What infants talk about: Comparing parents’ and carers’ insights

A book chapter (and book) have just been published:

McLeod, S., Elwick, S., & Stratigos, T. (2014). What infants talk about: Comparing parents’ and carers’ insights. In L. J. Harrison & J. Sumsion (Eds). Lived spaces of infant-toddler education and care: Exploring diverse perspectives on theory, research, practice and policy (173-185). Dordrecht: Springer. 

The chapter came from our Australian Research Council Linkage Grant where we explored what is life like for babies in childcare. We used parents' and teachers' responses on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures (Fenson et al., 2007) to determine what words were known by young children

Children’s first words are eagerly anticipated and celebrated by their parents and others in their lives. Their first words reflect the context in which children live, words that are heard frequently, and things that may be important to children (Hart, 1991; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1992). There is some evidence to suggest that young children’s language development varies by situational context and in direct response to what is spoken to them by their parents (Sabbagh & Callan, 1998; Snow, 1984). In this chapter, we explore the possibility that children’s first words may also provide insights into important aspects of their lived spaces in early childhood education and care settings.

Words known: "The words that the most educators recorded that the infants understood were: nappy (9), eat (9), outside (8), push (8), dog (7), water (7), lunch (7), drink (7), sleep (7), hat (7), and wait (7). Most of these concepts were also recorded by most parents as well."

Words spoken: "According to the educators, the words spoken by the most children were uh oh (6), daddy (5) and mummy (5). The next most spoken words (4) were social words (bye bye, hello, thank you), onomatopoeic words (meow, moo, quack, woof woof) and the noun, ball. There were other words that were listed by parents that were not in the top list for educators: baby (6), grandma (6), drink (5), and no (5). These words identified by educators and parents capture common daily events (e.g., welcomes and farewells, playing with and reading books about animals) and people in homes and ECEC settings.

Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network Whole of Network Meeting

This week I have travelled to Melbourne to meet with colleagues from Charles Sturt University, Queensland University of Technology, and Monash University. There are around 70 attendees at our final Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network (CRN) Whole of Network Meeting. The CRN has been going for 3 years as a result of Australian government funding of $5.3 million to build capacity within early years research across the three universities. It has been such a productive three years of collaboration amongst PhD students, senior, mid and early career researchers.

This week some of the guest speakers have included:

• Assistant Minister for Education, The Hon Sussan Ley, MP
• Professor Andrew Vann, Vice Chancellor of CSU
• Professor Marian Simms, Executive Director of Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences, Australian Research Council
• Karen Weston, Assistant General Manager, Quality Improvement Branch, Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria
• Professor Anne Graham, Ethics in Research Involving Children, Southern Cross University
• Professor Maggie Walter, Member of the steering committee of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children, University of Tasmania
• Deborah Kikkawa and Fiona Skelton, Department of Social Services, Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children team

Research involving the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) was a focus during the meeting and our recent publication using the LSIC data was highlighted in the poster displays. I was invited to provide a workshop titled "Improving your academic writing - both journal article and thesis writing".

Sarah Verdon, Deborah Kikkawa, Sharynne McLeod, Fiona Skelton

Prof Susan Danby (QUT - Future Fellow), Prof Marian Simms (ARC), Prof Sharynne McLeod (CSU - Future Fellow)

Statistics

Kate Crowe, Sarah Masso, Graham Daniel and I spent last week in Sydney at the Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Inc (ACSPRI) winter school undertaking statistics courses. Attendance at the course was supported by the Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network. The knowledge we gained will be useful to ensure that our data entry, coding, and analysis is accurate, efficient, and effective.

Our simplest (but one of the most effective) syntax that we created within SPSS was:
COMPUTE Age=DATEDIFF(DateScreen,DOB,"months").
EXECUTE.

This code meant that the SPSS program could automatically create the child's age in months from the date of birth (DOB) and the date of screening (DateScreen). We also created syntax to code all of Australia's postcodes into deciles relating to advantage/disadvantage, and all of Australia's languages.

Graham Daniel, Kate Crowe, Sarah Masso, and Sharynne McLeod at ACSPRI in Sydney

Tips on publishing from ECRQ editor

Today the School of Teacher Education research committee invited Professor Adam Winsler, editor of Early Childhood Research Quarterly to present a workshop titled:  "Publishing and reviewing in top-flight peer-reviewed journals: A mentoring workshop for early-career (and seasoned researchers)". The workshop was attended by students and academics who learned a lot of information and strategies for publishing in high quality journals. Here are  Adam's top 10 tips for why quantitative and qualitative papers don't get published in ECRQ (and other journals):

"1. Not enough methodological detail or clarity provided 
2. No clear focused, specific, research questions/goals articulated

3. Literature review doesn’t set up the questions/hypotheses

4. Problems with spelling, grammar, writing, English, and APA style

5. No policy/educational/practice implications given

6. Conclusions don’t follow from the data (could have made the points in the discussion without doing the study)

7. Contribution to the literature unclear

8. Bad fit between research goals and method/design/analysis

9. Poor fit between content of paper and scope of journal

10. Poor data analyses or design" (Winsler, 2013)

Excellence in Research in Early Years Education

Over the past 2 days I have been in Sydney for a meeting of the Excellence in Research in Early Years Education (EREYE) Collaborative Research Network (CRN). This group of Australian researchers have an impressive breadth and depth of expertise. Combined we were successful recipients of almost half of the last round of Australian Research Council Discovery Grants awarded to education researchers across the country. We have been discussing a large-scale collaboration that could have a major impact on Australian early childhood education.

Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC)

My colleagues and I from Charles Sturt University, Queensland University of Technology, and Monash University worked in Canberra from 9-11 August with members of Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FAHCSIA) to learn about the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC). LSIC is an initiative of the Australian government that parallels the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC).  What an amazing dataset of valuable information about Australia's Indigenous children! The information about language and cultural heritage is so comprehensive. I can't wait to work with this dataset.

 The goals of this Excellence in Research in Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network event were:

1. To develop sound theoretical and practical understandings of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC);

2. To explore how LSIC might inform research being undertaken by Collaborative Research Network (CRN) members;

3. To consider how CRN members might interrogate the data available through LSIC to inform social justice issues in early years education research; and

4. To build skills in working with the LSIC database and other relevant databases.

LSIC staff, Wendy, Jason Brandrup, and Fiona Skelton with Sharynne

Brisbane: Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network

This week almost 70 people within the Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network met in Brisbane. The CRN includes researchers from Charles Sturt University, Monash University, and Queensland University of Technology. What an inspiring week by the Brisbane River!

Over the week we have gone under, over and around many research ideas and questions

Love the spelling! Actually we are mostly "sisters" not "bro"s