Creating teacher capacity in Early Childhood Education and Care institutions implementing an authoritative adult style

Abstract

The being together intervention intends to raise teacher capacity in Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions and promote social and emotional development in preschoolers by implementing an authoritative (warm and predictable) adult style in the institution. An authoritative adult balances between building up high quality interactions with children, while at the same time having a predictable structure with clear norms and social expectations in the learning environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate what helped the ECEC institutions to successfully implement the program principles and core components, and what were the challenges. The staff groups of seven Norwegian ECEC institutions in different municipalities who took part in the innovation were interviewed at the beginning and before the end of the first year of implementation. Data analysis identified five success criteria in the implementation process; strong commitment to the authoritative adult style, strong focus on the implementation process, advanced support systems, highly involved leaders, and a collective orientation. These elements resulted in a shared vision and an academically grounded practice in the ECEC institutions. Staff members without formal professional training and a lack of written documentation in the ECEC institutions should be given more consideration in further improvement of the capacity building.

Educators’ Barriers and Facilitators to Physical Activity Policy Implementation in the Childcare Setting: Qualitative Findings From the Play Active Project

“…41,42 Organisational strategies such as benchmarking, building communication skills and committing to continuous improvement can build implementation capacity by understanding what does and doesn't 'work'. This creates an organisation that can improve children's outcomes 41,43,44 by focussing on common goals, 44,45 understanding key issues and then taking ownership 37,45 of meeting those goals. Educators reported a working knowledge of these strategies and were willing to participate in workplace-sponsored capacity building activities to support physical activity policy implementation and to embed a new physical activity policy into daily practice.…”

A Scoping Review of Relationship-based Training Programs for Early Childhood Educators.

“…Raver & Jones 2013; Nix, Bierman, Domitrovich, & Gill, 2013;Pickens, 2009;Ritblatt, Hokoda, & Van Liew, 2017;Shamblin, Graham, & Bianco, 2016;Steed & Durand, 2013;Tucker, Schieffer, Wills, Hull, & Murphy, 2017;Williford et al, 2017).The other studies were conducted in Norway (Omdal, 2018), the Netherlands (n=2) (Fukkink & Tavecchio, 2010;Werner, Vermeer, Linting, & Van IJzendoorn, 2018), Jamaica (Baker-Henningham, Walker, Powell, & Gardner, 2009), Belgium (Vancraeyveldt et al, 2015) and Singapore (Ebbeck, Phoon, Tan-Chong, Tan, & Goh, 2015). A majority of the research was conducted in preschool or childcare settings.…”

Increasing Capacity of Kindergarten Teachers in the Learning of Preservation Butterfly

“…The benefits gained from the participants after participating in this activity are being able to preserve the environment, maintain and care for plants well, aspects of beauty, help the process of pollinating plants as well as learning media (Table 4). Explanation from the interest and motivation section shows that there are high benefits to these activities, although it is difficult to develop further without the encouragement of environmental-based leadership (Omdal 2018). Almost all participants responded well to the benefits of this preservation activity.…”