Introduction
In this section, I will be reflecting about my whole journey of this group project. The process of selecting our focus topic, interviewing the Centre Principal to how I have grown as a pre-service educator in using my awareness of this topic to practice.
Awareness of Early Childhood Issues
As my group and I started on this project, we were searching for issues related to Early Childhood and we found a few that caught our attention, they were; Bilingualism, Professional Development (PD) and teachers leaving the sector. After reading more into the topics and analyzing them we soon chose to focus on PD. From what we have read and researched on, PD seems to be an emerging issue making news headlines with policy makers emphasizing the importance for educators to attend PD. After conducting the interview with the Centre Principal, I could see how she was very supportive of her teachers going for PD as she would plan with her teachers and see which PDs the teachers should go for to further enhance their skills. However, there would be some teachers who would be reluctant to go for PDs or feel that they do not require PD causing a drift between them and the center. The Principal also mentioned that there are some teachers who enter the center with a set pedagogy and would not change or alter their thinking to suit the culture of the school. This causes the teacher and the center to have differences leading to the children being on the losing end as they would not be getting as much as they should. From this interview, I realized and learnt that different centers have different cultures and ways of doing things, no two centers are alike. Different teachers develop their pedagogies from the courses they have studied, attachments undergone, and experiences gained. Having our own believes is normal however, we should not impose it on the center and the children if the center has a culture of their own. We should alter our believes such that it aligns to the center's doing or find a center that suits our believes.
Personal Growth
Through the course of this project, I have learnt important skills helping me to develop as an individual that I can use in practice. Organization skills such as teamwork and planning were picked up when the group needed to select on a topic to focus on and from there planning the interview questions to enquire about our topic. Communication skills such as listening, open-mindedness and respect was also developed on. When conducting an interview I should be open-minded and not conduct it with a set perspective as we would not get the whole picture making the interview ineffective. Listening is important to help us understand what has been said and to formulate our thoughts to continue the conversation in relation to what has been said. I should show respect to the interviewee such as acknowledging their perspectives and opinions. I was able to use these communications skills when working with my groupmates as well while we were planning a recommendation to address the needs of the center. Problem-solving skills were picked up along the way while thinking of a recommendation. Having fluency and originality to come up with multiple original ideas to make the recommendation stand out. We need to keep generating ideas before settling on one. After hearing all ideas, I needed to be flexible in adjusting the ideas to combine some aspects of everyone’s idea to form a solid recommendation that is feasible. These were the skills that I have developed as an individual while working on this project and these are the skills that I can use in practice to help me as set my foot in the sector.
Conclusion
Going through this project was not a smooth journey, however, through all the hurdles that I have faced I was able to grow as an individual such as picking up skills that I can use in practice during work and being aware of the trends in the Early Childhood sector.