Fluent Essays

Please read the attachments before completing this assignment  For (Section A of the Advocacy Project), Please look at Section A of the attachment called Assignment Sheet leadership Advance Assignment 3.1 Discussion: Potential Policy-Oriented Advocacy Project Topic Post an idea (or two) you have for your advocacy project. Identify if your advocacy is for a state or a federal level outcome. If you can, format this as a draft advocacy statement (Section A of Advocacy project): 3 - 5 sentences summarizing the change for which you are advocating with a clear DAO (Desired Advocacy Outcome). Responses should be directed at given feedback on how clearly and concisely the DAO/advocacy statement is. I will provide feedback on the scope.  For this discussion, you will have to post before you can read the posts of others. Remember to locate the rubric to this activity in My Grades before submitting your initial posts and comments.  Your initial post is due by end of day (11:59 pm CST) Thursday and your comments are due by end of day (11:59 pm CST) Sunday of this week in Module 3.Effective Communication about the Early Years: Understanding the Basics of Framing Babies are great communicators. They communicate from day one, through sounds (crying, cooing, squealing), facial expressions (eye contact, smiling, grimacing), as well as gestures and body movements (moving arms and legs in excitement or distress). Most babies learn to communicate to get attention or to get a need fulfilled. They continue to develop more sophisticated communication capacities and are encouraged to do so when their efforts are rewarded by appropriate and timely responses from the people around them. As adults, we are not that different. Throughout our everyday lives, we are constantly communicating both verbally and non-verbally. Over time we learn how to communicate best with various people and in different situations. We continue to develop and expand our communication capacities when our efforts are successfully received by the people around us. As members of the infant-toddler field, we know how to communicate effectively with one another. We commonly use jargon about self-regulation, early intervention, infant mental health and healthy child development. Yet our professional lexicon may seem like a foreign language to lay people, including policymakers who want to understand child development and articulate policies that will help promote healthy development for babies, toddlers and their families. Policymakers are not likely to be well-versed in the terminology of our field, yet they are expected to comprehend intricate details of our work in order to create policies that support infants and toddlers appropriately. Early childhood development is a complex process and communicating it effectively can be difficult. However, we must meet this challenge, so that policymakers and the public fully understand the needs of babies and the solutions that best support families raising young children. This article is designed to provide infant-toddler professionals and researchers with a basic introduction to some concepts of effective communications; first by outlining the fundamentals of framing, and then by introducing ways to think about reframing your communications. We conclude this article with some concrete examples of how to reframe a message related to early childhood development. Framing 101 Effective communication requires an in-depth look at what we are trying to communicate and how people make sense of the information. Fortunately, there are people who dedicate themselves to this challenge. The FrameWorks Institute, a communications organization, conducts scholarly research on framing the public discourse about social problems and then translates that research into 2000 M Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036 PHONE 202.638.1144 FAX 202.638.0851 www.zerotothree.org/policy recommendations and tools for the non-profit sector.1 The FrameWorks Institute hasEffective Communication about the Early Years The Elements of the Frame – Part One Early childhood development is a complex process and communicating it effectively can be difficult. To help infant-toddler professionals successfully communicate with policymakers and the public about early childhood development, the ZERO TO THREE Policy Network is publishing a series of articles in The Baby Monitor focused on effective communication about the early years. In the first article (http://www.zerotothree.org/policy/framingissues.html), we provided a basic introduction to some concepts of effective communications; first by outlining the fundamentals of framing, and then by introducing ways to think about reframing your communications. “Framing refers to the way a story is told and to the way these cues [or stories], in turn, trigger the shared and durable cultural models that people use to make sense of their world.”1 We also included some concrete examples of how to reframe a message related to early childhood development. This second article begins to break the process down even further by examining the strategic elements that comprise a frame. The elements of a frame help people understand new information by providing cues for how to interpret the communication. The concepts and research in this article are derived from the work of the FrameWorks Institute, a non-profit communications research organization in Washington, DC. According to FrameWorks, the essential elements of a frame are: Context Numbers Messengers Visuals Metaphors and Simplifying Models Tone In this article, we examine the first three elements of the frame – context, numbers and messengers – the research which supports each element, how to use it effectively in your communications and examples that relate each element directly to communicating infant-toddler issues. The next piece in the series will focus on visuals, metaphors and simplifying models, and tone. Context What does it mean to provide context in our communications? Context refers to the conditions or circumstances that help illustrate a situation. “The way you identify 1Gilliam, F.D. & Bales, S.N. (2004). Framing Early Childhood Development: Strategic Communications and Public Preferences. In: Halfon N., Rice T., and Inkelas M., eds. Building State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Series, No. 7. National Center for Infant and Early Childhood Health Policy. Retrieved January 17, 2006 from http://www.healthychild.ucla.edu/NationalCenter/default.asp: 4. 