Your Personal Research Journey

The topic I have chosen for my research simulation is the ways to foster, positive, healthy social-emotional development in toddlers. I chose this topic because a child’s social-emotional development is the key to a child’s understanding and knowledge of the world around them. For the last year, I have been trying my best as a teacher to support a child that have out of control aggressive behavior towards his peers and teachers. I was the child’s primary teacher, in an Early Head Start Program, where I worked very closely with the child and his family. I spoke with the parents on a regular basis and share my concerns of his behavior. I would ask the family if they saw any of the behaviors that the child has been expressing in the program at home. The parents would always tell me no, he doesn't act like that there, and doesn't understand why he does it at school. I had many support meetings with the parents and other early childhood professionals to get the help and support he needs to overcome his emotional state of mind. I did everything I could think of to help this child overcome and deal with his emotions, help himself become self-regulated, and support the child to bond with others to help him feel confident in himself. This is why I chose the topic at hand, because of my personal struggle as a teacher to help this specific child to overcome his fears, anger, frustration, that all seems to stem from his family experiences and environment that plays a roll into his social-emotional development with other children, other adults, and other people within his community.

I took the time to start some research on my topic that I have chosen, but realizing its picking the right wording to search for the topic. I was able to find some resources on my topic, but need to find the correct way to use the terms to find more information regarding my topic. Though I only found about 5 resources regarding my topic, I think I need to do a lot more to find information regarding social-emotional development, when I’m aware of the importance of social-emotional development on young children.

I found the research chart helpful, but a challenge at the same time. I feel like I’m looking at research in a whole in light, because there are steps that brand new to me that I just learning.  There are things that I would never have thought about when starting to research any topic within the early childhood field. I feel there are many steps at completing high-quality research and I’m at the beginning of my journey. There are terms like positivist, interpretivist, postmodern paradigms, I've never heard of before; including the intense process of research as a whole. I’m hoping to understand it and knowing that I’ll have to focus more on understanding what is asked of me for assignments throughout this course to understand the best way to go about research and gain knowledge to quality research in the early childhood field.

I would like to ask my colleagues for advice and suggestions on key terms when research my topic of choice. I would like to hear your thoughts on your own journey of research as well. I think if we help and support one another with resources and the way we each look up information on our specific research topic. I’m willing to share resources when asked and work together to explore the resource together.  By working together and collaborating for an outcome, together we can find all the resources needed to everyone’s topic.

References:

Mac Naughton, G., & Rolfe, S. A. (2010). The research process. Doing Early Childhood Research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2^nd ed., pp. 22 - 43). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.