NCSL Virtual Early Learning Workforce Boot Camp, 18 Aug 2021

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From YouTube: Enhancing Quality in Early Learning

Description

MDRC’s Dr. Michelle Maier provides an overview of her research in early learning educator quality and ways to enhance it through professional learning and advancement opportunities.

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https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrLes3ojwahls8aD_l5FT_kdyNDMb32mS

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A

All right, hi everyone thanks so much for having me, um as patrick said, I'm going to be talking a little bit about quality and early care and education and what we can do to enhance that quality. So a little background sounds like you.

A

I've already maybe talked about this, but decades of research have shown that children who attend high quality, early care and education programs arrive at kindergarten um better prepared to learn than their peers, who do not have access to those high quality, early learning experiences, and that suggests that investments in early childhood really should aim broadly to focus on two things: ensuring equitable access to early care and education, but also thinking really hard about that quality piece. But we know that quality really varies both within and across states.

A

So the question is: how might we enhance quality across the board? um And this early learning workforce really plays a key role in this, because these are the individuals that are providing the learning environments that will promote successful outcomes for children and when.

B

A

About workforce, um you know, of course it's about the teachers, the assistant teachers, the aides, the folks that are directly interacting with kids, but also thinking about the administrators and the directors, the education coordinators, coaches, etc, who are also playing this supporting role for those teachers? So what I'll talk a little bit about? Is you know? How can we define and measure quality and then what? So? What do we know about how to enhance it?

A

So, in terms of quality, I think all of us are probably wanting all children to be able to experience safe, stable, nurturing, respectful, inclusive and educational environments that really try to promote um growth and development in all areas of learning, for all kids, but operationalizing that, in terms of our definitions of quality and the measures that we use is rather a challenging thing.

A

um The fields have brought about quality in terms of different levels, so you can think about quality at a program level, a classroom or an individual child level, and research does show that individual children within the same classroom with the same teachers can have really different experiences.

A

We also have been thinking about quality in terms of different dimensions, and so I'm going to present um one way of thinking about quality or three dimensions of quality that we've been looking at in mdrc, so we could think of that as a base. We want to lay a foundation of structural quality, and it's upon this kind of all other aspects of quality can build, and here we're thinking about the structural or physical aspects of how a program or classrooms are designed and configured.

A

um This tends to be where you're sort of things that can be regulated fall into place. Like your teacher child ratio, um some safety standards, you can also think about the curriculum being used here, the materials in the classroom, how the furniture is set up, etc. Another dimension of quality, I'm going to call interactional quality. The field I think, is tend to talk about this as process quality, so that term might be more familiar to you. This is about with the relationships, the interactions that occur between teachers and children or among children within the classroom.

A

It's about how positive that climate might be how fun it is. um The overall kind of classroom, management and organization, the extent to it teachers are really responsive and sensitive to children's needs.

A

A third dimension, um I'm going to call instructional quality, and this is what is being taught in the classroom and then how is it being taught? And here I I've been thinking about this as kind of what content is being provided to kids. So are they talking about ocean animals or what it means to be a community member um or what is a living being? What is a living thing? Also, here's! You know where the skills remains they're being focused on. Is it math science, social, emotional, learning, literacy, etc?

A

um We also think about activity settings, and this is you know how much time is being spent in whole group or small group or transition, and then also instructional practices can fall into this category. So what kinds of questions are teachers asking? um Are they individualizing instruction, and so these three dimensions, I think, have been talked about a lot, but it's also important to think about kind of back up to that program level. What is the program support structure so with the leadership? How effective are they at supporting teachers and what are their?

A

You know, business management practices you know: are they able to keep their programs kind of running a flow which is particularly important given kind of the pandemic circumstances?.

A

So um there are many measures out there for looking at quality. They differ in terms of what aspects or dimensions of quality they focus on, how deeply they focus on them and who they might be focusing on, so they might be focusing on the program versus the classroom or at a child level, or they could be focusing on. You know, home-based setting versus the center-based setting the most commonly used measures are the classroom assessment scoring system the class or the environmental rating scales. But there are many other measures out there um I would say.

A

Unfortunately, there is no one measure of quality, that's sort of like the home hit run. That will work for every single circumstance um and I don't think we're ever going to get there um as it feels. And so, when you think about measure selection, you, it should be determined based on what your definition of quality is um and what's your goal, your purpose of measuring quality and what are the things that you care about? What dimensions you're interested in and that will help determine which measure might be the best for your particular circumstance.

A

So what do we know about enhancing quality and one very promising strategy that I want to talk about? Is thinking about professional development or the ongoing professional learning experiences that we provide the workforce once they're on the job and there's several forms that this can partake in training and coaching, and certainly, I think, once we think about the most. But I also want to think about common planning or prep time. This is really for teachers um or professional learning communities.

A

So are there instances where colleagues can get together to sort of share and reflect on their particular experiences and learn from one another?

A

I'm going to talk about these things from like a teacher perspective, but I do want you to really think about ongoing professional learning for the other members of the workforce, like your directors and education, coordinators, coaches, etc. That this is very important to be thinking about the experiences that we provide them as well.