2000 M Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036 PHONE 202.638.1144 FAX 202.638.0851 www.zerotothree.org/policy http://www.zerotothree.org/policy/framingissues.html http://www.healthychild.ucla.edu/NationalCenter/default.asp the problem [or issue you want to communicate] makes all the difference in how people are able to view [t2000 M Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036 PHONE 202.638.1144 FAX 202.638.0851 www.zerotothree.org/policy Effective Communication about the Early Years The Elements of the Frame – Part Two Early childhood development is a complex process and communicating it effectively can be difficult. To help infant-toddler professionals successfully communicate with policymakers and the public about early childhood development, the ZERO TO THREE Policy Network is publishing a series of articles in The Baby Monitor focused on effective communication about the early years. The first two articles in the series can be found at http://www.zerotothree.org/policy/framingissues.html. Introduction This article continues our look at the elements of a frame and the ways in which infant-toddler advocates can use these elements effectively in communicating with policymakers. The elements of a frame help people understand new information by providing cues for how to interpret the communication. In the previous framing article, we examined the first three elements of the frame – context, numbers and messengers. This article examines three additional elements of the frame – visuals, tone, and metaphors and simplifying models – the research which supports each element, how to use it effectively in your communications and examples that relate each element directly to communicating infant-toddler issues. The concepts and research in this article are derived from the work of the FrameWorks Institute, a non-profit communications research organization in Washington, DC. Visuals Words, whether written or spoken, can be a powerful tool in communicating a message to other people. But we should not forget that visuals – photographs, video footage, graphics, illustrations, etc. – can also contribute to, or detract from, your communications in significant ways. Visual images surround us and tell as much of a story as the words that accompany them. As effective communicators, how do we utilize visuals to establish our frame? As with all the other elements of the frame, it is important to consider the frame consequences of your visual selection. Our tendency as infant and toddler professionals is to use visuals of babies alone or of very young children and their parents. We should keep in mind, however, that when communicating about policy change and policy solutions, an image of an infant and parent alone is likely to place responsibility for the problem only with that parent rather than on society at large. Instead, we should work toward using images that place very young children in a more public context (such as a library or a park) and interacting with public figures. Choosing the right visual becomes a critical first step toward framing your message in the best possible way. In addition, “Location, size, and color can all http://www.zerotothree.org/policy/framingissues.html 2000 M StreetLeadership Advocacy Assignment We have worked through the module on advocacy. This module has identified what advocacy is, its importance to the profession, provided guidelines for developing advocacy skills, and given some examples of actions in advocacy. The overall purpose of this project is for you to develop skills you would use in the field as a professional, a leaders, and an advocate. Because of the context of this being an online course, we will focus primarily on written communication, with the understanding that advocacy skills depend as much upon your ability to interact with others face-to-face as through print and other media. You will have several different audiences for this project; consider the audience and purpose of the particular aspect of the project as you develop your advocacy actions. You are to craft an “advocacy statement”; this statement should summarize the changes you wish to advocate for within the field. Essentially this statement should describe the desired advocacy outcome – what you wish to make happen. I will refer to the “DAO” which is the Desired Advocacy Outcome. Your advocacy statement should be a description of your DAO. Your DAO should address either a state or federal level issue in early childhood education. Your DAO needs to be something specific and manageable. For example, I am all for “raising quality of early childhood programs” but that is far too vague a policy action. You must have approval from me that your DAO will fit within the context of this assignment. The rest of the assignment essentially revolves around the DAO. You will write a Fact Sheet or one page bulleted summary of the research. Think of this as a “cheat sheet” you might share with other advocates or policy makers (who do not want to read and 8 to 10 to 20 page research paper). This should be the bones of your literature review. You will write a literature review which provides the foundation for your DAO, synthesizing the argument for your DAO from the professional literature. This should be a minimum of 8 pages of text *** for the literature view, not inclusive of references, title pages, and other non-text accoutrements. This literature review should be based on professional literature. Excellent work will call upon original research publications to integrate them into your discussion (as opposed to consistently referring only to how others interpret that research). ***PLEASE NOTE – I do not like giving page number amounts. Honestly, a thorough literature review of a topic along the lines any of you are likely to choose should be well past 8 pages, as BOOKS are written on these issues. Good advocates understand the arguments opponents will make – why would policy makers, the public, other professionals and professions NOT support your DAO? Almost all policies required some type of funding for implementation – so one aspect