When I think of research......

First, I would like to thank everyone in this course for all of your words of encouragement, ideas, and help along the way.  I would also like to say thank you to the professor for your helpful insight and knowledge that helped me throughout this class.

I have learned that research is more than just reading and deciphering through literature reviews, articles, and books.  When I first started this class, I thought that it wouldn’t be different from constructing a well written research paper based off of the things you learned.  Looking back, I can see that my prior understanding of research was very vague.  With that being sad, I can honestly say that I have learned that in order to plan, design, and conduct great research, the researcher must first have an understanding of the concepts behind researching.  I have also learned that the passion for a researcher’s topic must take on its own planning and designing.  The hardest part of researching for me was the planning and designing.  I think once those obstacles are tackled, then conducting the research should go smoothly with the exceptions of a few small obstacles.  The challenges I met in my research simulation were narrowing the research question to reflect the independent and dependent variables I wanted to discover in the simulation.  For me, I knew what my goal of the study was but had a hard time narrowing them all down.  I met them by writing down all of my ideas, taking the advice of my instructor, and deciding on the factors that were of greatest importance to me. I feel that early childhood professionals are challenged to teach, learn, and uncover new discovering’s within the field to accomplish what is needed of us.  I have a more in depth respect for the early childhood professionals that have come before me as well as now because the job is never complete.  With some careers, professionals can retire after a certain amount of years.  For early childhood professionals, the passion for children and dedication to their success keeps them striving to advocate and research on behalf of children forever.