UNESCO'S "Early Childhood Care and Education"

UNESCO’s mission is to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information. 

 

One of their goals is to attain quality Education for All (EFA) and lifelong learning.  The Education for All (EFA) movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, including youth and adults. At the World Education Forum 164 governments pledged to achieve EFA and identified 6 goals to be met by 2015. Governments, development agencies, civil society and the private sector are all working together to reach the EFA goals.

 

Goal 1
Expand and improve comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

Goal 2Ensuring that all children, particularly girls, in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

Goal 3
Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes.

Goal 4
Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

Goal 5
Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

Goal 6
Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

 

 

The main challenge faced by the teaching profession today is both one of numbers and quality.  The recruiting of new teachers go hand in hand with improving the quality of teaching and learning as we have learned through our Effective Programs & Practices class as well as our Issues & Trends course.  Achieving quality education for all EFA calls for more and better trained teachers, as pedagogical processes lie at the heart of quality education.   Schools must be supported in attracting qualified teachers to ensuring quality and equity for all students.  UNESCO works to address these challenges by designing and implementing viable national policies for teacher initial and continuous training, recruitment, retention, status and working conditions.

 

 

Quality childhood care and education programs should emphasise the child’s holistic development and extend beyond assisting the child’s transition to formal schooling.  High quality childcare, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, promotes motivation, confidence, good cognitive and linguistic development and school readiness.  The Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) workforce is often made up of pre-school teachers, care workers, informal carers and other professionals.  Adequate training and work conditions are essential so they can integrate the content and practice of early childhood care and education and address the transition to formal schooling.  Regular inspection and follow-up of the service setting are crucial for meaningful learning to take place.  Active involvement from parents and communities ensure that early childhood services remain relevant to the needs of the children and all other stakeholders and increases sustainability.

 

References:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/

 

 

e-Newsletter

This week I received an e-newsletter from The Children's Defense Fund.  The e-newsletter didn't have any information on accessibility, availability, or affordability of early childcare education.  It is however, calling for action for better gun safety measures.  Their campaign is called America's Broken Hearts.  Just since this Congress convened on January 3, an estimated 2,102 children and teens have been shot.  They are calling for us to help end this epidemic of gun violence. 

The Newtown massacre was a turning point that changed the national discourse on gun safety. A group of non-partisan concerned citizens came together to create a March on Washington for Gun Control on Saturday, January 26. More than 100 residents from Newtown led the march. Most Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, support universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons and limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds or less. The Children's Defense Fund joined thousands to call on members of Congress and state legislators to pass common sense gun safety laws. See the highlights and join CDF's Protect Children Not Guns campaign. Learn more http://shar.es/CDueC. 

Every Beat Matters

This week I followed a link from the Save the Children webpage.  I was interested in their spotlight area which led me to http://www.everybeatmatters.org/.

 

 

Their mission is to mobilize citizen action in the U.S. to help local health workers help save more children worldwide.  This organization has traveled the world and recorded actual heartbeats of children in need.  These heartbeats were used by the singing group OneRepublic to create an original song that you can download to help save millions of children.

Every 3 seconds a child survives thanks to the basic health care provided by frontline health workers. Frontline health workers help children all over the world survive the leading causes of death, including newborn complications, pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and malnutrition (all preventable).  With proper training, supplies and support, frontline health workers — such as community health workers and midwives —could help save most of the 7 million children who still die each year.

Save the Children by the U.S. government and other governments so that frontline health workers can bring lifesaving care to hard-to-reach communities and make the survival of children a reality worldwide.

You can find Every Beat Counts on their facebook page and twitter. 

Harvard’s University’s “Global Children’s Initiative”

Unfortunately, my international contact has not returned my emails for two weeks.  As a result I have been exploring Harvard’s University’s “Global Children’s Initiative”. 

Harvard is attempting to build an integrated international approach to child survival, health, and development in the earliest years of life.  The Center on the Developing Child has launched the Global Children’s Initiative as the centerpiece of its global child health and development agenda.  The programs focus is on three strategic 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.

Below you will find some of their projects.

