Research That Benefits Children and Families: Option 2

If I had full reign to design and implement a research project it would be one on the topic of Effective Home Visiting Programs and the impact on young children and families.  I believe a research project of this type would provide many positive benefits for young childen, families, and the early childhood field.

These benefits would include:

• Greater awareness of home visiting programs
• What are they?
• Identifying different types?
• Identifying characteristics that make-up an effective home visiting program
• Professional development for staff
• Types of curriculum utilized
• Documenting positive benefits of home visiting programs
• Child abuse prevention
• Closing educational gaps
• Parental education
• Early detection of possible developmental delays

These are just some of the benefits that I believe would be found in this type of research project.  By learning more about home visiting programs and their positive benefits I believe early childhood professionals can provide higher quality services to young children and their families. 

Below is a video I have included from the PEW Organization.  It is a testimonial from a parent on the role that home visitng played in her life with her child.  The more we learn the better services we can provide!

My Personal Research Journey

I have to admit when I saw that this course, Building Research Competencies, was coming up I was a little intimidated and concerned at how interested I would be in this subject.  I was concerned with the statistical aspect and reading detailed research papers.  I am happy to say that I am really enjoying the course so far and was excited to pick a research topic.  The research topic I chose was Homevisiting Programs in Early Childhood Education and narrowed down a subtopic of factors that contribute to the success of these programs.

I have a very personal interest in this subject matter being an Early Head Start Home Visitor.  Within my career I have also been a Head Start Home Visitor.  I have also worked in the classroom but have always found myself going back to the home base option.  I have also participated as a parent in a home based intervention program for my son when he was little and found it to be very beneficial to both my son and my family as a whole.  I am always trying to look at ways that we can improve our program and provide better services to  my families.

I have also found working on the Research Chart has been very beneficial to me in that it gives me a better understanding of terms and topics.  By writing them down in my own words I am better able to remember and use the information in my own work.  Just this week I was able to show my supervisor why an article she chose to share with us on ADHD may not be the most accurate information.  I also was able to show her how to read a research article to get the information that you wanted, the article she chose was not even on preschoolers.  When we looked at the Participant section we found it was done actually on older children.  The research chart helped me to remember this information quickly and easily.  I was very excited to be able to share this information.

I now look forward to the remainder of this course and learning more about how to best utilize research data.