Research Proposal: Methodologies and Early Childhood Studies

This research proposal aims to explore the application of research methodologies in the field of Early Childhood Studies, with a specific focus on the role of children in the research process and the evaluation of quality change within early life education settings, utilizing a qualitative approach. The study, set in Ireland, seeks to address the appropriateness of current methodologies, the position of the child within the research, and how to assess quality improvements in educational settings. The proposal includes a review of existing literature, discussing various perspectives on children's involvement in research, from being considered as 'objects' to active 'participants'. The research questions investigate the suitability of different research methodologies, the importance of child involvement, and methods for evaluating quality changes in the early childhood education framework. The study emphasizes ethical considerations, the importance of child-centered approaches, and the need for reflexive practices to understand children's feelings, expressions, and behaviors. The proposal highlights the significance of considering the child's perspective, the relationships between adults and children, and the need for collaborative knowledge exchange between educators and parents to enhance the overall development of the children. The research intends to address the current issues in research planning, where the children's voices are often unheard, and aims to involve children in the research process in a more meaningful way.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Name of Student
Name of University
Author note

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Title – ‘The use of research methodologies in the field of Early Childhood
Studies’
Introduction and Research rationale
Early childhood studies are very important ways of educating the children with
respect to the stages of development so that the language, literacy and the social skills are
very much developed in the normal way. It is critical to understand that while the parents
feels very protectively about their children and expects that children will be given proper
educational support and academic guiding in the early life education settings and early
education institutes, the educators on the other hand have a different concern all together.
They plan the classes and the meal sessions and play therapies for a number of children who
are in the same classroom and they have to be responsible for the care of so many children
who are in their centers.
It is critical to understand that the classroom teaching in the early education
framework has various guidelines that the parents, the educators, the supporting staffs and the
academic coordinators needs to follow in order to impart a safe learning environment to the
children as well as with the reaching of the effective learning outcomes.

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There have been various researches that have focused on the criticality of the teaching
methods that would help the learning process and the learning outcomes of the children in the
early life. The various aspects of the education in the early life framework is based on
improving the cognitive, social and the physical developmental parameters of the children
that is normal to a specific age and the progression is made from the same. The children are
being taught with various teaching and educational strategies to improve the cognition, social
and behavioral skills in addition to the learning of the academic concepts (Christensen and
James 2008).
There are even different electronic tools and educational models that are used in the
classroom and in the other teaching frameworks as well in the other classroom framework in
order to develop and deliver a more comprehensive learning experience to the children but
there are various types and various numbers of questions that has been already raised to
understand the lives and the understanding of the children with respect to education,
academics and the experiences of life gained in the early life education settings.
Various childhood education researches have shared their concerns about the exact ways of
knowing about the exact feelings and the exact perception of the child – being not addressed
at all in the educational framework (MacNaughton, Rolfe and Siraj-Blatchford 2010).

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Mostly as the scenario in Ireland and in rest of the world stands, that the experiences
of the children are reflected not in language and understanding of the children but through the
words of the educators and teachers who chose to speak for the children in terms of their
behavior, attitude, attention, concentration and feelings shown in the classroom and nobody
gives the children – the opportunity of speak for themselves (Akpovo, Moran and
Brookshire2017). This is where lies the major ethical complication and research bias that a
minor who does have not researched a mature developmental stage to speaks about their
feelings – that complicates the purpose, objectives, aims, methodology and the conclusion of
the research. It is also to be taken into consideration that the various aspects of the
educational parameters are targeted at improving the cognition, behavior of the children and
the feelings are subjective in nature which should be analyzed at various parts and stages of
the research study – that is actually not being done (Mukherji and Albon 2018).
Hence, there is an increasing complicacy about how the childhood education
researches or early life studies researches are performed and undertaken by the researchers of
the study. It is to be considered that the problem lies in the research planning itself when
many researches fails to consider the importance of the subjects of interests of these early life
studies researches being the children themselves and it is as a matter of fact that the educators
and the teachers in the early life framework, gives themselves the entire authority of speaking
on behalf of the children (Park et al. 2019).