Global Children’s Initiative is launching its first major programmatic effort outside the United States. This project will use the science of child health and development to help guide stronger policies and investments for the benefit of young children and their families in Brazil.

Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância is in collaboration with the Center, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, Fundação Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of São Paulo, and Insper. This collaboration will foster a more prosperous, sustainable, and equitable society.

Together, these organizations will engage in the following activities:

·         Building a scientific agenda and community of scholars around early childhood development;

·         Synthesizing and translating scientific knowledge for application to social policy. This will include working with the Center’s longtime partner organization, Frameworks Institute, to effectively communicate the science of child development in the Brazilian cultural context;

·         Strengthening leadership around early childhood development through an executive leadership course for policymakers;

·         Translating and adapting the Center’s existing print and multimedia resources for a Brazilian audience.

There have been a large number of studies investigated on the impact of early childhood experiences on children’s developmental, health, and educational outcomes in developed countries.  Little evidence is available on early childhood development in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this gap, the Zambian Ministry of Education, the Examination Council of Zambia, UNICEF, the University of Zambia, and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University launched the Zambian Early Childhood Development Project (ZECDP) in 2009.  This collaborative effort measures the effects of an ongoing anti-malaria initiative on children’s development in Zambia.  ZECDP created a new comprehensive instrument for assessing children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development before and throughout their schooling careers which is the first assessment tool of its kind in Zambia. The Zambian Child Assessment Test (ZamCAT) combines existing child development measures with newly developed items in order to provide a broad assessment of children of preschool age in the Zambian context.  These collaborators hope that the data collected will not only improve understanding of child development but also help identify interventions to improve outcomes in a rapidly changing developing world.

Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), “A Good Start,” is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile.  Its efforts are to improve early childhood education through teacher professional development.  The idea is to improve the quality of educational offerings for four-to-six-year-olds, particularly in the area of language development.  This project is designed to intervene in critical health areas that improve school attendance as well as socio-emotional development.  It seeks to involve the children's families in their education.

This project will eventually encompass 60 schools. UBC incorporates a comprehensive evaluation: a cluster-randomized experiment in all 60 schools. This type of longitudinal evaluation in early education has not been carried out in any other country in Latin America and will place Chile at the forefront of demonstrating the impact of a high-quality early education. 

References: 

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/global_initiative/



Sharing Web Resources

For several weeks I have been searching through the Save the Children organization's website.  Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change in the lives of children in need around the world.  This organization saves lives with food, medical care and education and remains to help communities rebuild through long-term recovery programs.  They work to resolve struggles children face every day such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease and replaces them with hope for the future. 

In this weeks e-newsletter we are called to take action and tell our nation's leaders to establish a new commission on children.  Save the Children's Action Center wants to raise awareness on protecting our children from violence, poverty and other threats.  They are calling on President Obama and Congress to establish a new National Commission on Children to:

• Create a national policy on children;
• Set goals for protecting children's well-being, including reducing poverty and violence; and
• Monitor progress on stated goals.

This petition hits close to home and made me think of this issue in a new way.  In recent news 20 young lives were lost in Newtown, CT.  This moment of terror opened my eyes to the possibilities of that horrifying day.  This could be the school I work for and those could be students of mine.  No matter how prepared you think you may be you are never fully prepared for such an act of violence.  Kids are growing up in a different world and we must safeguard our children from violence at home and in school.  I electronically signed the petition and I hope that through this small act of advocacy their goal to reach 50,000 people is met. 

 

You too can sign this petition by clicking on the following link: http://www.savethechildren.org/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6217027/k.8BE1/Action_Center/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=8rKLIXMGIpI4E&b=6217027&aid=519116&msource=emecuanmj113

Signing the petition adds to my understanding about advocacy.  I don't have to be a loud voice on a megaphone to be heard.  I can use my name in support for safer laws for children everywhere and for the early childhood field.   

 

Reference:   http://www.savethechildren.org/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.6217027/k.8BE1/Action_Center/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=8rKLIXMGIpI4E&b=6217027&aid=519116&msource=emecuanmj113