Developing Professional Knowledge

• What specific section(s) or information seemed particularly relevant to your current professional development?
• As this class has progressed I have been fortunate enough to developer a deeper understanding of the world and its outlook into the Early Childhood community.  The section that has intrigued me the most has been the stand that economists and business professionals have towards developing a foundation for young children.  I think it is fantastic that large money making companies want to help develop programs to better the children and families to make them more productive for society.  However, I am hesitant to believe that there are not other motives for these big companies.  As a potential employee for a non profit organization, it would be extremely beneficial to build relationships with these businesses.  
• Which ideas/statements/resources, either on the website or in an e-newsletter, did you find controversial or made you think about an issue in new ways?
• The Rand Corporation is one of the corporation articles that has stood out to me the most.  The corporation has built up the idea that a program that is developed correctly and then implemented properly can in fact build functional members of society later in life; thus saving tax payers money in welfare and educational expenses.  In an ideal world, it would be great to think that economists care about the genuine well being of children in poverty, but in actual it is to save themselves money and hassle in the future.  However, if that is their end goal, I ask this, is it worth letting the corporations spend big money on beneficial programs simply to let them think they will get something bigger out of it?  I feel if corporations finally want to give something back to community, we should take it!
• What information does the website or the e-newsletter contain that adds to your understanding of how economists, neuroscientists, or politicians support the early childhood field?
• These professionals are developing new insight to the field of early childhood.  It has taken time, but the increase of poverty has finally found global attention.  I believe that these professionals do support the early childhood field, but again, I feel that there is more to there positive attitude then simply helping the needy.  There have been poor families around for decades, why the change of attitude within recent years?  
• What other new insights about issues and trends in the early childhood field did you gain from exploring the website or e-newsletter?
• I would like to explore more in depth the different research that has been done to determine how these companies can profit off of helping the poor in later years.  I would like to see how the data was collected and how they collected there data.  Also, it would be interesting to see how they then analyzed the data to create their hypothesis.