Research that benefits children and families

I like to listen to podcasts of radio programs while I walk. Recently I was listening to an episode of Quirks and Quarks. This is a science show that is broadcast on CBC radio in Canada. They were talking about the state of cancer research and were interviewing some notable scientists in the field. One of the treatments they discussed was cancer immunotherapy and is in the testing phase. The story they told was of a child, Emily, who was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukaemia. She received chemotherapy for 16 months but it wasn't working. Her parents were told they could take her home for the last months or weeks of her life. Then she was enrolled in an experimental treatment program using genetically modified T-cells from her own body. She is now in remission. During the treatment she had to be placed on a ventilator for over a week. This is an extreme case where the benefits to a research participant can outweigh the risks. The long term benefits are also invaluable. The results of this study could help create a less risky treatment that could help hundreds of people.

References

Waging your own war on cancer [Audio podcast]. (2014, January 11). [With Bob McDonald]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2014/01/11/january-11-2014/.

My personal research journey

         The questions that interest me revolve around language learning in young children. My own background contributes to this as does my current situation. I'm from Canada which has 2 official languages, Engish and French. When I started school at age 4 my parents decided that I should learn in French even though we are an English-speaking family. So I did my schooling until grade 9 mostly in French. In university I chose to continue and majored in French immersion elementary education. Although I now rarely use my French, I know it has helped me to pick up enough Spanish to live for 2 years in the Dominican Republic. Having a second language also made it easier for me to become proficient in a third when I settled in the Netherlands. I now work in an international school where 9 out of 10 children don't speak any Engish or Dutch when they come to us. I am interested in how they learn so that I can better help them when they arrive. I want to find out what strategies work best. I also want to know what long term benefits can come from learning a second language early in life. I want to know why some children seem to have a much easier time than others. I know I won't be able to answer all these questions at once. The scope is too broad and must be narrowed to a manageable research question (Mac Naughton & Rolfe, 2010).

          One tip that I got from the chapter on the research process this week was the recommendation to keep a detailed record of what articles and other resources you've used both for the literature review and other reasons (Mac Naughton & Rolfe, 2010). This seemed obvious once I'd read it but it is not something that I think of doing as I'm reading or listening to something.

References

Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.