Awareness of Early Childhood Issues

Current or emerging Early Childhood Issues.

Professional development is a topic that I want to pursue because it plays a significant role in the quality of early educators in Singapore and it would affect me as a future teaching professional working in the sector. Brainstorming the issues and trends surrounding this topic, helps me to gain understanding about the current trends and issues in my sector. During the process of gathering information, the lack of manpower and government set-budgets were significantly mentioned that I felt it was obvious that manpower, budget and the willingness of teachers are main problems. Along the way, the controversies on this topic have widened my perspectives and views on the challenges in the industry. Reading about what constitutes professional development on ECDA’s website, such as the recent articles which heavily mentions about ECDA’s budgeting for professional development and investments in early childhood leadership progression on the rise. These industry knowledge provide me key information to counter problems such as curriculum development and professional development.

Learning points from the interview and feedback from Centre Principal about your suggested recommendations.

The interview with the centre principal has enlightened me that professional development of the staff is not as simple as just managing the manpower, budget and attitudes of educators. The welfare of staff and academic development of the children factors into the professional development of the early educators. I recognised the centre’s need for hiring educators who are willing to attend professional programs that build their learning around the centre’s teaching beliefs. That is when I start to ponder if the hiring process could be made more efficient if teaching beliefs of novice teachers and the current teachers working in the centre could be aligned. The interview process has also allowed me to deepen my conversational skills when I had to brainstorm alternative questions to keep the interview going was challenging but I am glad that I managed to overcome it. Another challenge lies in the order of the different types of questions, which affects the flow of our interview.

Personal Growth

Problem-solving skills

It took some time to grasp the focus of our needs assessment. Our conflictual understanding of the needs of the centre led us to conclude that seeking the majority is the best way to appease each other’s emotions while acknowledging each line of thought from the group members. I learnt the cruciality of a timeline as well as meeting agendas, to ensure that each of us equalises the workload amongst ourselves. Communicating with each other is important as it builds camaraderie spirit for my group, as we must work to complete the module together. This is an essential learning point as I made progression in terms of working in a group as a collaborator and communicator. 

Communication skills

Crafting up a proposal was not easy as we lack the technologic skills and do not have adequate knowledge about the applications. So, through trial and error, we manage to find solutions and exchange knowledge. At the same time, I have exercised flexibility to the timeline without diminishing productivity. It was hard to relate to some of their problems at first, but we compromise with each other and the project got along smoothly. In this process, I discover that my way of handling conflict is to listen out to what others have to say, before stating my point. After debating and discussion, we decided workshops and quizzes would be our recommendations for the centre.

Organisational skills

The assessment process was difficult for me as I sorted them out according to the frequency of keywords. I found that highlighting and putting them down in a table helps to keep my thoughts organised and keep them from jumbling up with other categories that are not of high relevance to the topic of professional development. Putting our needs identified together was difficult because each of us undertook a different strategy to analyse the centre’s perspectives. This made me realise the importance of having a step-by-step categorising plan in a better interpretation of the perspectives collected. Not only is it clearer, but it brings us to focus on the commonality of the key quotations to support our needs analysis.