FINAL EXAM Flashcards
What are the 3 levels of advocacy? What are the pros/cons of each?
> Silent, Micro LVL: Conducting oneself as a professional.
- Pros: Maintaining professionalism, not working even harder while burnt out.
- Cons: Not as visible, maybe less impact.
> Small a, Meso LVL: Advocating @ program level.
- Pros: By fighting for programs to stay open, it means still having those programs instead of losing them.
- Cons: Might not get funding if higher ups/governance see they are doing fine.
> Big A, Macro LVL: Advocating @ socio-political level.
- Pros: More likely to get attention from decision-makers so that changes can be made.
- Cons: With a professional career, difficult to advocate w/o seeming political & having repercussions to your job.
Why is the ECEC sector considered to be “in its initial stages? What are some issues in the ECEC sector?
- Initial stages: Still a lot of work to be done so that ECEs are respected, understood, & paid fairly.
Issues:
- Early childhood education is not mandatory for children
- Diff in every province/territory
- Seen as an “optional” job or a sector of work that we could live w/o
- Feminization of the profession
- When we advocate we are seen as “selfish” or bad mothers
- Educators w/ children sometimes end up doing home child care instead because its cheaper for them
- View of ECEs as “babysitters,” lack of understanding of what we do
- Students are told about how bad the field is & told to upgrade, Ex. Get a degree, go to teacher’s college. This leaves a lack of educators in field
- Can work in the field w/o accreditation
- Burnout due to staff shortage
- Educators may be hesitant to advocate to fams abt field
- Larger systemic issues. Not everyone has privilege to stay in the field of ECE bc they want a living wage & need to find a better paying job
What does the feminist political approach bring to light?
> The downloading of social responsibility from the state to individuals AKA. Blaming individuals instead of recognizing systemic issues.
- Before age 5, society expects children to be an individual responsibility rather than a society responsibility.
> The struggle to balance paid & unpaid work. AKA. women having a “2nd shift” where they must clean/take care of kids.
> ECEs “subsidizing” (only paying partial cost of its worth) childcare thro low wages
How might professionalism be seen as both beneficial and problematic?
- Beneficial: bc it keeps children & families safe, helps us to be recognized as professionals, makes sure educators keep up to date w/ research & engaging in best practices
- Problematic: bc PD is not paid for & educators often not given time/resources to access it.
What is the connection b/w advocacy & professionalism?
- Wanting to advocate for field w/o seeming political or unprofessional
- For some ppl advocacy comes naturally bc we are used to advocating for children/fams
- For some ppl advocacy is harder bc we are caregivers and do not like to stir the water
- Advocacy involves embracing own experiences, opinions & values, the opposite of wht is generally considered objective & professional
What is Grounded Theory?
- A methodology that involves the collection of data to research questions abt how ppl relate to each other.
- Constructs theory thro emerging themes in collected data (as opposed to research tht reads a problem/data thro already established theory).
A critique of Grounded Theory:
- Can privilege insider views/interpretations of the researcher/their context and interpretations may fall in line with previously held beliefs/values/understandings.
- Basically, is subject to researcher bias
- Worldview of researcher determines how research is conducted and the type of data collected
- “What can be known & how we know are inseparable.”
What is Critical Realism?
- Philosophical approach tht aims to confirm the relative (differing b/w ppl) nature of reality & knowledge.
- Looks at how social, cultural, & economic situations may impact research & its interpretation.
Ex. a middle class white man examining issues of young teenage minority single mothers.
- Theories, concepts, & perspectives might create a minuscule understanding of a topic/experience, but can never fully create a complete understanding of a topic. Even if someone has personal experience with the topic of study, their experience is likely to differ from someone else’s experience. - The picture will never be fully complete.
- Many critical theorists claim experience is an invalid basis for claims abt knowledge bc experience alone does not take into account historical context.
How can researchers avoid research subjects as becoming “theoretical objects”?
- Participants should be involved in interpretation process and become co-researchers. This could help address the issues of limited world views & create opportunity for critical convos abt reality.
- By discussing & adapting
the developing grounded theory w/ coresearchers, who had experienced wht was being studied, the final grounded theory had greater fit, grab, relevance, & modifiability than if the theory had been generated by the researcher alone.
What is a decolonizing methodology?
- Takes into account power dynamics b/w researcher & participants.
- Power dynamics can be rooted in social, political, economic, or gender. Important to consider the dynamics of both today & historically.
How will these dynamics affect the data generated?
- The term “decolonizing” reflects both the process of challenging the colonial past & the ongoing colonizing processes. “Even when (the colonizers) have left formally, the institutions & legacy of colonialism remains”
What is Transformational Grounded Theory? What are its Limitations?
Transformational grounded theory takes grounded theory and adds the element of research participants becoming a part of the research process as co-researchers.
Limitations:
- Sustaining co-researcher participation.
- Researcher living in diff location to co-researchers
Why is there an increasing trend in community gardening?
- Housing crisis, not everyone has a yard bc a lot of ppl are renting.
- Helps alleviate food insecurity
- Community gardens can help support these problems but is not a full blown solution & convo shouldn’t stop there
How is community gardening a form of social action? How is this beneficial & how is it problematic?
Social action:
- Helps w/ food insecurity
- Brings community together
- Health promotion
- Learning skills & development
Problematic:
- Are gardens taking the place of other sustainable ways of food production?
- Responsibility being pushed onto individual instead of government taking responsibility
How is gardening being used in the communities from the videos?
- Using empty land to start farms in Detroit to support healthy food access
- Before this, many ppl could not access healthy food bc they lived closer to fast food & convenience stores than grocery stores
- Taking a dangerous & underprivileged city & turning it around & building community while providing food
- Growing gardens on the parkway grass owned by the city
- “If you’re not using it, why can’t I use it for something good?”
- On the street so that people can take some if they need
- Goal to build a garden going along the whole block
- If a child grows kale, they will eat the kale. Or if you involve them in grocery store visits. Giving them the agency & choice will help them understand its benefits and be more likely to eat it
What is white privilege & why is it problematic? List some examples from the documentary
- White privilege is a factor which causes white people to have more opportunity and privilege in many ways, at the expense of POC who are marginalized.
- White privilege is problematic bc it means that white ppl can have the same experiences as POC but then have the opportunity to go down a different, often brighter path. Ex. Chelsea’s father taking her away from bad influence so she could graduate while her ex went to jail.
- When ppl do not recognize their white privilege, they are part of the problem
- Problematic from documentary: when a guy says “I wouldn’t know” to having white privilege, he is applauded by Chelsea, even tho this mentality is problematic bc he does not realize the benefits he receives from being white. Chelsea allows whiteness to remain invisible by not probing deeper in this interview.
- Republican lady saying that white privilege didn’t give her any jobs but that she had to work extra hard as a woman to succeed. - She distances herself from being called a bad white person, existing as part of a racial structure, and positions herself as innocent.
