week 5 - International Research

International Research

European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) is an independent, self-governing, international association which promotes and disseminates multi-disciplinary research on early childhood and its applications to policy and practice. EECERA is a non-profit organization, wholly-owned and subscribed to by its substantial and influential world-wide membership. It generates its own revenue, receives no external funding and thus ensures its independence, radical attitude and innovative openness.   EECERA Annual Conference is the largest and most significant early years' research conference in Europe, regularly attracting more than 600 researcher delegates from all over the world.   

Some of the current international research topics include Outdoor play and learning, Diversity in the early childhood education and appropriation of symbolic skills in 5 years old. 

The are many new facts that I learned from reviewing EECERA web page.  There is a Conference that is hosted in a different European city each year by a local university or early years network and to encourage networking and cross-national collaborations, includes a full social program. The local knowledge and the EECERA organizational structure mean that each conference is unique but of consistent quality.   The next conference will be in Estonia in August 2013.  It will be discussing the important issues of values, culture and contexts.   I as well became exposed to one of the most respected journals in the early childhood field.  The EECERJ, the Journal of EECERA, is one of the most prestigious early childhood journals in the world. It is one of only four early years journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information.    It consists of all pertinent research studies in correlation with effective early childhood development.