My Research Journey

I am a person that loves to learn new things and seek new knowledge especially when it focuses on the well-being of children.  Since the beginning of this program I have been able to obtain information from many different sources that have given me an idea of the issues and problems that children, families, and early childhood professionals are faced with.  Also during my current course, I have been introduced to the research process and also given the opportunity to select a topic of interest that I have in regards to the early childhood field for my simulation.  After careful consideration of things that I have learned and resources I have read, I decided to select poverty as the topic for my simulation.  Poverty is situation that many children and families are living in which has a major impact on their lives as well as their development.  Living in poverty is very stressful for children in which it affects them in all areas of development.  This is a topic that every early childhood professionals should be informed on especially when it comes to the impact it can have on children academically.  Early childhood professional should be aware of the living conditions of their students and also be able to provide them with different resources and services that can help the families address their situation.  Basically my simulation will provide every early childhood professional with important information regarding how living in poverty effects a child socially, emotionally, cognitively, and physically.  

The process of conducting research can be very difficult in which I must make sure that I keep my topic in mind at all times when going through the research process.  However, after being provided with information on how to identify scholarly resources, I feel more comfortable with selecting sources that will be used in my research.  In addition, I was able to gain an even clearer view of research by conducting the research chart in which I was able to identify different topics and terminology I did not understand and eventually convert it into information that is understandable.  I feel that going through each process individually and taking time to understand each part will allow me to successfully complete my simulation and have a stronger view and position on poverty and its effect on children.  I was also able to begin looking for resources on poverty in which I was able to identify several resources that will provide me with a great deal of information on poverty.  The articles I identified are as follows:

• The Effects of Poverty on Children retrieved from http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/07_02_03.pdf.
• The Effect of Child Poverty on Child Development and Educational Outcomes retrieved from http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=psycd_fac.
• The Impact of Poverty on a Child's Social and Emotional Competence retrieved from http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/policy-brief/impact-poverty-childs-social-and-emotional-competence.

I look forward to finding more information on this topic, learning more about research, and successfully completing my simulation.  I also look forward to sharing resources with my classmates and I encourage them to share resources with me as well as we continue to learn about the early childhood field.