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It is to be understood the children themselves have the authority to speak for their
own experiences and they should closely be involved in the research framework as much as
like the other participants in the research study and it is of critical interest that how the
children responds to the questions being asked in the research study and how the responses of
the children to the questions being asked are actually interpreted by the researchers to reach
the results in a effective manner. The research are mostly teacher centric than being child-
centered and this is where the various issues with bias and ethical complications arises. The
researchers of this study aims to understand the application of subjective thinking into
research and practice. It is vital to be mentioned that the early life education settings with all
its resources and infrastructures should be as ready for a child as the family of the child and
the child himself is ready for the school.
Various researchers have identified to ignore the age factor that disallows the
participation of children in the scientific researches and it is as a matter of fact by taking
more vital ethical parameters such as beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and integrity
of the children into consideration so that the importance of involving the children in the
research is realized and steps are taken to formulate the research design in a very coherent
manner so that the young children are included in the research as well. It is important that the
reflexive approach is taken into consideration so as to understand the feelings, expressions,
perception, attitudes and the behaviors of the children and it is critical that empirical data is
taken into account when analyzing the feelings of the child (Dickson-Swift et al. 2017).
The various aspects of the relationships between the adult and the child should be
taken into consideration and it is critical to understand that it is the relationships that affect
the multiple facets of learning by the children. Special children as compared to the normal
children who has normal language and cognition – lacks the verbal fluency and that is why
different approaches are undertaken to understand their feelings, experiences and expressions

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and that is why, per a research a formulized procedure of geometric circles are used to
understand the same (Harrison et al. 2019).
Observing the children carefully and closely along with active listening of the
children’s responses are critical ways of developing the rapport with the child prior to and
during the research process that is undertaken. Checking the development stage of the child
and the developmental needs of the child, it is important that the quality of care being
delivered by the early life education settings are assessed and not only the school, the care the
child receives at home that promotes his growth, development and education has to be
crucially analyzed as well. It is important the knowledge exchange between the children and
the educator is undertaken through a collaborative, reflexive approach and more than
importantly, the teacher-child relationship has to be focused on more than anything. The
knowledge should be exchanged between the parents and teachers. This approach should be
targeted at improving the cognition, social, emotional, mental, intellectual, moralistic
development of the children.
The harms and the benefits of the children go hand in hand and it is important that the
ethical considerations of the framework are taken into account in order to improve the
creative participatory methods that improves the sense of enjoyment, curiosity and
excitement in the children and above all, improves the empowerment rate of the children
from across the countries. The vulnerability to risks is to be improved by qualitative analysis
and quality improvement of the ethical parameters being implemented in the clinical change
system. Even for the infants who suffer from speech language pathologies and the various
types of the language disorders – a collaborative, compassionate and an interpretive approach
has to be taken. Hence, in order to address the issues, the study will study the use of research
methodologies in the field of Early Childhood Studies, in an appropriate manner.

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Research aim
Hence, this research study will aim to understand the importance of quality change in
the early life education settings of early childhood studies, using a qualitative method.
Research objectives
1. The objective of the study is to understand the appropriateness research
methodologies in the field of Early Childhood Studies.
2. To understand the role and position of child in the research study?
3. To evaluate the quality change in the early life education settings of early childhood
studies, using a qualitative method
Research questions
1. What is the appropriateness of research methodologies in the field of Early Childhood
Studies?
2. What is the role and position of child in the research study?
3. How to evaluate the quality change in the early life education settings of early
childhood studies, using a qualitative method?
Settings
The study will take pace in Ireland.
Literature review
According to various researches the cognitive, physical, emotional, behavioral and the
cognitive development of the children is taken as a construct that is built by the adults
themselves to understand the children and their experiences in relation to life and growth. It is
critically important that different models have come up in the research field that allows the

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children to participate in the research. According to a group of researches, there are issues
with position of the children in the research study. Some studies take the children as
‘objects’, some of the researches take the children as the ‘subjects’ and others consider the
children’s position in the research as the ‘participants’ (Cousins 2017). All the three types of
viewpoints used in the research have different aspects and attitudes towards the children and
their cognition, perception (Griffin, Lahman and Opitz 2016). The first group of researchers
who consider the children as a ‘object’ are most in number as because this it is the general
opinion that the prevalent in the society that children are very young to express their feelings
and expressions in words or in other ways such as the art projective tests. Hence, these groups
of researchers believe that it is better to interview the teachers and the parents of the children
or run a survey with the educators and with the parents and family members of the children in
order to collect the necessary information about the child (Mukherji and Albon 2010). The
second group of thinkers and researchers have accepted the importance of the seeing the
experience of the early childhood as an important way of understanding or knowing about the
child attitudes and ideas about the studies in the early life framework (Graham, Powell and
Truscott 2016). The third group of researchers believe that the children should critically be
involved in the study as participants as because they are not be seen as ‘little adults’ but as a
separate human being who has autonomy, integrity, esteem and identity just like any other
child or adult in the society.
It has been reported that the various development studies and various behavioral
studies that are done in order understand and study the developmental patterns of the children
the psychosocial development, the moralistic development, the cognitive development band
the physical development of the children, the attention and the social processes, the
psychosocial growth and the cognitive patterns, the parenting approaches, the teaching
strategies, the learning strategies, the reasoning and the thinking patterns and even in

