Sharing Resources: Part 2

For "part one" of this assignment I focused on the EECERA, which still looks to be an interesting resource for international perspectives on early childhood.  However, membership fees are only collected via the postal service, and I have not as yet received a payment option.  Without membership, the site maintains very limited access.

Plan B!

     So for this week, I’ve decided to see what’s new with the Center on the Developing Child:  Harvard University.  This has been my favorite source of regular information for quite some time now.  I should make time to read it more often.  Although the CDC of Harvard emulates professionalism through every page, I also find that it is unpretentious, unbiased and easily accessible.  Have you noticed how easy it is to access articles by Jack Shonkoff and the National Scientific Council for the Developing Child, without paying fees or signing up to publisher sites?   Anyway, as a Montessori teacher, I teach in Montessori classrooms, which typically attract a larger-than-average number of immigrant families, from a variety of countries around the world.  So over the years I’ve had the great fortune of testing the Montessori method to it’s fullest extent in culturally diverse classrooms.  Because of this, I am always curious about what is going on around the world in regard to ECE.  That is why I originally chose to investigate the EECERA site mentioned above.  But fortunately,  on the CDC Harvard site I see there is a page called, “Global Children’s Initiative”.  When I clicked on the link, I realize that the page I’ve found is actually one of our resources for the upcoming week… So I read on:

     The GC’s Initiative recognizes that healthy children are an important aspect of “economic productivity”(Center on the Developing Child, n.d.), which has been a major topic of discussion for this week.  In being a part of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard the site is constantly updating what we know from neuroscience, and providing that information to politicians and other policy makers.  Besides recognizing that economic productivity is an essential part of every culture's existence, I have not seen a lot about funding of EC programs beyond public funding.  The CG’s Initiative will focus on the following 3 areas:

• reframing the discourse around child health and development in the global policy arena by educating high-level decision-makers about the underlying science of learning, behavior, and health, beginning in the earliest years of life;
• supporting innovative, multi-disciplinary research and demonstration projects to expand global understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track; and
• building leadership capacity in child development research and policy—focused on both individuals and institutions—in low- and middle-income countries to increase the number and influence of diverse voices and perspectives that are contributing to the growing global movement on behalf of young children.

As is traditional with the NSCDC, initiatives are based upon scientific findings from an array of scientific fields regarding human development.  This coming together of scientific disciplines demonstrates the superior strength of diversity over, for example, basing initiatives upon the insights of only one scientific discipline such as only education, or only pediatric medicine.

Within the realm of early childhood development, CG’s Initiative has developed two different projects:  One is sited in Zambia, and is assessing and measuring child development outcomes linked to malaria control strategies.  The second project is sited in Chile and focuses upon improving preschool quality in Chile.

Projects are also planned within the realms of “child mental health”:

• Assessing the state of child mental health services in Shanghai, China;
• Developing and evaluating family-based strategies to prevent mental health problems in children affected by HIV/AIDS in Rwanda; and
• Addressing child maltreatment and mental health outcomes in three Caribbean nations (Barbados, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname) (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.)

and “children in crisis”:

• Exploring comparable approaches to surveying child status in post-earthquake Haiti and Chile.
• Bringing the science of child development into strategies for addressing acute malnutrition (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.)

    “Finally, and central to the Center’s core mission, an array of education and training activities will be incorporated into all of the thematic areas described above. The first dimension of this work focuses on building a sustainable infrastructure to support the productive engagement of Harvard students and faculty in a diversity of global settings. The second dimension focuses on developing opportunities to provide leadership training for individual researchers, policymakers, and institutions, primarily in the majority world.” (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.)

Although through these projects, participants are likely to encounter many controversial issues first hand, I do not recognize any of the issues presented in this site as controversial.  We'll see how things go as the GC's Initiative tests itself in other cultures.

     Possibly, after my girls have gone off to college, I might be able to consider participating, myself, in activities such as these.  I think they would be great learning opportunities, and an opportunity to work with some very interesting people.

References:

Center on the Developing Child. (n.d.). Global Children’s Initiative. Center on the Developing Child Harvard University. Retrieved May 26, 2012, from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/global_initiative/