About us
With the world trends of aging populations, low birth rates, internationalization and diversities, the Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education in National Chengchi University will apply more “openly, diversely, and interdisciplinarily” practical ways to train our students to be educators with autonomy, reflective ability, social responsibility, and practical ability on the basis of strong foundation of research. Thus, we dedicate ourselves to providing a friendly learning environment through the principles below to ensure our students will not leave here empty-handed.
1. Taking the campus of National Chengchi University (NCCU) as a classroom, we encourage students to plan their own interdisciplinary program. This will make students’ learning process filled with the pleasure of knowledge exploration and the practical ability which can be taken with themselves.
2. Our institution is committed to building a margin-friendly and democratic learning environment. Students and teachers from all different backgrounds, such as socioeconomic statuses, races, and gender, should be cherished and treated equally. Interactions between students and students, or teachers and students, should be based on the principle of equality to create open dialogues and profession sharing.
3. Our executive team plays a supportive role in conducting any activities which are beneficial to students’ learning.
Time of Establishment
In the period of 1999 and 2000, when the expansion of the departments of Early Childhood Education in every Taiwanese normal university (now called university of education) began for training early childhood teachers, only the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in National Normal University trained academic or non-teacher talent specializing in early childhood education. Thus, National Chengchi University established the Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education in the 2000 academic year for providing a way for cultivating domestic talent in early childhood academic profession and leadership.
Visions and Goals
The Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education has been committed to integrating research and educational practices and equipping educators with the abilities of culture, community and society, and the skills of communication, interaction and reflection. Population aging, low birth rate, internationalization and diversity are the trends that cannot be ignored, and Bilingual Education, New Southbound Policy, and Public-popularized Early Childhood Education are the future educational directions of the country. Our institution will develop with these major trends, and the following are our visions and goals:
- Training early childhood and bilingual education talent for meeting the needs of Taiwan and the new southbound countries:
Bilingual education is the developmental blueprint of the country, and equipping teachers with English teaching proficiency is one of the responsibilities of the department. It not only meets the huge domestic needs of bilingual education teachers but also can export to new southbound countries to cultivate overseas early childhood education talent. In the future, we will provide more local and overseas intern opportunities for students to broaden their international perspectives and equip them with the ability to step on the global stage. For sure, “international perspectives'' do not only stand for bilingual education or international exchange. Having teachers with multicultural literacies design the courses and including world economic-cultural connotations into the lessons are also important goals for training bilingual early childhood education talent.
- Interdisciplinary learning is the foundation of the future early childhood education research and practice under the concurrent trends of aging population and low birth rate:
With the increasing aging population around the world, elderly care has become an important agenda that every country has to take into consideration. Recently, academia proposes the new concept of “intergenerational learning,” which puts the elderly and the child, the seemingly two poles of life, together to make the two generations help each other in their learning. For instance, “Intergenerational Learning Center'' in Seattle has moved their kindergartens into beadhouses. On one hand, it can give the elderly more fun and laughter when they interact with children, which will help them find and affirm their self-worth again; on the other hand, the children can get more wisdom, love, and living skills from the elderly. Taiwan has gradually become an aging and low birth rate society, and finding ways to make good use of elder manpower resources and to combine them with early childhood education are important future issues.
In order to combine the two important issues together, we need interdisciplinary learning. Also, understanding the complexity of future students’ problems needs more interdisciplinary understanding ability. Thus, students of the Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education in the future should not only give an important try on combining the professions on social work, sociology, counseling and guidance, and Chinese teaching with early childhood education, but also should build their own interdisciplinary learning and connecting ability. In the future, the office of the institution will be committed to building the bridges among different fields and implement mutual credit recognition on a part of courses, which will give students a more barrier-free interdisciplinary learning environment. We will also plan or join related programs in NCCU to give students a more complete and broader learning opportunities if possible. Now, NCCU is on the way of opening more opportunities for students who want to double major or minor in other fields, and we believe that it is also our opportunity to open up the limitations.
