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Competent Educators of the 21st Century: Principles of Quality Pedagogy is a policy document that defines quality teaching practices when working with children from 3 to 10 years old, and their families, to better support the child's development and well-being. 

This resource contains:

• A brief history of the development of the Principles, including references to the international documents on which they are built,
• Explanations of the values the Principles represent for ISSA and its member NGOs,
• Short suggestions for how they can be used and by whom,
• Brief descriptions of each of the 7 Focus Areas that provide the framework for the Principles of Quality Pedagogy,
• A list of the 20 Principles and the 85 Indicators that describe how to apply these Principles.

In addition to the to the four full PDF versions, ISSA has translated the Quality Principles into two Romani dialects: Vlaxicko and Rumungricko. You can find these on the ISSA website.

Based on its long experience in working with practitioners, mostly in challenging contexts, ISSA has articulated an approach that embeds the values and practices that are considered to lead to meaningful and sustainable mechanisms for continuous professional growth.

An important outcome of this process is called “Roads to Quality”. This is more than a guidebook explaining how the resources in the ISSA Quality Resource Pack can be used to increase the quality of practices in early childhood education services. It stands for ISSA’s approach towards practitioners’ professional growth and nurturing their professionalism. It stands for the systemic change in early childhood education systems that should reflect the concern to invest in professionalism. As a democratic and inclusive professional learning community, ISSA promotes learning within its network, while at the same time bringing in knowledge and innovation from outside the network.

With this guidebook, ISSA proposes not only a quality framework for early childhood education practices—including a range of resources supporting its translation into practice—but also a “know-how” approach that reflects the consistency between scaffolding children’s development and learning, and scaffolding practitioners’ professional growth in such a way that each achieves their full potential.

National Guidelines - Best Practice in Early Childhood Intervention presents eight recommended best practices in Early Childhood Intervention. The document also offers rationale for each of these practices in the following quality areas: 

• Family
• Inclusion
• Teamwork
• Universal Principles 

This text draws upon extensive consultation with key stakeholders in the early childhood intervention sector.

The Northern Lights Career Development Center is part of the Community College of Vermont. The Center is the hub of Vermont’s unified system of professional development for early childhood and afterschool professionals.
A primary goal of the professional development system is to maintain and enhance a comprehensive, quality, statewide professional development system that:

• Provides evidence-informed professional development opportunities for the workforce led by skilled instructors, mentors, or coaches;
• Aligns with program and professional standards, requirements, and regulations; and
• Recognizes accomplishments of professionals in the field.

The professional development system aims to be consistent, accessible, and responsive to the needs of early childhood and afterschool professionals from entry to advanced levels. Core knowledge and competencies provide the foundation of Vermont’s professional development system. They strengthen the system by creating common language and expectations for the professionals working with young children.

This book includes the knowledge and competencies and describes their development and uses.

The Skills Framework is a SkillsFuture initiative developed for the Singapore workforce to promote skills mastery and lifelong learning. Jointly developed by SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), Workforce Singapore (WSG) and the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), and together with employers, industry associations, education and training providers and unions, the Skills Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) provides useful information on:

1. sector and employment opportunities
2. career pathways
3. occupations and job roles
4. existing and emerging skills
5. training programmes for skills upgrading and mastery

With the Skills Framework, individuals are equipped to make informed decisions about career choices, as well as take responsibility for skills upgrading and career planning.

The Framework provides an overview of the 5-must-knows for a fulfilling career in the ECCE sector. These are: 1) Why ECEC quality is important; 2) What it takes to be an inspiring ECEC professional; 3) What’s next for ECEC professionals; 4) Where the opportunities are; and 5) How the government supports ECEC professionals. The Framework also provides an overview of the career pathways in ECEC field and is accompanied by the ECCE Skills Map which details the skills for each of the ECCE occupations. The components within the Skills Map and brief descriptions are as follows: 1) ECCE occupations; 2) skills categories; 3) skills; and 4) training programmes

SkillsFuture

2017

Standards for ECD Parenting Programmes takes a deeper looking into the interventions or services which aim to support parenting interactions, behaviors, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and practices. The document guides practitioners through a set of standards for parenting programs. Nine standards are presented including:  

• Supporting nurturing care because it contributes to holistic child development;
• Build on a theory of change that leads to the desired results;
• Tailor content to the child's developmental stage;
• Serve vulnerable children and their families;
• Involve all parents and key caregivers engaged in the function of parenting;
• Adapt to context and culture and build upon positive parenting practices;
• Engage trained workforce and service providers;
• Reflect continuous improvements through systematic monitoring and evaluation.

This resource is particularly targeted to low and middle income count ires.

Towards the Right Care for Children: Orientations for reforming alternative care systems - Africa, Asia, Latin America, commissioned by the European Commission Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development commissioned SOS Children’s Villages International to conduct a study on the possible issue of institutionalization in six South and Central American, Asian and African countries, in order to strengthen the knowledge of the European Commission on the nature, the extent and scope of institutionalization and feasibility of the de-institutionalization.
 
The objectives of this research was to:

• map and summarize the existing knowledge on (de-) institutionalization in the three continents concerned;
• increase the knowledge base on (de-) institutionalization in the six countries; and
• provide guidelines for future EU strategies on (de-)institutionalization in developing countries.

This synthesis report brings together desk reviews and country studies through which a large collection of documents from various sources have been consulted.

Proposal for key principles of a Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care is the report of the Working Group on Early Childhood Education and Care under the auspices of the European Commission.

The authors of the report focus on which measures have helped Member States address and promote measurable improvements for children, families, local communities and society.

SOS Children’s Villages has been working to embed children’s rights within care settings for many years. Our approach has been multifaceted, embracing structures and institutions, care professionals and young people themselves. One gap identified in the course of this work has been the absence of effective training programmes for care professionals which have children’s rights at the core. This manual has been produced to fill that gap. The two-day course outlined in these pages is designed to familiarise groups of care professionals with the international standards and principles surrounding children’s rights – and above all, to relate this to the daily experience and challenges arising in the field of alternative care. The course is intended to provide participants with the information, motivation and strategies that they can use to carry children’s rights into their daily work. The aim is to contribute to higher quality care and a culture of respect for children’s rights.