Hello everyone, I’m Gao Haotian, a research student of our empowerment lab.
It is my pleasure to report on the 2nd Child Care Power Up Forum on 21st January.
The topic of this forum is Use of 5 Empowerment Support Tools and Support
Methods to Empower Child Care Providers. This forum deepens the discussion
of the last meeting. In order to understand the basic usage of the five tools
(significance, evaluation method, etc.) and use them in practice. Sakai-sensei
presided this forum and thanks to Zhao-san for his contribution to the planning
of this forum.
After greetings from Sakai-sensei and Anme-sensei, Aoki-sensei, Omaki-sensei
and Emiko Tanaka-sensei gave presentations separately. The Developmental
Evaluation Tool, Support Tool for Children's Troubles, Childcare Environment
Evaluation Tool, Childcare Education Environment Evaluation Tool and Social
skills Assessment Tool were introduced in each of the five tools.
After an introduction to the five tools, Kato-sensei and Kido-sensei presented
two examples of using the tools in childhood care.
The third part of the forum is an advanced section with group discussions on the
five tools. Teachers from each kindergarten and graduate students from the
Empowerment Lab had a lively discussion about how to use the tools, their
doubts about the examples, and their own insights.
At the end of the meeting, Tanaka-sensei summarized the forum. He re-emphasized
the role of these five tools in the field of childcare from the childcare staffs’
perspective. It was emphasized that early childhood education cannot be carried
out without child development, parenting environment, child confusion resolution,
early childhood education environment, social skills and support methods.
During this forum, I gained insight into how to use the scale for evaluation and
to practice based on the results after the evaluation. And in the group discussion
session, I was confused about the selection of targets in the support design,
and Kido-sensei patiently explained this issue to me. She said that the selection
of targets was based on observation and conversation with children and parents,
first observing the situation and then analyzing it.
It is my pleasure to see practice and theoretical research always promote each
other like this. May love and faith live forever with you all.
Hello, everyone!
Have you enjoyed your life this week?
Again cold winter, also please live steaming hot.
Today we have spent a very unforgettable and meaningful time with our senior Sana.
After the seminar, we hold a cake party to welcome Sana to our lab. In the beginning,
Sana talked about her current situation, including her job, changes after graduation,
and what she had learned in her career. At the same time, she also gave some lovely
comments on our seminar presentation. The members of our lab had a warm responses
and actively asked questions to Sana. We asked about her experience after graduation,
including social, study, work, and feelings about different countries. Sana was also very
enthusiastic about answering questions raised by us. Anme sensei also asked Sana about
her future. She said she would choose a warm country to finish her Ph.D.. We sincerely
thank Sana for sharing her experience with us. There are lessons from her sharing that
apply, and we wish Sana every success with her study and work in the future.
Hello everyone!! I am Shrestha Smarika, a first-year master’s student in public
health in our Empowerment Science lab.
It’s a first month of this year and I hope this year brings us a lot of opportunities
to explore the world of possibilities. This month few of our lab members with Anme
Sensei visited the Tokyo Toy Museum and conducted a Focus Group Interview.
It is my pleasure to share this valuable experience with you.
A visit to the Tokyo Toy Museum is a must for anyone who loves toys. Located
in the heart of Tokyo, this museum showcases some of the most iconic toys
from Japan’s history. From classic wooden dolls to unique exhibitions featuring
a collection of 100,000 toys from 100 countries, there is something for everyone
here.
The museum features a variety of interactive exhibits that bring visitors closer to
the world of Japanese toy-making. Visitors can explore the history and culture
behind each toy and learn how it was made and used in Japan. There are also
special activities like building your own toy, playing with traditional Japanese games,
joining workshops, or even just walking around and experiencing lots of wonders you
have never seen before.
We were guided by volunteers from the Toy Museum who were wearing red aprons
and seemed really friendly and expressive. They took us to different places around
the museum and shared our excitement as we talked, built, and played together.
We conducted a Focus Group Interview with those volunteers by engaging them in
conversation and asking them questions about their motivation towards the volunteering
activity. Through this Focus Group Interview, we gained insights about how the
volunteers felt while being engaged with activities inside the museum. These included
adding satisfaction, meaning, and fulfillment in their life; having sense of freedom and
reduced stress; and be able to help next generation while being able to enjoy one’s
own hobbies and interests.
