Teachers' Education, Classroom Quality, and Young Children's Academic (Article Critique Sample)

Teachers’ Education, Classroom Quality, and Young Children’s Academic
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Institution
Teachers’ Education, Classroom Quality, and Young Children’s Academic
The Main Problem Addressed by the Research
In a world where the literacy levels improve continually, there is need to harmonize every part of the education sector, and this poses a challenge to the various policy makers in any country. The biggest problem is that of whether it is necessary to have young children in the pre-school years to be taught by a degree holder. Early and the group of researchers did research on this matter to find the solutions for the underlying problem of teachers with the minimum of degree qualifications. The research does a lot of research into the problem to find answers to the most disturbing questions, and even how quality issues should be addressed CITATION Ear07 \l 1033 (Early , et al., 2007).
Past Research
Research has been conducted in this particular area. For instance, Barnett et.al points out that there is increase in the advocating of the teachers who teach children of age three and four years old to have a bachelor’s degree minimum and in addition have certification from the State Department of Education verifying their capability to be resourceful in with the children (Barnett, 2003) (Trust for Early Education, 2006) . Similar research conducted by the National Research Council also reveal the same need of such qualified teachers (National Research Council, 2001). A report from one study revealed that 17 out of the 38 States that were researched, half of them showed that the early childhood teacher had to have a minimum of a degree for them to qualify to teach the pre-school children. The other 12 States made it a mandatory for a school offering preparatory education to have at least one of its staff members being a bachelor’s degree holder. Some other States or even countries require that the teachers must be specialized in early childhood education.
Classroom quality is closely linked with the qualifications that the teachers (Burchinal, et al., 2000). The only challenge with this advantage noted is that the more the teachers are academically qualified, the more their pay requirements. Any country faces an enormous surge of the student population which calls for the even a rising number of the teachers and consequently the burden of paying them. That factor leaves the program controllers and the policy makers with the thought of the best way to identify what qualification is the best to meet the need and can be managed by the government. Research conducted by, Zaslow, Berry, and Tout came to a conclusion that although a higher level of the qualification of the teachers produces the best result, however, there is no exact point where the level can be said to be the threshold (Trust for Early Education, 2006).
The problem of policies being made pushing for the preschool educators to have a minimum of a degree is also as a result of past research which indicated that the quality of education is improved when the teacher learns from experience in the child-care areas that are majorly based in the communities. The other analogy of the research conducted showed that the early child care is linked to the classroom education which has an impact on the academic gain of the children. Logically speaking, the researchers were revealing that not only should the programs being proposed only help in producing the best students in the classroom, but should also focus on giving the children highly qualified teachers to guide the children as well as implement the programs that the policymakers have put in place.
Purpose of the Research
The primary objective of the research was to get the connections between teacher’s education with a focus on the degree attained and the quality of classroom delivery, and how these impacts on the skills in academics that the young children have before they join kindergarten.
Research questions
For a strong research to conducted, questions are asked and answered by actually finding out the concerns of the research. In the research conducted by Early and the others, the following were the research questions that helped in the progress of the research:
1) Does the educational degree of lead teachers relate to observed classroom quality and children’s academic skills using a value-added specification? And, more specifically, do teachers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher have classrooms of higher quality or children who learn more during the prekindergarten year?
(2) Among lead teachers whose highest degree was in early childhood education or child development, does the level of the highest degree predict classroom quality and/or children’s academic skills using a value-added specification?
(3) Among teachers whose highest degree is a Bachelor’s, does a major in early childhood education or child development predict better quality or greater academic skills than a major in another field of education or a no non-education major, controlling for baseline skill levels using a value-added specification?
Research Methods
Although Early and the rest of the authors of the report do not directly mention the methodology, they used in collecting data, two methods stand-out as to contributing to the success of the research. For instance, the researchers compared different research that was related to the what they were researching and in cases where there were disharmonies with the data, the same could be harmonized to fit the research results desired. At the same time, the researchers employed the observational method, since the children were observed for three years till they were about to join kindergarten. The research also employs the use of experiments, for instance in administering head-starts for the children.
Population, Sample, and Selection of Participating Data
The study was conducted from the studies that have been carried out in the past. Thus, the methods, population, and samples were chosen after scrutinizing all the participating research, and therefore the current research borrowed from the past studies. The previous studies, for instance, Early Head Start (EHS) Follow-Up was conducted for the children undertaking Early Head Start and some of the controlled conditions. However, this particular research was carried out to comprise both the categories (Administration for Children and Families, 2005). For Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Zill, et al., 2003), the study comprised of 63 programs that were analyzed, except that in the current research the method was solely restricted to the children below four years. Some other studies from which the current research conducted its analysis comprise More at Four Evaluation (Peisner-Feinberg & Maris, 2005), Georgia Early Care Study (Henry , et al., 2004), National Center for Early Development and Learning (Early , et al., 2005), Study of Early Child Care and Yolk Development (NICHD SECC, n.d.).
The research used analyzed the data using scientific methods, including using tables to compare data from different researchers in the past. In the comparison, the research was able to reach very to the point where the information gathered and the result presented are all valid and reliable.
The data is used in this research is collected from the previous researchers, and the same are compared and analyzed from the different perspectives of the study. The data is passed through a thorough scrutiny so that it can help to answer the main questions of the research.
Results
The study found from the various studies that the teacher’s degree qualification does not influence the classroom so much. However, the study also found out that the teachers with at least a bachelor’s degree had a better classroom quality than those who had no bachelor’s degree. Some studies could not produce enough evidence to support teacher qualification to the classroom management. Secondly, the study found out that it a child’s performance in language and maths had so little to do with whether the teacher is just a degree holder and has major in early childhood education or not. Some, however, some evidence indicated that teachers with at least major in ECE, had their pupils perform better, although the quality of their classroom was lower as compared to the teacher with a degree. A combination of both bachelor’s degree and a major in ECE produced the best performance as well as classroom quality. Third, the research revealed that there was no association between the class quality and the level of education of the teacher or their major courses.
The researchers give two major recommendations that should be implemented by the policy makers. For instance, the study recommends that a broader research should be conducted so as to reveal a proper understanding of the teacher quality can be understood with more clarity. The study also suggests that focus should not be made entirely on the teacher quality since it is just one of the many components that form the education system.
Critical Analysis of the Paper
The book “Teachers’ Education, Classroom Quality, and Young Children’s Academic Skills: Results from Seven Studies of Preschool Programs” CITATION Ear07 \l 1033 (Early , et al., 2007) by Diane M. Early and others written in 2007, is a great study article, offering a broad research on teacher quality. The article addresses the need to have a quality education, prov...