Thesis: Talk to folks and dig my approach
This week I exposed myself to people, attended two activities DFMSUMMIT, and Make Faire, informally talked my dream of thesis, heard folks’ thought and captured sprinkle sparks .
Manqian, a industrial design student at UIUC, previous schoolmate of mine, she pointed out an potential problem worthy me to look at, that many early age children have “confliction” time at the beginning or during whole time at preschool, since it’s first time for them to leave parents, they feel abandoned and extremely lonely. Besides, through the talk, I got a relatively clear vision of preschool education at U.S.A.
At Maker Faire, I met Janella, a director of Early Childhood Education of NYSCI, where she was responsible for an interesting activity for children, “Little Maker”. She told me she’s teaching children use a simple, home achievable material, electronic wire, to create sculpture. It’s not to hard to tell every child in this section is pretty happy, they’re busy with hand making while erupting a laugh in crowed time to time. “Little Maker” is valuable discovery standing at the early stage of thesis, I feel I get close to understand children’s internal world.
I also read an report about the social emotional development in American’s low-income families, which is another reality challenging worthy to dig it.
So right now I feel all these little pieces weaved together help me more clearly articulate my structure of thesis, which I read it below.
My Assumption(the core of thesis)
Mental health, especially social-emotional well-being is promoted by positive early environment, and nurturing relationships. But social-emotional problems among young children are common.
How could I approach it?
Online research is essential, but for me, during next month or even 2 months, I want to dedicate myself into play with child and collaborate with parent and teachers. I wrote a letter to Janella, ask a door for me to engage recent activities.
Impressed by Design,Make, Play Conference document (see link), I believe “Design-Make-Play” is a new pathway to empower each child and transform them from passive learners to participatory pursuer. I also believe that “Design-Mak-Play” is right way to shape children’s healthy social-emotion.
The following diagram shows how I plan to approach it
