Diverse Pathways in Early Childhood Professional Development: An Exploration of Early Educators in Public Preschools, Private Preschools, and Family Child Care Homes

Abstract

This paper presents a naturalistic investigation of the patterns of formal education, early childhood education training, and mentoring of a diverse group of urban early childhood educators participating in the Los Angeles: Exploring Children's Early Learning Settings (LA ExCELS) study. A total of 103 preschool teachers and family child care providers serving primarily low-income 3- and 4-year-old children in Los Angeles County provided data on their education, training, and beliefs about teaching. This sample worked in public center based preschool programs including Head Start classrooms and State preschool classrooms (N=42), private non-profit preschools including community based organizations and faith-based preschools (N=42), and licensed family child care homes (N=19). This study uses a person-centered approach to explore patterns of teacher preparation, sources of support, supervision, and mentoring across these 3 types of education settings, and how these patterns are associated with early childhood educators' beliefs and practices. Findings suggest a set of linkages between type of early education setting, professional development, and supervision of teaching. Public preschools have the strongest mandates for formal professional development and typically less variation in levels of monitoring, whereas family child care providers on average have less formal education and more variability in their access to and use of other forms of training and mentorship. Four distinct patterns of formal education, child development training, and ongoing mentoring or support were identified among the educators in this study. Associations between professional development experiences and teachers' beliefs and practices suggested the importance of higher levels of formal training for enhancing the quality of teacher-child interactions. Implications of the findings for changing teacher behaviors are discussed with respect to considering the setting context.

Learning areas for holistic education: kindergarten teachers’ curriculum priorities, professional development needs, and beliefs

“…However, our analysis did not reveal any significant correlations. Furthermore, in contrast with Fuligni et al (2009), our analysis did not reveal any significant correlations between the demographic variables and teachers' PD needs in the different learning areas.…”

“…For example Fuligni et al (2009) found that PD focused on family child care allowed teachers to enhance their authoritative or democratic beliefs about children, whereas PD related to child development enhanced the positive emotional climate in the classroom. More recently, Hur et al (2015) have investigated the predictors of teachers' child-centered beliefs with a large sample of preschool educators in the United States.…”

Online child care training in the United States: a preliminary investigation of who participates, what is offered, and on which topics the workforce is focusing

“…Context can include the ages of the children served (e.g., infants and toddlers versus preschoolers) and their home languages (Winton et al 2016;Zaslow et al 2010). Also to be considered are the programmatic inputs used (e.g., curriculum) and the availability of onsite mentoring to follow up on any training (Fuglini et al 2009;Howes et al 2003;Vu et al 2008). The extent to which there is a 'culture of learning' for teachers also appears to play a role (Ackerman 2007;Connors 2016).…”

“I Wanted to Know How They Perceived Jail”: Studying How One Early Educator Brought Her Students’ Worlds into Her Standardized Teaching Context

“…We employed an empirically based understanding of the best practices within teacher education that have been correlated with teachers' pedagogical change to accomplish this task (Fulligni et al 2009;Webster-Wright 2009). The primary goals of the PD course included supporting, as well as challenging, these teachers' practices with culturally and linguistically talented children in a close and personal environment in which the researchers and teachers studied and worked together in the schools where they actually taught (Pultorak et al 2006).…”