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rationalizing the needs of the children with preset parameters – the researcher never or rarely
takes into the consideration the ‘view’ of the child which is simply important. In order to
understand the child’s experience of life and education in the early years it is important to
know about the function of the child as a social actor and how does a child has the ability,
even unknowingly to socially model for others in the same group or near age group, to
develop their behaviors in a positive and negative manner as well. the organizational, societal
and the material and the environmental factors should also be understood well in the words
and expression of the child that how the same affects him and impacts his or her life and
education. Similarly, punishing of a child is another very important point of interest of the
studies undertaken in the educational, social science and the research field. While the
education framework that is prevalent in the early childhood is more teacher centered than
children centered and it is very important to understand that the ‘punishing a child physically’
is not only ethical and offensive but it is also against the rights of the child. With the
evolution of teaching strategies and with the evolution of the exact legislations required to
protect the rights of the children in the early life education settings – various changes has
been made about in the educational and the academic system. The research methodologies
should take into consideration and account – the importance of comprehending the exacts
negative feelings, negation emotions being triggered and stimulated in the child due to the
punishment, inflicted by the parents and the educators of the child and it is critical that the
various implications are bought to surface by the researchers using the right and the
appropriate strategies in the research methodologies. The data collection and the data analysis
procedures have to be formulated in the right manner to understand the right feelings and the
trauma being suffered by the children in the classroom setting.
Saracho (2017) aims to study ‘Writing and publishing qualitative studies in early
childhood education’ and finds out various correlations between the understanding of

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feelings, perceptions and the attitudes of the children being interpreted by the different pieces
of qualitative literatures. The aim of this research was to focus on the various aspects of the
qualitative researches being written by the various researchers in their own styles as an
important strength. The study critically tries to analyze the writing and the exploratory style
of different authors providing new and other others, new perspectives and multiple aspects to
think about regarding the experiences and role of children in ‘childhood education. Moreover,
the research of this study describes the importance of using more and more qualitative
research methodology in the understanding of the child perspectives. According to the study,
it is vital the qualitative methodology focuses on collecting and analyzing the right data with
respect to the experiences of the child in the classroom settings and in the environment where
he has been bought up. The study supports the importance of using qualitative methods in the
research design to understand and explore the subject nature of information that cannot be
quantified in any manner.
Bøe, Hognestad & Waniganayake (2017) aims to study ‘Qualitative shadowing as a
research methodology for exploring early childhood leadership in practice’ and finds out the
vitality of using the qualitative methods in the research methodologies to collect and analyze
data about the early child studies. The researchers of this study recommends on the use of
interpretivism philosophy to analyze the various aspects of the childhood experiences and
goes on further to discuss about the importance of the qualitative data in developing
leaderships in the childhood education framework. The teachers, parents and the educators
plus the assistants are very involved in the development of childhood relationships and the
various aspects of involving the child in the education process are very critical. Thus in order
to improve the chances as well as the ratios and opportunities of the child engagements in the
play or in the educational programs – the leaderships and responsibility taking is very
important to involve the child, parents of the child and the various other carers in the early

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years education or studies. The researchers of the study put emphasis on qualitative
shadowing to help the educators take up the leadership in employing the child. The learning
and the development of the children is improved by the use of this methodology in the
academic research framework. According to the researchers of the study – it is critical to
know and understand that the various aspects of the qualitative studies are similar to each
other and certain other parts are dissimilar to each other and it is that is why more important
to involve the strengths of similar research to create a certain leadership model. The
qualitative shadowing model helps to sort the data and synchronize the similar data in order
to produce better analytical results. According to the researchers, it is vital to use the quality
strategy to expand on the epistemological data for an interpretivism research approach. The
reality is a presentation or the product of intersubjectivism that allows the ideas, the concepts
and the various aspects of complex perceptions between different people and masses of
people and the perspectives as well as the meanings of different things in social practice are
always open to subjectivism. Thus, it can considered as a vital strength of the qualitative
research methodology that always a more refined argument leading more refined product of
knowledge can be derived, which adds to more validity and more quality to the child studies
research studies being undertaken. Thus, it is critical and also very important to know that the
feelings, perceptions, attitudes of the child are subjected to different meanings. The
interpretivism and the feeling, perceptions, understanding realization, knowledge and
attitudes are subjected to alterations throughout the developmental stages of the child and
qualitative shadowing is critical to the ongoing, transcendal research continuum. It is also
mentioned by the researchers of the study that triangulation and the ethical ;practice is better
possible in the research framework.

