The staff at Early Childhood Associates are a passionate bunch. One of the topics we like to “nerd out” over is how to improve the quality of professional development for the early childhood workforce. At its best, professional development improves child outcomes and empowers early childhood practitioners to advance in their field. We believe that creating sets of competencies to guide PD providers in their work is central to the development of a strong professional development system and workforce.
Early Childhood Associates is excited to announce our participation in this year’s National Smart Start Conference, where we will share our experience developing workforce knowledge & competencies for educators, PD providers, and IHE staff in three states. Held May 5th – 8th in Greensboro, North Carolina, the event is the nation’s largest conference devoted to early education systems and strategies.
Dr. Linda Warren, President of ECA, will be presenting the workshop “Developing Workforce Knowledge & Competencies for Educators, PD Providers & IHE Staff.” She will be joined by ECA’s Senior Policy Analyst, Benita Danzing. The presentation is based on ECA’s work in three different states developing comprehensive workforce knowledge and competencies (WKC) across two target groups: PD/TA providers and faculty and staff at Institutions of Higher Education. The workshop applies to consultants/trainers, mentors/coaches, program director/administrators, policy makers, public agency officials, researchers and teacher educators (IHE faculty).
Participants will examine the conceptual approaches and processes that we use to develop WKC, explore strategies for actively drawing upon diverse stakeholders’ expertise and actively engaging them in the process, and examine ways to integrate WKC work into the five core elements of a PD system. (Fair warning: participants will also get a healthy dose of our dorky passion for this work!)