophical ideas for helping the United States get to the point of upping its investment in the early years.

The research involved six other countries, Australia, England, Finland, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore. The study found that these countries are pioneering new and remarkable visions for early childhood education and care. While all of the countries studied have low-income populations in need of extra assistance to provide their young ones with quality child care and education, none of them make income level a requirement for services. Instead, these countries offer near-universal systems that guarantee some level of education for children age 3 and older. Five of the countries, Hong Kong excepted, also offer provisions for infants and toddlers, whether it be subsidized care or extended (compared to the U.S.) paid parental leave.

In the United States, states and some cities have developed their own completely unique curriculum frameworks, often with limited consistency across them. This opens the door for inequities in what ECEC looks like from one state to the next. Furthermore, it means that an educator moving to a new state will have to contend not only with getting to know the new context, children, and families, but also with a completely new set of standards, expectations, and the various documents that describe them. National curriculum frameworks like those seen in the studied countries would help eliminate such inequalities and inefficiencies.

Through this research, it was discovered that at the core of each country’s ECEC system is a robust national curriculum framework that influences practice and policy in the quest to provide high-quality, equitable ECEC services to young children and their families. This suggests that while all US states and territories have developed their own foundations for such a framework, there may be significant benefits to further expanding this strategy and bringing it to the national level (Melvin, Landsburg, & Kagan, 2020).

Dr. Kagan findings can be watched the full webinar below. https://vimeo.com/294208397

Consequence 3. learning through Play

Play and learning are not incompatible but are integrally connected. Play everywhere is an enculturing process, a means through which children learn about their culture, others and their environment. “Play is the highest form of research” (Albert Einstein, n.d.a.).

Research tells us that providing very young children with opportunities to learn grow and develop through safe and supported play will positively impact the cognitive, social and emotional health of a child. They will learn better at school, have better relationships with family and friends and be more likely to reach their full potential in life.

Play and creativity can happen in a variety of situations with different children of different ages or a child can be involved in solitary play on their own. They can play alongside other children doing different activities known as parallel play or they can involve adults in their play.

It would appear that play is a universal feature of most children's lives, provided the children's lives have not been disrupted by events such as war, conflict or famine. This is not to say that children's play is identical throughout the world. While children in different parts of the world may use similar objects in similar ways, and all children appear to engage in ‘pretend play’, who children play with, the extent to which adults are invited to participate in children's play, and the children's choice of play themes vary. It is evident that all children in all societies appear to engage in activities that would fulfil some of the criteria of play, that is, children explore and pretend as a way of engaging with the world. However, in many societies and cultures throughout the world the separation between the child's world and the adult's world is not as obvious as in others it is expected that children, even very young children, will help with the family's work or contribute to the family income,limiting or excluded time for play. According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), however, all children have a right to play.

Playing has a very important role in boosting learning this applies not only inside the classroom, but also at home and elsewhere. Research also tells us that providing very young children with opportunities to learn grow and develop through safe and supported play will positively impact the cognitive, social and emotional health of a child. They will learn better at school, have better relationships with family and friends and be more likely to reach their full potential in life. Through playing, children may develop: critical thinking, sense of joy and wonder, problem-solving skills, creativity, resourcefulness, self-confidence independence, social skills, sharing, cooperation, imagination and curiosity (Save the Children, 2020).

International organization such as Save the Children and UNICEF support play through programs such as Play2Learn, and the Early Childhood Development Kit which support both parents and children. The two videos below support the power of play.

Professional Goal

My goal is to stay informed on international issues regarding the early childhood field using the many resources I have accumulated throughout this and previous courses. I plan on paying special attention to programs that encourage literacy and diversity.

References

Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, October 29).Considerations for community-based organizations. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/community-based.html

Melvin, S., Landsburg, E. & Kagan, S. (2020, March). International curriculum frameworks: Increasing equity and driving systemic change. Young Children, (75) 1. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/mar2020/international-curriculum-frameworks-increasing-equity

Mongeau, L. (2018, October 9). Time to change how we think about early education, international study finds. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/time-to-change-how-we-think-about-early-education-international-study-finds/

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2020). NAEYC COVID 19 statement. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/blog/naeyc-covid-19-statement.

National Center on Education and the Economy. (2020, June 12). Silver linings: Innovations in education spurred by the Coronavirus. Top of the Class Newsletter. Retrieved from https://ncee.org/2020/06/silver-linings-innovations-in-education-spurred-by-coronavirus/

World Bank. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: Shocks to education and policy responses. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/publication/the-covid19-pandemic-shocks-to-education-and-policy-responses.

United Nations. (2020, July 13). COVID-19: UN and partners work to ensure learning never stops for young refugees. Retrieved from https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1068201

United Nations (2020, July 21). COVID-19 is making a global childcare crisis even worse’: UNICEF chief. Retrieved from https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1068811

Zero to Three. (2020). How COVID-19 is impacting child-care providers. Retrieved from https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/3398-how-covid-19-is-impacting-child-care-providers.