Final Blog Assignment

In thinking about consequences of learning about the international early childhood field for my personal and professional development, I have concluded the following:

1. I have benefited professionally by obtaining knowledge regarding what policies, procedures, and/or programs are successful in other countries, and in thinking about ways in which I could advocate for changes in my own program to obtain similar results.
2. I have gathered a new wealth of online resources and websites (UNESCO, UNICEF websites, etc.), which may provide information to benefit my work in the early childhood field in the future.
3. Most significantly I have a newfound sense of gratitude towards early childhood education in America, which I see through a personal and professional lens. When I start thinking about all of the things I see wrong with early childhood education in America, and become frustrated with the changes that need to be made, I take the time to think about the many underprivileged countries I have learned about through my own research and in reading that of group members, and the struggles they face: struggling countries around the world may lack fresh water or restrooms in their facilities, their facilities may not be safe, unprotected, and lack even the simplest supplies and materials. Yes, early childhood education in America is due for many changes, but these aspects we take fore granted (safety, clean, running water, materials) put us far ahead of countries who are unable to advocate for, and initiate change independently.

 

A goal related to international awareness of issues and trends I have is to continue to learn more about the contributions I can make to positively impact early childhood initiatives in developing countries, which may include, but not be limited to, financial donations, and time donations through advocacy efforts and/or research and work from afar.

UNESCO Insights

For this week’s blog assignment, I visited the UNESCO website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/.

• Prior to this week, I was not quite aware of this organization’s existence through the United Nations. The website provided an array of information, and I first appreciated learning about the missions/goals of the organization:
• -provide international leadership to create learning societies with educational opportunities for all populations.
• -provide expertise and foster partnerships to strengthen national educational leadership and the capacity of countries to offer quality education for all.
• -work as an intellectual leader, an honest broker and clearing house for ideas, propelling both countries and the international community to accelerate progress towards these goals.

-facilitate the development of partnerships and monitors progress, in particular by publishing an annual Global Monitoring Report that tracks the achievements of countries and the international community towards the six Education for All goals.

Since this week was spent discussing professionalism, professional growth, and further education, I decided to investigate the area of the website dedicated to The UNESCO Institute for LifeLong Learning (http://www.uil.unesco.org), which promotes life long learning among the populations with whom they work. While reviewing this area, three highlights I found include the following:

1. “Germany aims to raise the literacy and numeracy skills of at least 5 million of its 7. 5 million adults with low literacy levels within the next 15 years. At the same time, the country will promote guidance and counselling services, to help achieve its aim. This initiative is entailed in a resolution adopted at the 75th General Assembly of the German Commission for UNESCO in mid-September. This initiative is a big step towards achieving ‘inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all’ as stated in Goal 4 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The United Nations General Assembly adopted the SDGs in September, 2015 to guide the global development agenda for the next 15 years.

Additionally, the German resolution aims to promote the recognition schemes of non-formal and informal learning and to increase inclusive education in formal and non-formal settings.”

2. “Approximately 10 million people without literacy, numeracy and basic skills in Afghanistan will benefit from a newly adopted curriculum framework for youth and adult literacy and basic education. The new curriculum was endorsed at a 3-day validation workshop in Kabul in late November 2015, which brought together more than 100 stakeholders. The participants, including two CONFINTEA scholars, who spent their scholarship at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) to develop this framework, signed a final statement which also acknowledges the crucial role UIL has played in developing the curriculum. H.E. Hanif Balkhi, Minister of Education, and H.E. Mohammad Azim Karbalai, Deputy Minister of Education for Literacy, endorsed the new framework as one that would improve the quality of literacy provision in the country.

Non-governmental education providers and literacy managers from various provinces in the country gave feedback and shared their experience to further enrich the framework. This new curriculum framework allows for flexible programme design and delivery that can be adjusted to diverse target groups and contexts. Additionally, it provides guidance to curriculum and learning material developers with regard to literacy and numeracy competency levels that are equivalent to those acquired in formal education. The framework offers the possibility for learners to obtain recognized certificates as it is aligned with the Afghanistan National Qualifications Framework.

UIL has played a crucial role in constant provision of guidance and support that has led to the development of this new Curriculum Framework. The workshop was co-organized by UNESCO Kabul and the Deputy Ministry for Literacy Education (DMoEL).

With financial support from the governments of Finland, Japan and Sweden, UNESCO Kabul is implementing the third phase of the Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan (ELA 3) project, which aims to reach 630,000 adult learners between 2014 and 2016. With the newly adopted framework as a basis, learning materials for the Basic General Literacy (BGL) programme will soon be developed. UIL continues to provide technical assistance to this next step of the programme.”

– See more at: http://www.uil.unesco.org/literacy-and-basic-skills/capacity-development/new-literacy-and-numeracy-curriculum-framework#sthash.Tgd4OqgU.dpuf

 

3. “Literacy and numeracy are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development yet estimates show that there are 757 million adults, including 115 million youth, who cannot read or write a simple sentence and two-thirds of them are women.

