When I Think of Research

         Research is a routine that is done daily in most fields of employment including early childhood education. In early childhood education, situations and issues within the field change frequently which is why research is important to keep up to date in this field of education. During my time in this course, EDUC 6163, I have gained insight on information such as, getting consent from parents and participants to have research conducted on them, information that is allowed to remain confidential and information that cannot remain confidential due to mandates within early childhood education as well as state, local, and the federal laws, doing interviews on your participants to get to know them a little better, and many triangulation within research (Mac Naughton, Rolfe, Siraj-Blatchford, 2010). When I researched information on NAEYC website, I learned that, "Children benefit from research when it used appropriately (Fleishman, 2006). When is comes to doing research, my view have changed because I learn research takes time to plan and conduct. Its not just about picking a topic and doing research on it, but about the process, time, and steps it takes to put research together. It is important that you take your time and make sure what you want to research will have a outcome instead of just a yes or no response, but explain why its either yes or no.

              
      The lessons about planning, designing, and conducting research in early childhood that I learned is to prepare and plan before conducting research "Choose a topic that will be of interest and significance to other people" (Mac Naughton, Rolfe, Siraj-Blatchford, 2010, pg. 16), search for information on reliable sites, and know where you want to collect your data from and who will be included in your research. Research is a process and it takes time to have a successful research that will be valid, but you also have to make sure that what you observe is what you observed and not have any assumptions within it.


     When it comes to research, one challenge that I had was picking a question that I wanted to get an outcome about and one that wasn't to broad. Some ways I met this challenge was getting feed back from my professor, Dr. Parrish and some ides that she provided me. She has truly been a blessing and a big help to me in this class. I am grateful to have been able to learn more about research and the process of making a research valid and successful.


References

Fleishman, S. (2006). Research matters:  Moving to evidence based professional practice.
                 Educational Leadership, 63 (6), 87-90.

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

National Association for the Education of Young Children. (n.d.). Using early childhood
                research. NAEYC. Retrieved from http://www.naeyc.org/research/using