EDUC-6163: Building Research Competency. My Personal Research Journey


I am privileged to work in early childhood education for almost two decades. As a professional educator that operated and managed inclusive early childhood programs, I am passionate about Inclusion, children with special needs, and equality. I learned from personal experience the essential contribution of inclusion for typically developing children and children with special needs. Besides, Inclusion allows children to feel like a unique individual at a young age and respect their peers based on their attributes and strengths. I intended to focus my simulation research on this topic, which will be Strategies to foster social-emotional skills in an inclusive classroom. 

As I started the research process, I looked for articles that will relate and reflect my study’s topic. During this stage, the first challenge I faced was to refine and contemplate the keywords that will meet my interest area. I started typing the whole subject and could not found any related article. That leads me to refine my search and divide it into small topics, inclusion, and social-emotional skills. When I started having reports compiled, I had to add another tunning and focus on the appropriate age of my choice-Early Childhood Education, which came out to Social-emotional skills in early childhood. 

As I look for some articles, I was focusing on keywords, date, and publication type. I proceeded by reading the abstract of each piece and the literature review at the introduction of each item, then focused on the discussion and conclusion. During the search of articles at the Walden University library, I found on the right bar of each piece, “Related articles, that provides me with a list of similar items related to my interest area. When I pulled out some related articles, I found a checklist that divides and describes the paper on the screen’s left side, such as Outline, abstract, keywords, and references.

As I continue delving more profoundly in the research process, I would love to have some suggestions for looking up articles, related references, and other advice or feedback to support and expand my knowledge and competencies in this area. Do you have something in mind? Any ideas will be much appreciated!

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Behice AksoySeptember 19, 2020 at 6:18 PM

    Hi Ilana,
    As always, your posts are intriguing and thought provoking. I am very interested in what your research will find. While doing your research on "strategies for developing social-emotional skills in an inclusive classroom", will you have any studies about the effects of teachers' attitudes and behaviors on children?

    Behice

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ilana AlbertSeptember 19, 2020 at 11:59 PM

    Hi Behice
    Thank you for your kind comments. As I delve into the research process, I feel that I may refine my topic and focus precisely on what you asked, which is the effect of teacher’s competency, attributes, and behavior on the children. I am sure that as a professional educator, I will gain valuable knowledge from the outcome of such a study.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 20, 2020 at 9:08 AM

    Hi Ilana,
    Your post is well written and the ideas you provided on searching for research articles is valuable. I will be utilizing the 'related articles' function in the Walden Library.

    As for your topic, will you be researching techniques that are effective in the classroom? I have taught several students with infant to toddler social emotional skills but grade level academic skills, with the exception of language. It was difficult to know what was an appropriate behavioral expectation.

    Samantha

    ReplyDelete

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