- Strengthening teaching with collaborative kindergarten and increasing collaborative study with other departments in NCCU and other universities.
The Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education has entered a professional collaboration agreement with many kindergartens to hold exchange activities for teachers and students, academic or teaching activities, and to provide collaboration, teaching, and executing consultations and places for educational experiment. These will be spaces for students’ intern observation, researching and professional development. In the future, we will build the connection between the institution and schools, especially the cooperation system among the Affiliated Experimental Elementary School Preschool of National Chengchi University and the Affiliated Experimental Elementary School of National Chengchi University. We expect to have new mutual resolutions on curriculum, activity designing, and project leading from the perspectives of the common good. IB PYP (3-11years old) teacher training program is about to begin, and there will be more international exchange opportunities for students in the future.
From 2020 academic year, Professor Lee Su-Ching (specialized in multicultural education, gender and education, and sociological analysis on educational policy, school, community, and culture) and Professor Fu Ru-Xing (specialized in parent education, marriage and family therapy, adolescent deviant behavior, and research method on counseling and psychological therapy) transferred from the Department of Education to the Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education, which strengthened and broadened the professions of students in our institution. Besides the specific subject mastery taught by the full-time teachers in our institution, we still teach many interdisciplinary courses with other teachers in different departments to import more resources into our institution; for example, we cooperate with the Graduate Institution of Social Work in the first semester of 2020 academic year to teach "Seminar on Child and Adolescent Welfare" (EMI courses), and in the second semester we teach “Humanity Innovation & Practice“ together with the College of Commerce. In the future, we also plan to cooperate with the College of Communication and build the cross-department course cooperation system gradually.
- Providing opportunities for students to get into authentic environment to explore their careers through interdisciplinary and cross-industry cooperation:
Facing challenges from the future educational environment, teachers should be equipped with a variety of skills and abilities to adapt into the workplace apart from their passion and profession. The life of a “linear type” teacher cannot handle the unpredictable educational scenes anymore, and we consider that future teachers should think outside of the linear and simple career planning. Also, they should equip themselves with “web type” views and life experiences, especially on the social experiences outside of the schools, including the experiences of working in non-profit organizations, private enterprises, the cross-cultural experiences of working abroad for holidays, the international volunteer experiences, etc. We can accumulate more depths and views of lives through these experiences, which will lead to different ways of seeing things and “problems.” Thus, our institution will encourage students to have and participate in their own well-planned internship to expand their abilities.
In order to respond to the need of social changes, our institution will integrate the applications of the research and educational practices. Therefore, making students into the authentic environments through cross-industry cooperation and taking the cooperation with creative educational industry, experimental education, international education, non-profit organizations, and social enterprises into consideration to perk up the field of early childhood education will both be important future developments. These processes are also good opportunities for students to explore their own careers.
The graduates of our institution can develop their careers through the directions below:
A. Teachers, principals, or secondary education teachers in public and private kindergartens or schools.
B. Start a new kindergarten to make their own educational philosophy come true.
C. Industrial leading talent related to early childhood education, such as working for local early childhood education or child care guidance, assisting in improving educational quality of the organizations of teachers and caregivers, and providing consultation service for early childhood education and care.
D. Executive talent in all levels of government
E. Academic and research talent in the Early Childhood Education field.
The Graduate Institution of Early Childhood Education in NCCU is based on the deep foundation of humanities and social sciences of our university to create our own path. The first step is to manage a fan page for popularizing the knowledge of Early Childhood Education and communicating with the masses through simpler and more understandable languages. The information includes realizing the problems and issues of early childhood education and possible solutions, introducing innovative curriculum, reporting international news, and commenting on early childhood education policies. We expect our fan page can be a translator between the general public and the policies. Our institution has committed ourselves to filling the learning journey in NCCU with the pleasure of knowledge explorations and practical abilities. We welcome all people who are interested in Early Childhood Education around the world to apply for our institution.
