Early Childhood Education ?
Q: I am interested in finding out about online
masters programmes in early childhood education. Any views/insight would be
appreciated.
Also any articles on language development - 4 year olds who are saying
"me go to ride the pony". Does this indicate dyslexia ?
A:It's unlikely, but it's worth keeping an eye on and/or having the
child assessed by a dyslexia specialist. A more common form of word
confusion in dyslexic children at that age would be "up/down",
"left/right" etc., but not really word-order confusion, at least not
when speaking.
For a list of some dyslexia-indicators take a look at
http://www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk/info/faqs.htm . It can't be stressed
enough, though, that if you think the child may be dyslexic (s)he
should be taken to see a specialist. The worst thing that can happen
to a child is when (s)he starts being labelled as "slow" either by the
teacher or fellow students once they start going to school. The loss
of self-esteem and confidence can have life-long effects, so the age
of 4 is a good time to become aware of a potential situation
You might look into these schools:
Edith Cowan University (http://www.ecu.edu.au)
M.Ed., early childhood studies (and you can also do a second
focus in children with special needs; program is
correspondence and research based rather than online,
although some of the required courses are probably
available online)
Macquarie University (http://www.coe.mq.edu.au)
M.Ed., early childhood education (again, correspondence and
research based rather than online, but still no
residency)
University of South Africa (http://www.unisa.ac.za)
M.Ed., preprimary education (again...well, you know the
drill)
Other folks can probably suggest other options. You probably had a
U.S. program in mind, and there probably is one, so let me know if
you're still looking for one in a week and I'll do a less lazy search.
Aside from the excellent recommendations by Br. Tom C. Head, I can add the
following programs from Australia:
1) University of