A

So why is this important on the idea that ongoing teacher professional learning opportunities will lead to sort of an increase in the knowledge, the skills, positive attitudes that teachers have and that will in turn change kind of what they do in the classroom if you're thinking about a curriculum, it'll help them to implement the curriculum as intended so with fidelity, and it can change kind of that classroom, learning environment in turn, we think all these things will help better support, children's learning and development.

A

So, first I want to do a poll and I'll list a couple of different professional learning opportunities, which one of these do, you think, is most effective for early childhood teachers.

B

Michelle it looks like we may have to do both questions at once, to give the results.

A

At one, so the first one is which ones of these listed training, coaching or training combined with coaching do, you think, might be most effective and then the second one is. If you were to focus that training and coaching on a particular skill domain. What do you think would come of it.

A

Does it pop up seeing what the results are.

C

Yeah we're just at about 75 respondents, so we'll give it here, maybe a few more seconds. That's pretty quick.

C

C

A

Well, excellent job group: um for the first question, um it is teacher trading combined with coaching, so it is sort of that combo with training and coaching around a particular topic. um That's going to improvement and teacher skills and practice, and when I talk about coaching, it really is sort of two-fold it's about observing teachers within the classroom, implementing doing their work and then also providing regular opportunities for them to reflect on what's going on and how that's working and receiving um feedback from their coaches.

A

The idea here is that coaching can really help teachers to translate the knowledge and skills that they learned in training into the real world context, because every classroom is going to be different and so doing it um in your real context is what makes um the bone sense. There is some evidence suggesting that training alone is just less effective.

A

So the second goal was, um if you're, focusing on a particular skill domain in terms of training and coaching which are the following, as it's been shown to do, um it looks like most of you picked um all of the above, and that was the correct answer that we have seen research. That would show that um this is linked with all these good things. um Just increased use of instructional practices within that targeted domain more time and whatever that skill domain is and also improvements in just global classroom quality.

A

Now I would argue that the easiest way to try to focus training in coaching um and to get to this focus on a particular skill domain is to do it around evidence-based, domain-specific curriculum.

A

So what about the other professional learning opportunities I mentioned before.

B

A

A lot of research on them, but they are promising methods and a study that we did of pre-k teachers in new york city. We found that those who had more common planning time were observed, implementing fewer whole group activities and more small group activities, and I think that's really interesting, because small group is a time where there's just a teacher with just a few kids and it allows for instruction that's more tailored to individual children's needs.

A

Now, there's little research. As far as I'm aware on professional learning, communities, there's some work in older grades and it does look promising. So it's um and it's gaining popularity. So I think this is another method, that's important to um to implement.

A

So, given this, what are some practical steps for improving quality? The first is thinking about the curriculum that's being used. We do want ones that are that have proven track records um that focus on key learning domains and but the proven track record.

A

It might mean more focus on those that have an evidence-based, rather than just research based and the idea with this focus on the key learning domains that they tend to be set up in a way that they follow activities follow a sequence that aligns with how children learn, and that is something that we really want to see to be able to improve children's learning.

A

The second piece is supporting educators through robust ongoing professional learning opportunities like those that I just described, and then the third piece is collecting data and then creating metrics and monitoring them to inform continuous quality improvement. The idea here is, if you're, putting in a new curriculum, you want to know what are the sticking points what's working? What's not working are teachers implementing it or not, um and then using that information to kind of go back to the drawing board and try to move away those barriers that are challenges for teachers.

A

So what should ongoing professional learning opportunities? Look like there's a couple of characteristics that have shown to be pretty important versus sustain over time and that's the sustained within a school year, but also across multiple school years. Just that kind of one I think most of us are in the zone where we know that one kind of workshop at one point in time is not going to be sufficient.

A

um It also is best if it's targeted again that could be targeted on a curriculum uh targeted on specific kinds of teaching practices, or you know targeted towards a particular skill domain.

A

These uh professional learning opportunities should also allow for active, hands-on learning. We do a lot of thinking about what a kids need, but when you're thinking about professional development, you want to think about what's best for adults and how do they learn best and provide it in that way, um they need to be aligned with relevant education standards, program expectations and the particular program context, and so this is so that you don't get mixed messaging um to folks and that you overburden teachers with lots of conflicting information.

A

um We want them to encourage regular collaboration with colleagues and to include all relevant staff. I think we've learned um in trying to put in place different curricula that, if you just train and coach lead teachers, but don't include the other teachers in the classroom, you're kind of missing the boat a bit, um because then you know that you can't really get a full experience there and if you also don't include directors, educational coordinators, other folks that are supporting teachers, they're not going to be able to provide the support that everyone needs.

A

My last plug with this last piece is, you know. Ideally, we want children to have aligned learning experiences across time, so the ongoing professional learning opportunities that we provide the workforce should really think about how we can make sure that we have that alignment for kids.

A

So, um in conclusion, a sustained investment in in high quality, ongoing professional learning can help support an early childhood workforce to be well equipped to create these high quality learning experiences that we all want to see that ultimately meet the developmental needs of young children from all backgrounds.

A

um Okay, I'll stop there. I want to say thank you. I hope you have some time for a discussion and questions and I look forward to that.