UNESCO and the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) is holding a consultation meeting at the Organization’s Headquarters in Paris on 26 February 2016 to discuss the establishment of a Global Alliance for Literacy (GAL) within the framework of lifelong learning.

‘The Global Alliance for Literacy is an ambitious attempt to make the major stakeholders work together to pull in the same direction to better support countries to achieve better,’ said Arne Carlsen, Director UIL.

The meeting will seek the views of Member States on the proposed alliance, which aims to help Member States achieve the literacy-related target of the Education 2030 Framework for Action. Sustainable Development Goal 4 seeks to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” while Target 4.6 aims by 2030 to “ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy.”

The alliance will promote literacy as a foundation of lifelong learning, focusing on the innovative use of technology and the establishment of connections with the other Sustainable Development Goals.

At its 68th session (2013), the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) expressed deep concern that the issue of literacy may not be sufficiently high on national agendas and recognized the importance of national programmes and measures to promote literacy worldwide. UNESCO was asked to strengthen its coordinating and catalyzing role.

The UNGA also encouraged UNESCO to continue consulting with Member States and development partners in order to elaborate a literacy vision and agenda for the years following the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003–2012).

In its 37th Session (2013), UNESCO’s General Conference resolved ‘to continue consultations with Member States and development partners in order to put in place a multi-stakeholder partnership for literacy that would ensure long-term global literacy efforts’.

Against this backdrop more than 100 UN and government representatives, donors, national and international non-governmental organizations, representatives of the private sector and experts from thirty-four countries gave their support to the proposal to create a GAL within the framework of lifelong learning.

– See more at: http://www.uil.unesco.org/literacy-and-basic-skills/repositioning-literacy-meet-2030-education-agenda-targets#sthash.TOFCh8CF.dpuf”

 

Sharing Web Resources (Zero to Three)

The website I have been exploring is that of the organization Zero To Three (www.zerotothree.org).  While reviewing the website this week, I did not see an abundance of links to outside websites or resources, rather the organization promotes their own materials which I find informative, current, and insightful.  An area of the website I explored that I had not gone through before was the Health and Nutrition section under the Behavior and Development tab.  The website provides resources that would be great to hand out to parents, and these same resources were beneficial to myself as a professional and a soon-to-be mother.  Among these resources were a podcast titled “How Feeding Nurtures Your Child’s Body, Heart and Mind”, a printout with tips for picky eaters, and their most popular resources and handouts (many research-based articles from the Zero to Three journal) about feeding young children in the 21st century and childhood obesity.  Zero to Three does a great job promoting and advocating for increased equity and excellence in early care and education through their policy work, with has it’s own designated area on the website.  Regarding other issues and trends in early childhood, I did find a wonderful visual resource titled “Poverty’s effects on infants and toddlers” (http://www.zerotothree.org/public-policy/infant-toddler-policy-issues/ztt-poverty-infographic-final-1.jpg) that displays information about poverty and early stress’s impacts on brain development and vocabulary development in a user-friendly format.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts Part 2

This week, I reviewed Harvard University’s website on the Developing Child, specifically, content related to their “Global Children’s Initiative”. This section on the website was new to me and I was excited to see what it had to share.  The website shared that “the Center on the Developing Child works globally to build a broader movement to achieve breakthrough outcomes for children around the world”. The Center on the Developing Child partners with ground organizations to engage in work with young children and families in the countries of Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. I was expecting to see work in countries of greater need, but the website did provide information regarding their work in the three aforementioned countries.

 

Brazil:

“The collaborative Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância (NCPI) includes the Center on the Developing Child, Fundação Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal (FMCSV), the Medical School of the University of Sao Paulo, Insper, Sabara Children’s Hospital, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. This partnership has been highly successful in creating a science-driven early childhood movement in Brazil, most notably through training Brazilian policy makers on how to apply developmental science to inform programs and policies and, recently, through launching an innovation cluster” (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/).

 

Canada:

“The Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (AFWI) shares our strong belief in the power of translating the science of child development to inform public policy. AFWI was created to counter the separation between science, policy, and practice work, which hinders the real-world application of scientific knowledge. Drawing upon the Center’s scientific resources, the initiative fulfills two key mandates:

• supporting research in early brain and biological development, mental health, and addiction, and
• translating that research for policy makers, healthcare communities, and the general public.

Through activities in applied research, knowledge translation, professional training, and evaluation, AFWI is continually seeking to bridge the gap between “what we know” in science and “what we do” in policy and practice (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/).”

 

Mexico:

“The Center is beginning to develop an innovation cluster anchored in Monterrey at the Universidad Regiomontana, a pioneering institution at the forefront of an extensive urban revitalization effort. A strong interest in adding a human development focus to their work led the Monterrey team to connect with the Center and learn more about our strategy for enhancing child outcomes through adult capacity building.

The addition of Mexico to the Center’s existing relationships and experiences in Brazil will create a strong Latin American pillar for our innovation agenda, allowing us to begin to think about how lessons from these two projects can be applied locally, regionally, and globally “ (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/”.

REFERENCES

Working Globally