Effectiveness of Large-Scale, State-Sponsored Language and Literacy Professional Development on Early Childhood Educator Outcomes

Early childhood educators' knowledge about language and literacy: Associations with practice and children's learning

“…Participation was open to all early childhood educators who registered for the state professional development, directly taught preschool‐aged children, agreed to complete research study activities, and provided informed consent. Notably, the original evaluation project showed no impacts of the professional development on measures of educators' knowledge, no impacts on any child outcomes, and no impacts on the overall quantity or quality of classroom practices (Piasta et al, ; Piasta et al, ).…”

“…Empirically, a growing body of literature has focused on educators' knowledge as it pertains to supporting early language and literacy (e.g., Hindman & Wasik, ; McCutchen, Abbott, et al, ; McCutchen, Harry, et al, ). Moreover, considerable efforts aim to strengthen educators' knowledge to support early language and literacy via professional development (e.g., Cunningham, Etter, Platas, Wheeler, & Campbell, ; Neuman & Cunningham, ; Piasta et al, ). The underlying logic model on which this work is premised is that educators' knowledge informs their practice and is thereby associated with children's learning (Desimone, ; Markussen‐Brown et al, ).…”

Going beyond defining: Preschool educators' use of knowledge in their pedagogical reasoning about vocabulary instruction

“…In addition to examining the quantity and quality of support for vocabulary occurring in early childhood classrooms, researchers have endeavoured to understand preschool educators' knowledge about supporting vocabulary development. Traditionally, knowledge about supporting language development has been measured through static measures that assess a variety of types of knowledge for teaching (Shulman, ), often focusing on what Hindman and Wasik () call “conceptual and procedural knowledge” (p. 353; e.g., Hindman & Wasik, ; Neuman & Cunningham, ; O'Leary, Cockburn, Powell, & Diamond, ; Piasta et al, ). These measures generally seek to understand educators' broader knowledge about supporting language and literacy in early childhood settings, with embedded items specific to vocabulary.…”

“…These measures generally seek to understand educators' broader knowledge about supporting language and literacy in early childhood settings, with embedded items specific to vocabulary. Across studies that have employed such measures, early childhood educators tend to accurately answer 60–70% of items (see Cash, Cabell, Hamre, DeCoster, & Pianta, ; Piasta et al, ).…”

“…Most researchers depend on traditional paper and pencil measures to assess teachers' knowledge about how children learn language skills (e.g., Cash et al, ; Hindman & Wasik, ; S.B. Piasta et al, ), which are created from researchers' perspectives but do not take into account the other types of knowledge that are important in the work of teaching (Piasta et al, ; Shulman, ). Furthermore, they are removed from the immediate context in which educators work and use knowledge to make decisions about practice (Cohen, Raudenbush, & Ball, ; Lampert, ).…”