Research that Benefits Children and Families

I know that research can be very beneficial for young children and families. As an early childhood educator, research has played a major role in my work with young children as well. There have been different times in my own experiences where I have been able to turn to research to help me in a situation with young children. I have particularly seen research in practice with young children in two ways: how children develop musically and working with children who are living in poverty.

I recently took a music training course to become a registered teacher for a company called Music Together LLC. Although I have a Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Studies, throughout all of my coursework we only just briefly touched on children and music. My eyes were opened to a whole new area of development in young children when I learned about how they develop musically. Attached here is a link to some information about how they research and develop their program: http://www.musictogether.com/ResearchAndDevelopment. I was fascinated by the research they have conducted in order to implement a program that would support young children's music development. The reason I found out about this company is because I attend these classes with the little boy I nanny for. I have seen how powerful Music Together has been in his overall development as well.

The other area that I have seen research in action and the benefit of it to young children is looking at young children living in poverty. For my student teaching I worked in a Head Start program. Here is a link to some research done by Head Start: http://www.nhsa.org/research. I saw this research put into action at the program where I was placed. I learned about how they utilized, not only research about young children and how they develop in general, but also about how young children living in poverty effects their development. This helped the teacher understand how to be sensitive to children and families living with this, as well as, helped teacher create an environment that was safe and helped support the children's development regardless of how things were in their home life. I think the research that was conducted with the children living in poverty was a benefit to them because it helped the teachers become more understanding of the children and the families and also helped them support the development of the child as well.