Education & Care

The Working in Early Care and Education in North Carolina workforce study provides comprehensive data on teachers, assistant teachers and directors in early care and education centers and on the licensed early care and education programs in which they work.

Data is provided from statewide surveys of the workforce from September 2012 through February 2013.

Other workforce studies can be found via the website listed below.

Early Childhood Care and Education in Five Asian Countries seeks to consolidate early childhood developments in Asia as a basis for The Head Foundations further research and advocacy in this area.

A general overview of the ECCE landscape in the Asia-Pacific region is introduced by this resource. Country profiles are included as a way to share data on individual countries. These country profiles are presented through five aspects:

1. Programme structure,
2. Teacher qualification
3. Demographics
4. Funding and governance structure,
5. Public-private share

These profiles also provide a look at current concerns and recent developments in the countries. Common threads between these profiles are also addressed.

Innovative approaches to continuous professional development (CPD) in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Europe: Findings from a comparative review explores innovation as an aspect of in-service continuous professional development in ECEC.

A literature review and cross-country analysis conducted in ten European countries uncovered the fact that innovation in CPD was understood a way to improve quality. This finding shows how CPD encompasses processes such as critical thinking, reflexivity and co-creation within and across ECEC systems. This resource highlights insights identified as crucial aspects of CPD in terms of innovation including:

• Critical reflection;
• Communities of practice; and
• A growing focus on politics that address social inequality through ECEC

The analysis is a contribution to research on innovative CDP in ECEC at the micro, meso and macro levels. The authors suggest more research into in-depth and identified approaches to innovation related to CDP and their impact on the quality development in European ECEC. 

The 2018 Fostering Effective Early Learning (FEEL) study focuses on the importance of quality, and how to strengthen it in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Extensive research demonstrates that the benefits of ECEC for children are increased when the service provider and educators are highly skilled and participate in professional development (PD), and the service is of high quality. Upskilling the workforce, including in-service professional development, is considered to be a key to improving quality, and can produce substantial and practical improvements for staff and children alike.

Building on the existing body of international research, the findings of the Fostering Effective Early Learning (FEEL) study, address the need for quality improvement in ECEC by showing how a particular form of evidence-based in-service PD can produce substantial and practically meaningful improvements in both staff practices and child outcomes.

The FEEL study was conducted by the research team from Early Start, University of Wollongong, on behalf on the NSW Department of Education.

You may also find the The Fostering Effective Early Learning (FEEL) Study's Literature Review below. The Literature Review highlights the importance of quality teaching practice in early childhood education and outlining the key elements of the best practice professional development used in the Study.

Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education outlines a framework for a funding strategy that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education for young children from birth to kindergarten entry, including a highly qualified and adequately compensated workforce that is consistent with the vision outlined in the 2015 report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation.

The recommendations of this report are based on essential features of child development and early learning, and on principles for high-quality professional practice at the levels of individual practitioners, practice environments, leadership, systems, policies, and resource allocation.

This report was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. You can download the PDF version, read it online or buy it in print here.

Early Childhood Workforce Index 2018 is the second edition of the biennial Early Childhood Workforce Index from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. This edition continues to track the status of the early childhood education workforce and related state policies in order to understand changes over time. Several new analyses, as well as updated policy indicators and recommendations, have been added. 

The chapters in this resource take a look at those working in the early childhood workforce, their economic security and the policies that impact them.

Early Learning Career Pathways Initiative: Credentialing in the Early Care and Education Field introduces a career pathways framework 4 in use by several federal agencies, provides a national landscape of states’  requirements for ECE staff related to credentialing, highlights five states at various points in the development of ECE career pathways, and shows how early learning system components used in the majority of states align with the Six Key Elements of Career Pathways Framework that other industries use. The elements in this framework are:

Element 1. Build Cross-Agency Partnerships and Clarify Roles: Engage key cross-agency partners at the local and state levels, agree to a shared vision, and gain support from political leaders. Clearly define and formalize roles and responsibilities.

Element 2. Identify Sector or Industry and Engage Employers: Select sectors and industries and engage employers in the development of career pathways.

Element 3. Design Education and Training Programs: Design career pathway programs to provide a clear sequence of education and credentials that meet the skill needs of high-demand industries.

Element 4. Identify Funding Needs and Sources: Raise and/or leverage resources necessary to develop and operate the career pathway system and its education and training programs.

Element 5. Align Policies and Programs: Pursue state and local policy and administrative reforms in order to promote career pathway system development and to support implementation.

Element 6. Measure System Change and Performance: Assess system-wide change and measure performance outcomes to ensure continuous improvement.

Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Early Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study offers a snapshot of today's early childhood teachers in the United States. The report takes a look through four lenses:

• Then and Now: Trends in Wages, Education, and Turnover Among Early Childhood Teachers, 1989-2014. A comparison of available evidence reveals the extent of change in center-based teachers’ wages, education, and rates of turnover over the past quarter century.
• Economic Insecurity Among Early Childhood Teachers. New evidence reveals the serious consequences of inadequate compensation on this predominantly female, ethnically diverse workforce.
• The Public Costs of Inadequate Compensation. An examination of how widely early childhood workers and their families use public benefits offers a first look at some of the hidden costs of the low wages endemic to this workforce.
• Policy Efforts to Improve Early Childhood Teaching Jobs. An appraisal of state and national efforts to improve the quality of early care and education in the United States focuses on how adequately these have addressed the low wages of the teaching workforce.

The report also offers thoughts on paths forward and reinvigorating the national conversation on the status and working conditions of teaching staff.

Excerpt

"In the 25 years since the release of the National Child Care Staffing Study, combined developments in science, practice, and policy have dramatically shifted the context for discussions about the status of early childhood teaching jobs, and the importance of attracting and retaining a well-prepared workforce that is capable of nurturing young children’s learning, health and development. Three narrative elements of this changed early care and education landscape set the stage for the new evidence presented in this report:

• A developmental story. Since 1989, we have gained exponentially greater knowledge of the powerful role of children’s earliest encounters with caregiving adults in setting a sturdy or fragile foundation for lifelong development.
• An economic story. There is now a far more widespread appreciation for the wise investment that high-quality early care and education (ECE) constitutes for children, families, and society at large.
• A policy story. For the first time since 1971, when national child care legislation made it all the way to a presidential veto, there is serious debate at the federal level, echoed in virtually every state, about the vital importance of improving the quality of early education, with vast implications for what we expect of the early childhood teaching workforce."

This report presents ‘good practice case studies’ of exemplary approaches to innovative in-service Professional Development (PD) of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) practitioners in three countries: Denmark, Italy and Poland.

The report reviews the use of new technologies, peer learning, reflective practice and organizational learning, within the field of Early Childhood Education in Europe. This document presents the case study design, results and interpretations of findings from each of the three case studies The case studies in this report aim to explore new effective approaches to professional development focused on enhancing education and improving workforce training strategies for ECEC practitioners.

In the United States, cross-sector core competencies for the prenatal through 3-year-old field are currently being broadened to encompass competencies needed for working with children 3-5 years old. The charge of this report was to: 

1. Identify core competencies needed by the P-3 workforce in Los Angeles County;
2. Develop training approaches to support development of these competencies; and
3. Create and field test strategies in selected Los Angeles communities for integrating the core competencies in professional development systems and developing strategies to sustain their use.

This report captures core competencies agreed upon by the workgroup tasked with this report, as well as recommendations regarding the prenatal through three-year-old workforce.