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With classrooms becoming increasingly diverse due to children's various cultural backgrounds and varying abilities, early childhood teacher education programs face the challenge of how best to prepare the workforce. Various initiatives have been implemented in teacher preparation programs to prepare early childhood educators to become competent in relating to all children and families. Infusing components of diversity into all courses and field experiences and engaging in community-university partnerships, as well as unifying early childhood education (ECE) and early childhood special education (ECSE) program components, are promising practices for the field. An examination and evaluation of these initiatives are discussed in this article, as well as future directions for research and practice.

Interventions provided by occupational therapists and other professionals in interdisciplinary teams enable children and youth with disabilities to participate in everyday life situations (EDLSs) (Wales and Dunford 2011). To understand participation as defined in the World Health Organization (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), with its version for Children and Youth (ICF-CY), using self-report or proxy-report tools is of great importance (WHO 2001, 2007, Haglund and Fältman 2012). However, when using the ICF-CY to discuss with parents their children's participation, the complexity of the classification is a challenge, and simplifications are required to make it more user-friendly (Adolfsson 2011). Such simplifications can be achieved by developing brief code sets, that is, limited sets of approximately 20 ICF-CY categories identified as essential for a specific EDLS (Simeonsson 2009). Today, developmental code sets intended to reflect functioning for children in different developmental periods are available, but there are no code sets intended to identify participation in EDLSs.

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