Research Studies

            The research that I would study if I had no limitations or restrictions would be: What skills do young children need to be successful when entering public school?  School readiness skills are very important for young children to be successful throughout their education and life. As years go by I am seeing more and more expectations on young children and most of it is not developmentally appropriate, and I feel that we need to know where young children should be developmentally to be successful.  My goal would be to study developmental skills starting in infants and setting standards that build up to replace the standards that start at third grade and goes down.  We need to start at the beginning and move forward in what we expect of young children.  We need to teach them to be life-long learners and that will not happen if our expectations for them are out of their reach.

Research Journey

The topic I chose is at what age do problem-solving skills start in young children?  I work with children that have special needs and I facilitate problem-solving skills.  I use the Second Step curriculum to help with this and to build social skills in my classroom.  I need to know that I am not pushing skills that children are not ready for and to know where my students should be.  Problem-solving skills are used throughout life and are a very important school readiness skill.   Children need problem-solving skills to be successful in school and in life.

This class and constructing research has been very challenging.  I have learned a lot and we are only in week 2.  Any suggestions and insights for researching as well as research articles that you might find on problem-solving skills in young children would be much appreciated. 

Some articles that I have found:

Webster-Stratton, C. & Reid, M. J. (2004). Strengthening social and emotional competence in young children-The foundation for early school readiness and success: Incredible years classroom social skills and problem-solving curriculum. Infants and Young Children, 17(2), p. 96-113. Retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/iycjournal/Abstract/2004/04000/Strengthening_Social_and_Emotional_Competence_in.2.aspx

Bernard-Opitz, V. Sriram, N. and Nakhoda-Sapuan, S. (2001). Enhancing social problems solving in children with autism and normal children through computer-assisted instruction. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31(4), 377-384. DOI: 10.1023/A:1010660502130 Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/k2t2416v357q3883/