Global Children's Intiative
3 New Insights gained about Early Childhood Systems around the globe:
v Un Buen Comienzo ~ “A Good Start”
Ø This program takes place in Santiago, Chile
Ø Mission
§ improve the quality of education through teacher professional development training
§ Each school will receive 2 years of extensive training in Early Childhood Development
Ø Expanding resources & Success
§ This is the only early childhood program that deals with child development intervention
§ Activists and leaders in this program hope to expand this to over 60 sites in the course of over a few years
v Creating a New Measure of Child Development in Africa
Ø Anti-malaria initiative
§ Have found positive effects on children’s health since this program was implemented
§ Less cases of malaria have been recorded
Ø Started by Fink and colleagues
§ These advocators realized that Zambia, Africa was far underdeveloped and needed to gain capital resources
§ Advocators assessed physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development in children at age 6, and followed this group of students through their school years
§ These advocators made an assessment based on their culture with the appropriate benchmark levels
· (In their part of Africa, there are over 70 languages studied. Fink and his colleagues determined the prominent language to go forth in study)
Ø Expanding Resources & Success
§ Since these efforts, children have grown in the three major areas,( socio-emotionally, cognitively, and physically)
§ They are growing in height as well, 8% of children are taller than previous years since the monitoring of this cohort has taken place
v Global Children’s Initiative ~ Brazil
Ø Mission
§ By using science of child and health development, this program in place, hopes to receive stronger policies and larger investments to benefit young children and their families
§ In the long run, they hope for a prosperous, sustainable, and equitable society.
Ø Expanding Resources & Success
§ This program offers an internship opportunity for young educators to help those in Brazil
§ It’s goals are to succeed in the following 3 activities
· Implement a proper scientific agenda centered around Early Childhood Development
· Communicate the science of Child Development in the Brazilian Culture
· Strengthen leadership for policymakers and lawmakers, and familiarize them with Childhood Development
Podcast
In this podcast, George Forman, author of book about Piaget, professor at University of Massachusetts and the Cofounder of Vidaetives, explains the importance of allowing children to explorative play. Forman became interested in how children think, through observation of play. He did this by observing children on playground and their interest in play and used Piaget’s theories as a guide. Forman’s epiphany sprung when he observed a young boy dragging a huge log. The child let go off this log vertically, rested it and realized it stood on its own. The log was not falling and the child was amazed by this! He saw this log as standing, not naming it a tower. He noticed that the child saw this situation as a verb not noun, or seeing the world as how things change or stay the same, not how they are. Piaget wants us to see how things change. For example, you can show children red and pink and tell them that those are the colors (noun, or naming) or you could ask them “what do you add to red to make it pink?” Helping children how to change one thing to the other creates solving problem and hierarchical thinking. In Italy, the school reflects this pedagogy, and taking play, drawing, music, by helping children think about their thinking. By using symbols to show children their thinking and setups to help children solve problems at higher levels, will create an independent, explorative student.
