Child Life Council 26th Annual Conference on Professional Issues

A recent issue of the Child Life Bulletin featured an article by Paul Thayer (2007) presenting the question: How can child life continue to develop as a field as well as a profession? Thayer offered the vision of Child Life as a leader in research about pediatric psychosocial health care and suggested a number of approaches to the question. One suggestion focused attention on the need to emphasize research at all levels of education. Indeed, whether opportunities for research are afforded at the undergraduate level or graduate level, aspiring professionals can benefit from a variety of research experiences. Constructivist educators assume that learning is a social process and meaningful learning is active (Kardash, 2000). Just as standards for supervised internships are in place, promotion of the value of supervised research experiences as an important asset for future child life specialists may be a direction the profession can take in an effort to move toward Thayer’s vision. The goal of this poster is to illustrate two forms of undergraduate research opportunities: the honours thesis and the undergraduate research assistantship