High quality professional development is a key component of the Recognition & Response system.  Five areas in which early childhood professional development specialists can provide training and technical assistance to teachers and other program staff are:

Recognition: Screening and assessment to help create a learning profile for all children and in particular to identify those who may be at risk for learning disabilities.

Response: Approaches to teaching and curriculum that would flow from the “Recognition” component to provide an individualized response to all children with challenges in literacy and mathematics knowledge and skills.

Parental Engagement: Approaches to involving parents, through the development and sharing of a strengths-based learning profile for their child.

Transition to Kindergarten: Creative use of learning profiles to address the fact that children now arrive in kindergarten with the teacher having little or no knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses related to learning.

Systemic Change: Approaches to professional development of pre-K professionals, as well as policy changes, that relate to accreditation and ratings of centers and professionals and can help ensure effective application of an early learning system.

Source:  Hudson, Stewart. Fall 2005. A New Strategy for Advancing Solutions to Learning Disabilities. In Grantmakers in Education Newsletter, p.4.

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), efforts to “promote a high-quality system for early childhood professional development can be a catalyst to successfully address barriers to high quality for all young children and their families.”

NAEYC has developed the following conceptual framework that identifies key principles of an effective professional development system embedded within the larger system of effective early childhood service delivery.

NAEYC Principles of Effective Professional Development

1. Professional development is an ongoing process.

All early childhood professionals - no matter how qualified - need to continue to incorporate into their professional repertoire new knowledge and skills related to working with young children and their families. NAEYC recommends that all early childhood professionals complete 24 clock hours of ongoing professional development each year.

2. Professional development experiences are most effective when grounded in a sound theoretical and philosophical base and structured as a coherent and systematic program.

Currently, many early childhood practitioners, particularly those who have not completed formal preparation programs, gain training though a scatter-shot approach that often reflects their state’s child care licensing requirements or the availability of training opportunities at a given time. A scatter-shot approach makes it difficult to integrate and apply new information and often results in duplication of some topics and gaps in others.

3. Professional development experiences are most successful when they respond to an individual’s background, experiences, and the current context of their role.

This principle is particularly important for employed individuals who are often investing scarce resources - both time and money - in training and may feel cheated or frustrated when there are few apparent links to their needs. Such congruence is particularly important in the beginning stages of professional development because it is more difficult to make connections on one’s own without a broad foundation of knowledge and skills.

4. Effective professional development opportunities are structured to promote clear linkages between theory and practice.

Without clear linkages between theory and practice, students may reject new knowledge as “book learning” or an “ivory tower" approach and instead rely on experienced practitioners’ information and strategies “that work in the real world.”

5. Providers of effective professional development experiences have an appropriate knowledge and experience base.

In addition to helping ensure the accuracy and quality of the material presented, meeting this principle is important for establishing credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of the participants.

6. Effective professional development experiences use an active, hands-on approach and stress an interactive approach that encourages students to learn from one another.

In addition to reflecting what is known about effective strategies for teach adults, meeting this principle has the added benefit of modeling the same type of teaching practices that are effective when working with young children.

7. Effective professional development experiences contribute to positive self-esteem by acknowledging the skills and resources brought to the training process as opposed to creating feelings of self-doubt or inadequacy by immediately calling into question an individual’s current practices.

The low pay and status of many individuals working with young children already works to undermine practitioners’ self-esteem, which in turn can have negative effects on their interactions with young children. Additionally, building upon existing strengths makes it more likely that the new information will be incorporated into the individual’s repertoire, and the opposite approach is likely to result in the rejection of new information (“You don’t know my kids; that would never work with them”).

8. Effective professional development experiences provide opportunities for application and reflection and allow for individuals to be observed and receive feedback upon what has been learned.

Learning is most clearly integrated into an individual’s professional repertoire when there are frequent opportunities to utilize the new information, to reflect upon its meaning and applications, and to receive feedback on how the new knowledge or skill is incorporated into one’s practice. Isolated, one-shot training experiences do not provide for such integration and reflection, nor do formal preparation programs that teach theoretical foundations early on without any practicum experiences until much later.

9. Students and professionals should be involved in the planning and design of their professional development program.

Meeting this principle helps to ensure that the professional development experiences are tailored to meet individual needs. It also encourages individuals to develop a stronger sense of ownership for their learning and reinforces the notion that professional development is an ongoing professional responsibility. Conceptual Framework for Early Childhood Professional Development (PDF)

Source: NAEYC position statement. November 1993.

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