Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

Imagine that you possess the means and the knowledge to conduct research studies about any topic in the early childhood field. Imagine further that you are not restricted by the reality of the present. Imagine that your study will make a major positive contribution to the well-being of children and/or their families. What topic would you choose? What can you imagine the positive contribution(s) would be?

I think if I could choose any topic and was not restricted by the present, I would like to do research on how traumatic experiences can effect children in a lifelong sense.I work with many military children and believe this research would be essential in helping the children and families I work with cope with their very difficult lifestyles.  The positive contributions would be to understand the effects of children undergoing traumatic experiences such as war, death, poverty, deployments, and much more. Children growing up in our society today are under a lot of stress and we still do not know about all the long lasting effects these stress factors have.

In my research, I would try to explore how children's learning and development can be delayed during stressful times. In addition, I would try to explore how we can help children learn better coping mechanisms and how parents and caregivers can provide them with strategies to use stress in a more positive way. Everyone is surrounded by stressful situation on a regular basis and coping mechanisms are very important. However, it is also important for adults to understand how to teach those coping mechanisms.

My Presonal Research Journey

The topic for my research is very broadly termed "Positive Guidance." I have worked in a child development center for the past 2 year as a trainer. In my personal opinion, I find guiding children to make positive and socially acceptable choices important. Most of us grew up with a discipline approach, meaning rewards and punishment. Most early childhood professionals know about the importance of positive guidance. However, teaching others to use these strategies and reflect on their interactions with other children can be more challenging.
When narrowing my research topic to three subtopics, I was challenged to think about questions that would narrow my topic. At first I thought this would be an easy step to take but I soon found that there are many avenues to choose from. As a first subtopic, I choose to investigate how positive and appropriate guidance can lead to socially acceptable or unacceptable behaviors in children. I find this subtopic important because we see so many children with challenging behaviors and are quick to judge parenting as the cause without thinking about how our own way of interacting with the children can affect them. As a second subtopic I chose self-reflection and self-evaluation about guidance to see how this can effect the ways of evaluating effective teaching strategies. As a last subtopic, I have chosen to investigate more strategies to teach others how to improve classroom management. I am often confronted with staff members being trained insufficiently and therefore employing strategies that are unacceptable.
I have gained insights from my research chart because even though I have done research in my educational career, there are challenges like skimming articles or finding the specific information that is relevant for my topic. In the last week, I was also reminded in how much research materials are available to us now a days without necessarily being quality.
As far as resources go that I can share, EBSCOT on the library website has provided me with many valuable research articles. The search engine might be valuable to many of you since it focuses on education. Websites I can recommend are Zero-to-Three or NAEYC who also provide many good resource articles for younger children. Both websites also provide a wealth of information about how to share insights with parents.