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Research design
The researchers of this study aims finds out the importance of the use of the
participatory methods in the development of a better childhood education framework where
the children feels more engaged and more stimulated in a positive manner. Safety,
connectedness, appropriateness and meaningfulness are the four critical parameters that are
importantly taken to account while formulating the ethical child centered education
framework (Roberts-Holmes 2011). More importantly, the aim of the study is to improve the
connections between the ethics and the participation ratios of the child in an education
framework. It is highly important to know and understand that the right of the childhood is as
vital as the rights of the adults.
Research paradigm
The reflexivity of the children is the most important aspect that can be used to
develop participation, engagement and efficacy in the children. The researchers of this study
also recommend a strength based framework with continuous research towards the
development of the study. Through a qualitative research, the continuous development of the
relationship of the child and the parent along with the relationship of educator and the child
can be fostered and this is more centrally directed at the improvement of the quality of
education (Berti, Cigala and Sharmahd 2019). Each teacher is far different in his approach
than the other and each subject being taught is far different that the others and for a child, this
might create the problem and there is no interrelation between the different spheres of
education.
Paradigm Ontology Epistemology Research methods
Interpretivism Reality and
researcher are
Knowledge is
abstract, shaped by
Interviews

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inseparable human experiences
Research approach
In order to address the needs of the children holistically, it is vital to develop a certain
multi facet construct that is named by the researchers as the ‘pedagogy meeting place’.
Respect for diversity and the equity in the distribution of the resources are the certain areas
that are encouraged to be made more appropriate for the children so that in any, feels
discriminated. The protective factors and the maintaining factors of the quality change and
improvement is determined by staff training with the qualitative tools. The children and the
family of the children should be continuously involved in order to develop a more correct and
ethical framework inside the early education settings. As there is lack of information in the
same field, an exploratory research with interpretivism approach will be undertaken.
Research Methods
Data collection
A play based semi-structured interview will be conducted by the researchers of the
study so that the children can explore their ideas, views and perspectives without any fear or
the bias of impressing the elders in the vicinity and especially their parents. Open questioning
method would add to the research philosophy of subjectivism, interpretivism and empiricism.
Research Design
A semi-structured interview followed by the thematic analysis of the data will be
done.

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Sampling
A group of 15 Irish children were chosen through purposeful sampling from 5
different early education settings.
Inclusion criteria
1. Only children who are 4 years old.
2. Children who are born in Ireland.
3. Children who did not have any speech language pathology or developmental delay
issues.
Exclusive criteria
1. Only children who less than or more than 4 years old.
2. Children who are not born in Ireland.
3. Children who have any speech language pathology or developmental delay issues.
Data analysis
A thematic analysis of the responses of the children will be done in order to
understand the information revealed by the children and reach a new set of perspective about
the research problem.
Following this, the researchers of this study will study the application of the mosaic
approach to improve the journey of shared learning between the researchers and the children
(Bell 2010). The results of the study will be incorporated as knowledge base in the pedagogy
system of all the early life education settings where the children studies as it is important that
the qualitative research done in this study lead to improvement of the pedagogical strength
who should find new ways of incorporating reflexive, right and respect for children into the
educational system.

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Reliability and validity
Will be assured through audit trials and intra-coder reliability
Ethical considerations
Moreover, from the perspective of the social researchers, to involve the children and
their parents directly in the research is critical and this also involves helping them financially
and non-financially for having taken part in the social research. The ethical consideration will
be incorporated into the culture of the organization so the teachers, academic coordinators,
the academic staffs and the other supportive staffs are equally involved in the development of
ethical practice around the children admitted in their organization and same was incorporated
in the research design (Ang 2018). Helping the child with accommodation, food and travel
expenses for having travelled and participated in the research is an important part of ethical
justice whereas incentivizing the children and the families for participation in the social
research is against research ethical protocols. Hence, the areas of ethical consideration should
be taken into account in this study.
Limitation
The limitation of the study is that the research will be covering only a certain age
group and would not apply to the older children.

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