Undergraduate Research Project
This blog is a place for me, as an early childhood educator, to share my experiences with reflective practice. I am beginning this blog as a creative outlet project for my Honours Capstone Project with Brock University.
Over the past eight months, from September 2024 to April 2025, I completed my research, Transformative Reflective Practice of Change: An Autoethnography. My undergraduate thesis explored reflective practice and the transformation that occurs when dedicating time to professional learning and reflection. I will define a few key terms to make sense of and understand the context of my research project. Reflective practices refer to the ability to ponder, critically think about, and make changes in the future (CECE, 2017; Ganly, 2017). When I refer to image of the child throughout my work, it is the long-held belief of a mighty, competent, rich with potential child that Malaguzzi (1994) theorizes.
Aim
My study aimed to explore how reflective practice shaped my thoughts about children, early childhood education, environments, families, and my role as an educator. Aligning my reflections, professional learning and values with my practices helped me to appreciate the changes that occur. My project's purpose is to inspire others to engage in reflective practices, open their heart to change, and become aware of unscripted ways of thinking (Pelo and Carter, 2018).
Research Question
I investigated the question: How does reflective practice change my beliefs, ways of being, pedagogy, images of children, families, educators, education, and the environment?
You will witness my first-hand accounts of how I reflected upon my substantial professional development, my image of the child, families, the environment and my role as an educator.
Methodology
I chose the route of qualitative, primary research with a creative output. This pathway led to conducting an autoethnography, which studied narrative and photographic archives from my past educator experiences.
The unique data collection involved gathering artifacts from journals, reflections, coursework, photographs, and professional learning as data. Permission was acquired from the appropriate individuals from prior experiences to utilize photos containing potentially recognizable elements. I obtained ethical clearance for using photographs of my early childhood environments from the Social Science Research Ethics Board (SREB) at Brock University. My file number is #24-118 - BARRATT. I analyzed my artifacts precisely using researched qualitative analysis techniques.
Findings
The discovery that studying my work found was that professional learning and reflective practice impacted my views of children, their families, the environment and who I am as an educator. My growing image of the child went from mischievous and manipulating to caring, persistent, and mighty learners (Makovichuk et al., 2014). With my transforming image of children, my role as an educator changed from someone fearful of doing wrong to a confident and passionate one, or from controlling the environment to striving for a co-creation relationship with children. The photographs analyzed illustrated my changing image of the environment connected to my image of families with a cozy space with a couch to invite them to read upon arrival, as pictured above. Also, my environment became enhanced with beautiful, sustainable treasures with an elevated view of capable and caring children.
You can learn more about my study through a symposium presentation on Brock University's website.
The link to my full thesis link can be copied here:
References
College of Early Childhood Educators [CECE]. (2017). Continuous professional learning (CPL) resource: Reflective practice and self-directed learning. College of Early Childhood Educators. https://www.college-ece.ca/en/Documents/CPL_Reflective_Practice_Self_Directed_Learning.pdf
Ganly, T. (2017). Taking time to pause: Engaging with a gift of reflective practice. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 55(6), 713–723. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2017.1294492
Makovichuk, L., Hewes, J., Lirette, P., & Thomas, N. (2014). Flight: Alberta’s early learning and care framework. https://www.flightframework.ca
Malaguzzi, L. (1994). Your image of the child: Where teaching begins. Exchange, 3, 52–56.
Pelo, A., & Carter, M. (2018). From teaching to thinking: A pedagogy for reimagining our work. Exchange Press.
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