Final Reflection
This activity has been very interesting to research and useful in many ways as everyone has researched something different. Through my research into HighScope, I found things my school was not practising which lead me to realise that even though they claim to the parents and teachers to be a HighScope school in practice they are merely using the name of HighScope and applying some of the ideas. When I read about the accreditation process to become a HighScope school and how all lead teachers had to be certified HighScope teachers it clearly opened my eyes. I realise my school is not necessarily doing a poor job of education but they should instead claim their practice is based on best practices in HighScope tailored to meet the needs of our students within China. 

 

After researching more into HighScope the data confirms that it is an effective curriculum. I also found some of the misgivings I had toward the curriculum were misplaced and in fact truly following the guidance of the HighScope philosophy would have solved some of the issues I encountered. It also gave me more courage to speak out to my school about my ideas on how to change things as I can clearly see we are not solely a HighScope school and that is OK. We can try to make the best curriculum out of a few well-researched curricula and apply them in ways that synergise with ours.

 

I had also heard really good things about the IBPYP curriculum and had wished my school had taken up an offer a year ago to convert to an IB school. I see now the financial costs that the school faced when doing so and that we already operate somewhere between an IBPYP and a HighScope school. It was nice also to see that even IBPYP had some struggles of its own and that no curriculum is perfect and there is still a lot of research that can be done to try to further refine best practices in early childhood education.

 

Reading the posts and analysis from the other cohort members was highly beneficial to me. I tried to look at some of the cohorts who had written about a curriculum I have not heard about or had no experience with. This helped my understanding of what other people and other countries are doing. It expanded my knowledge of the available curricula and was great to see their personal insights about the curricula from their hands-on experience putting them into practice. It is one thing to research curricula and best practices, but sharing personal experiences about the implementation process made this task come to life.