Having not heard from any professionals over seas, I was back to web research for international issues pertaining to Early Childhood. After looking through the Harvard website on the developing child, I was drawn to an article focusing on a member of their faculty named Gunther Fink. He is a health economist who was interested in discovering how the use of anti-malaria nets over time, may effect child development in Zambia. In order to track the children's development, they needed to create new instruments of measurement because the methods used for measurement were not helpful in providing the information needed to see a result.
What was interesting to me also is that Gunther said at the end of the article that with out good information, they can not prove that they need funding. This sounds similar to us here in the states. We also may need to create new instruments of measurement as we continue forward and as the field here in the US changes and we try to balance play and academics for children in school. As we grow and change over the next however many years, we will have to change many things. First we have to change our thinking. Once we do that, we can make the changes needed to truly benefit the children involved.
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/faculty_and_partners/faculty/faculty_spotlights/faculty_spotlight_fink/
Enjoyed your blog! Sorry you haven't heard from your outside sources either. I enjoyed hearing your take on the article you reviewed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this information. Change can often be difficult in any situation and often finds resistance but Fink's understanding that the correct instrument must be used to measure the information being sought is key to any change we make in early childhood. As we seek to prove programs are working or not working we must be evaluating with the correct instruments.
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