Personal Research Journey

                  


I was very intimidated by this course and was almost on the verge of dropping the class, I was feeling overwhelmed by the word "research", but as I emerged myself into my studies, reading the Research Method: The Essential Knowledge Base by William Trochim and our weekly discussion, my understanding and overcoming my fears of embarking something I felt was out of my element, has ease my thoughts.

The social/emotional development was something that was very new to me until I started working for a Head Start program and through my education journey.   Through my observation of my students this school year I started to notice the "green eye" starting to circulate around my 3-5-year-old students.  This led me to my decision on focusing my research on jealousy in preschool children ages 4-5.  Young children at this age are starting to realize differences and similarities in all aspect of the world around them. "Relationships, sex, different people of a different race; all these big social issues become visible to your 4-year-old", http://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Child-development-4-5-years.  I chose this topic because I want to have a better understanding of how to help and support regulation of emotions in young children.  Girls and boys both display this emotion but through some of my research, society tends to always advertise and objectify girls and women as displaying this emotion through books, songs, commercials, movies, television shows, and even articles and seem to go a different route when it comes to boys and men. I hope to come to a much better understanding of how young children regulates their emotions and create a pretend causal-relationship research.

As we embark on this personal research journey I hope to gain knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of all aspects of the early childhood field.  As I was reading our weekly discussion, I came across a research topic that one of my colleagues chose to research which was how to implement the spiritual side of young children and how mindfulness and children well-being is equally important and should be addressed into our practices as educators and serving, providing and supporting the whole-child.  I wish I would have thought of first this topic first, but I hope to gain incredible insights through my colleagues sharing of information.

Reference

http://www.healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/A_E/Child-development-4-5-years