When I Think of Research...

For so many they are unaware what Quality Rating and Improvement Systems are. A QRIS is designed to measure, rate, and disseminate information about the quality of early care and education programs including licensed child care centers, home based programs, Head Start and Early Head Start programs, and state prekindergarten programs. A QRIS publishes tiered quality ratings using “stars” or other quality designations for the tiers for each participating program based on its performance on quality standards related to curriculum, assessment, the learning and caregiving environment, staff-child interaction, family engagement, staff qualifications, and administrative practices. 

Why is this important in the field of early childhood?

There are so many benefits for young children and their families when they are enrolled in a center that has been quality rated.  QRIS are intended to improve the quality of early and school-age care and education programs through the alignment and coordination of systemwide initiatives. A QRIS may offer States several opportunities:

• Increase quality of early care and education services.
• Increase parents’ understanding and demand for higher quality early care and education.
• Increase professional development opportunities, benchmarks, and rewards for a range of early care and education practitioners and providers.
• Create a cross-sector framework that can link standards, technical assistance, monitoring, finance, and consumer engagement for programs in a range of settings, including family child care homes, child care centers, school-based programs, Head Start programs, early intervention, and others.
• Develop a roadmap for aligning many pieces of the early care and education system, such as child care licensing, prekindergarten and Head Start program oversight, national program accreditation, early learning guidelines, subsidy administration, technical assistance, training, quality initiatives, professional development systems, and others.

Those who would benefit from my research simulation are the students and their families.  I also believe that teachers, and administrators also benefit from being quality rated.  The students benefit from an improved environment, highly trained teachers, new and improved teaching techniques and a more relaxed environment.  This lends itself to help boost healthy development and school readiness.  Teachers benefit from being better trained and the ability to find new methods that may be more effective.  

What I have realize is as teachers we conduct research every day.  We research activities, we observe their behavior, we conduct focus groups when trying to identify the wants and needs of the students and their families.  Research and early childhood goes hand and hand.  Education is a world that changes each week.  There is a new method, or technique and research study trying to target the best way to interact and teach children.  I can admit that I have never really paid much attention to the efforts and the intricacies of research studies, however learning what I have about how data can be collected and use to highlight a specific topic and gather the desired results, I have gain a deeper respect for researchers and the research they conduct.  Even though I was intimidated by the content at first, I appreciate the education I have received throughout this course and I am looking forward to implementing some of the methods and approaches in my smaller but focused research.