Well, unfortunately I emailed Maria over a week and she has not gotten back to me, so I am not able to share any information from her on Sweden. It is a little frustrating to depend on someone else to complete an assignment, so I chose to do the alternate assignment this week.
I first went to the Global Children's intiative website and here is what I found:
Zambian Early Childhood Development Project-researchers had found that there was not a lot of research from Sub-Saharan African on education, to they created an assessment that tested how well the anti-malaria intiative was doing in Zambia. It started in July 2010 and there are follow-ups each year. I looked up information from the 2010 assessment final report and it talked about the country's background, the history of the test and development across Zambia (which varies). The assessment tests a variety of skills, such as fine motor and verbal skills. Through the assessment they found the intitiative is successful and is working well for children. Depending on where the children lived in Zambia depended on there overall successful because there was a large difference in areas.
Brazil-Nucleo Ciencia Pela Infancia--This center was to guide stronger policies and get more investments for early childhood programs that benefit young children and their families. They also want to adopt a center model curriculum, but include local context as well. I really liked the idea of having an established curriculum, but then also making sure to include the children's home cultures in their learning.
Chile-Un Buen Comienzo-This center wants to improve early childhood education through professional teacher development. I thought this was interesting because so many programs look at what they can do for the childrn and teacher development is a huge part of quality education. The center also wants to improve language offerings and include children's families.
I was able to find a really interesting podcast on early childhood education from http://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/index.php?q=node/6156. It focused on the economic gains of early childhood education and Head Start. I thought this fit right along with our topics we have been discussing plus I am interested in knowing more about Head Start.
The podcast starts with the two men talking about and quoting James Hackman, who states "early childhood education is a great investment and their is a high rate of return on it." They went on to discusse that they best way to improve equity and combat inequality for all is to focus on disadvantaged individuals and improve Pre-K to make it assessable to all. Hackman is quoted as saying, "it's not just or fair, it would increase our overall productivity". When disadvantaged children have access to Pre-K their IQ is raised to normal cognitive levels and they have increased behavior. It has been shown that these same children than increase labor productivity and participate more in the job market.
The next conversation was about Head Start. They called it a high quality program that does a "decent" job of educating children. The two men felt their Pre-K programs were of better quality than most public or private Pre-K. Head start improves cognitive ability and has been shown to keep kids in school longer. They quote Jen Curry from Columbia who has discussed the "fade out" affect of Head Start (which I had not heard about before). There is a jump in cognitive skills for disadvantaged children while in Head Start programs, but as they get older, the jump in cognitive development disappears.
Even thought I learned a lot from the website and podcasts, I would have loved to shared with all of you more about Maria's school. Through the alternate assignment, I was able to learn about places that I do not know much about when it comes to education and I was also able to gain more insight on Head Start.
Resources
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/
http://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/index.php?q=node/6156
Amber it is always good to have a set curriculum in school. We use the creative curriculum. I love it. It really helped me when I became a lead teacher because as an assistant, the teacher I was with didn't show me anything and didn't want me to do anything except paperwork. My weakness was trying to include the diversity in the classroom when I set up the class. The facility never had enough materials so I had to rely on the internet or ask the parents to bring things from home. If you want to know more about Head Start just visit their website at http://www.nhsa.com. I could go on and on because you know that is my passion. Head Start provides a great start for young children.
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ReplyDeleteI understand how frustrating it is not to hear from your contact. I still have yet to receive a response to any of my emails. On the other hand though, I have enjoyed learning about the many different programs in other countries. I like how the curriculum in Brazil is including the children's home culture in their learning. It is important that children know their culture. I know that would be difficult to do here in the US because of our diverse classrooms. However, I think we should try to implement some kind of culture study within our programs, that would include all cultures.
Amber, just wanted to encourage you about your international contacts. I know how you feel waiting on someone to do your assignment. Just hang in there try not to get frustrated. I see that we both chose Zambian it was an intersting article especially to see how no assessments had been done on these children prior to this one. Stay encouraged.
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