Unisa online - Center stage for Collaborative Research: ECD

The newly formed College of Education is already making strides towards its strategic objectives, and one such platform was a Collaborative Early Childhood Development Research Seminar which took place on 23 and 24 January 2012. This seminar was organised by Dr Soezin Krog and Prof Marike de Witt (ECD specialists in the College of Education) to provide collaboration opportunities for young researchers. 

Prof Ann Farrell (School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology, Australia) and Dr Auma Okwany (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Netherlands) were key speakers who brought integral discussion points and challenges of Early Childhood Education (ECE) to the fore at the seminar.

Presenting on many topics, Prof Farrell delved into the challenges of ethical research with young children, early childhood education and the implications of poverty, young children, families and communities. She also looked at how training institutions should address these issues and the ethical responsibility of students during work-integrated placement, to name a few.

She emphasised that there are major long-term benefits which can be gained from investment into ECE. “In order to be successful you must invest into training of specialist early childhood teachers, it must be a play-based approach and it must be universal so that provision can be made for all children.” According to Prof Farrell, there is already robust evidence to underpin this approach and the awareness has started major reform in Australia.

ECE in an African context was the core discussion point for Dr Okwany as she posed burning questions to the audience about ECE challenges in South Africa. Not short of responses, some of the issues that came up were training, unqualified teachers, lack of quality education, remuneration of teachers, fragmentation of services, proper implementation of policy and practice, infrastructure and resources, poverty and parental expectations.

With the growing concern of weak Early Childhood Development (ECD) care environments, Dr Okwany pointed out the challenges of lack of integration in ECD policy: staff lacking relevant policy familiarity or the philosophical grounding of policies, the shifting of government priorities and knowledgeable staff moving to other positions (communication vacuums), to name a few.

This seminar is one of many platforms building up to the College’s Centre of Excellence in teaching, training and research. This will serve the Unisa community and the community at large, as well as strive to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by enabling to offer quality education for all children in early childhood.  By collaborating with international researchers, the aim is to merge inclusive education and ECD.

Key activities and services of the Centre of Excellence are research, education and training, providing a pool of knowledge and forming key networks and collaborations, to name a few.

*Story written by Kirosha Naicker