Finally, we got an opportunity to take a group photo with our Sensei Infront of the
Tokyo Toy Museum. The dedication, support, and warm hospitality of the volunteers
is something that I will always cherish and highly appreciate. A visit to the Tokyo Toy
Museum is an unforgettable experience that will bring out your inner child. Come and
explore the wonders of this amazing museum and get closer to understanding Japan's
toy culture!
Hello, everyone. I'm Pei, a research student in the empowerment lab. It’s my honor
to attend and record this workshop.
The theme of this workshop is about “Theory and research on the application of
Interaction Rating Scale (IRS) of childcare and its support.”
At the beginning, Zhu-zhu san first introduced the research fields and objects of
empowerment lab, of which empowerment for child development and child care is
one of the important components. Then, she introduced that today’s workshop
was divided into the first half and the second half, and the content of the first
half included four parts.
The first part was meaning and international application. It included theoretical
background, definition, category and evaluation of social competence. And IRS
was one of the important methods of social competence evaluation. Zhu-zhu san
also explained the relevant contents of IRS, including development background,
representative measurement indicators, originality and international application.
The second part was implement method. It included the purpose, object, setting,
reliability and validity of IRS. Moreover, Zhu-zhu san cited examples of tasks to
illustrate that different research measures should be taken for children of different
ages.
The third part was evaluation method. In this part, Zhu-zhu san distinguishes the
evaluation subdomains and items, and focuses on them. It included five subdomains
of children, five subdomains of caregivers, and comprehensive relational evaluation
of children and caregivers.
The fourth part was the question and answer session. Zhu-zhu san asked participants
about their initial impressions of IRS, as well as their views and suggestions on evaluation
methods. The participants all thought that this was an interesting and meaningful research.
And the classification of the scale and the evaluation criteria were clear, quantitative and
easy to use. At the same time, some participants asked questions about the parts they
did not understand, including the background of the research design, some details of the
evaluation methods, etc.
After a lunch break, the workshop entered the second half. The theme of the second half
was "How to use IRS to evaluate caregiver-child interaction".
In order to enable participants to better understand IRS, Zhu-zhu san used examples to
guide them to experience the actual research process. At the beginning, she played a video
of a mother guiding her child to build blocks as an example, and asked participants to judge
whether the corresponding options were correct on the scale received in advance. Then
she collected everyone's data by asking questions to the participants, and finally released
the results through playback the video, and analyzed the specific reasons.
Later, in order to deepen everyone's impression of IRS, and ensure that everyone can
appreciate the interest and significance of IRS, Zhu-zhu san played a video of a father
guiding his child to build blocks for comparison. Then, participants practiced again according
to the basic steps they just learned, and finally analyzed the reasons for the data differences
in the scale. In addition, participants also discussed in detail what impressed them most and
how to use IRS correctly.
In a word, the contents of IRS workshop are specific and very meaningful. We can find
that empowerment lab provides participants with Japanese English bilingual texts
throughout the whole process, so as to facilitate participants to understand professional
knowledge. During this period, videos and a large number of pictures are interspersed to
increase interest, which can better arouse the resonance of participants. Moreover,
after each part of PPT presentation, there is special Q&A time to help participants
better understand the difficulties that are not clear.
Through this workshop, we knew the design idea and evaluation criteria of IRS, and
learned how to correctly use IRS to collect relevant data.
We all enjoy it, and look forward to the next time!
Hello everyone, I am research student Zhang Zhizhen of our lab. I would like to record
the puppet training on 6th January as a blog for our lab.
Anme-sensei presented Amely puppet to everyone who attend seminar on 6th January.
After seminar, Anme-sensei invited Sakai-sensei to give a professional puppet perform
lesson online for us. Sakai-sensei came on the screen with an orangutan hand puppet
and then gave us a short but interesting professional puppet perform. After that,
Sakai-sensei greeted us with the hand puppet Amely. All the lab members have
enjoyed her interesting performance a lot.
Sakai-sensei taught us how to operate the puppet with every finger more efficiently.
Sensei also mentioned the sound we making and the words we using should be carefully
considered based on children’s understanding ability when performing with the hand
puppet Amely.
In addition to some language performances, different emotions and body language can
also be shown by hand puppet Amely, such as happy, shy, upset and so on.
From Sakai- sensei, we learned the art of hand puppet performance. Hope all of us can
complete the empowerment task better with the help of hand puppet Amely.
