Formal Education, Credential, or Both: Early Childhood Program Classroom Practices

A Multi-Instrument Examination of Preschool Classroom Quality and the Relationship Between Program, Classroom, and Teacher Characteristics

“…Teacher education level and years of experience predicted scores on the Instructional Support domain, whereas a degree in ECE predicted ECERS-R scores and scores on the Student Engagement domain. These are different findings from Early and colleagues (2006), who did not find any relationship between teacher education or ECE major, but are consistent with Vu, Jeon, and Howes's (2008) findings that teacher education level was related to ECERS-R scores.…”

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).…”

Family Child Care Learning Environments: Caregiver Knowledge and Practices Related to Early Literacy and Mathematics

“…Unlike a number of previous FCCH studies (e.g., Marshall et al 2003;Vu et al 2008) provider education was not related to pedagogical knowledge or to goals and practices such as how time was spent and what kinds of activities were prioritized. This may be the result of a somewhat skewed distribution of provider education, such Table 2 Bivariate correlations between caregiver goals, activity priorities, language/literacy and math knowledge, and background characteristics that individuals with four-year college degrees were quite underrepresented in the sample.…”

“…Whereas studies conducted in state-funded prekindergarten programs and in some child care center settings have yielded mixed results regarding the relation between formal teacher education and child care quality (e.g., Burchinal et al 2002;Clarke-Stewart et al 2002;Early et al 2007;Vu et al 2008), studies of family child care providers have consistently found education to be related to quality as measured by global measures such as the Family Day Care Environmental Rating Scale (FDCRS; Harms and Clifford 1989); Marshall et al 2003) and measures of caregiver sensitivity (e.g., Caregiver Interaction Scale ;Arnett 1989;Li-Grining and Coley 2006). For example, a recent study that focused exclusively on family child care homes found significant relations between sensitive caregiving and higher caregiver education; caregiver education was a particularly strong predictor of sensitivity in states where the regulatory standards were lower (Raikes et al 2005).…”

“…In general, research on child care quality has focused on structural (e.g., regulation, ratio, caregiver education, wages) and process (e.g., caregiver-child interaction, activity-selection) indicators to measure global quality , and has documented a relation between the more distal structural characteristics and the observed processes (e.g., Dowsett et al 2008;NICHD ECCRN 2002) although not without some mixed findings on caregiver education (e.g., Early et al 2007;Vu et al 2008). Those studies (e.g., Cassidy et al 2005) that do find a positive relation between caregiver credentials and quality indicate that those with more education and expertise provide more responsive care, more stimulation, and more engagement in language rich play.…”