Week 2 Literature Review

My chosen topic is the merits or benefits of reflective practice for early childhood teachers/providers.  I chose this topic because I have experienced the benefits of reflective practice in my own professional life.  As a family childcare provider in rural Iowa, I was pretty isolated (this was before social media was available) and had it not been for my experience reflecting on my own practices and working with a reflective partner to reflect on hers, I would not be the highly qualified professional I am today.  We would video tape our programs then watch the videos together and critic what we saw.  We discovered new ideas for helping other childcare providers, which led to us starting our own 501C3 non profit provider association.  Through this association, we were able to form a larger group of professionals who wanted to improve their own practices but also wanted to mentor others in improving theirs.  This experience taught me that even practitioners without a formal education can become good teachers when they discover the reflective process.  The IOM report, “Transforming the Workforce for children birth through age 8: A unifying foundation”  is recommending that only degreed early childhood teachers should be able to provide early care and education services to young children.  The cost of providing such qualified professionals would be astronomical; parents cannot afford to pay more; workers cannot work for less money; and childcare centers cannot add to their group sizes.  Either the federal government is going to have to step in and subsidize early care and education; or look for practices that will have more immediate affects on child outcomes.  Each day children around our country are being taught and cared for by practitioners who may be unintentionally harming our young children by perpetuating poor teaching practices.  There is no time to waste; reflective practice can begin impacting children immediately.

There is a movement right now in mental health organizations and large corporations to encourage supervisors and staff to work together in reflective practice and I think the same practices would benefit all educational practitioners. 

I was surprised to find several articles in the Walden database that addressed this topic, it is not a strictly early childhood issue. I know I will learn more about reflective practice as I prepare for the research simulation.  Research is an intimidating topic for me and breaking down each section is making it easier to understand.  Reading the two articles this week for the literature review helped me to understand the purpose of this section.  The literature review is the researchers way to set the stage for someone reading it to better understand why the topic was important, what the researcher had already discovered about the topic using other research, and to draw the reader in to become curious about the results of the research conducted. 

I am willing to help any of my fellow students with insights and resources that I have at my disposal, please feel free to contact me if you get stuck or want to brainstorm possible strategies.

References:

Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council (NRC). 2015.

Transforming the workforce for children birth through age 8: A unifying foundation. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.