Early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings offer an opportunity to provide children with a solid beginning in all areas of their development. The quality and efficacy of these settings depend largely on the individuals within the ECCE workforce. Policy makers need a complete picture of ECCE teachers and caregivers in order to tackle the persistent challenges facing this workforce. The IOM and the National Research Council hosted a workshop to describe the ECCE workforce and outline its parameters. Speakers explored issues in defining and describing the workforce, the marketplace of ECCE, the effects of the workforce on children, the contextual factors that shape the workforce, and opportunities for strengthening ECCE as a profession.
As a result of the heightened public and political attention and the movement toward standards and accountability, performance measurement has emerged as an important concern in the early childhood care and education field. At the request of the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families convened two workshops to learn from existing efforts to develop performance measures for early childhood care and education, to consider what would be involved in developing and implementing an effective performance measurement system for this field, and to delineate some critical next steps for moving such an effort forward.
Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: An Update: Workshop Summary is based on the original study From Neurons to Neighborhoods: Early Childhood Development, which released in October of 2000. From the time of the original publication's release, much has occurred to cause a fundamental reexamination of the nation's response to the needs of young children and families, drawing upon a wealth of scientific knowledge that has emerged in recent decades. The study shaped policy agendas and intervention efforts at national, state, and local levels. It captured a gratifying level of attention in the United States and around the world and has helped to foster a highly dynamic and increasingly visible science of early childhood development. It contributed to a growing public understanding of the foundational importance of the early childhood years and has stimulated a global conversation about the unmet needs of millions of young children. Ten years later, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Research Council (NRC) held a 2-day workshop in Washington, D.C., to review and commemorate a decade of advances related to the mission of the report. The workshop began with a series of highly interactive breakout sessions in which experts in early childhood development examined the four organizing themes of the original report and identified both measurable progress and remaining challenges. The second day of the workshop, speakers chosen for their diverse perspectives on early childhood research and policy issues discussed how to build on the accomplishments of the past decade and to launch the next era in early childhood science, policy, and practice. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: An Update: Workshop Summary emphasizes that there is a single, integrated science of early childhood development despite the extent to which it is carved up and divided among a diversity of professional disciplines, policy sectors, and service delivery systems. While much work still remains to be done to reach this goal, the 2010 workshop demonstrated both the promise of this integrated science and the rich diversity of contributions to that science.
On June 24-25, 1999, the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine convened a workshop for researchers and practitioners to examine the underlying knowledge base that informs current best practices in early childhood services, from the prenatal period to school entry. Early Childhood Intervention discusses the diversity of working assumptions, theories of change, and views about child development and early intervention that currently shape a wide variety of social policies and service delivery systems for young children and their families.
How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
Child Care and Training was first published in 1928. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this completely revised edition, a book with a long and successful history is brought up to date in keeping with current concepts of child development and growth. This basic handbook has been used and enthusiastically endorsed by thousands of teachers, students, doctors, parents, and nurses. The present volume retains the time-tested plan of previous editions, but much of the material has been revised and new information, including a whole chapter on Personality, Adjustment, and Mental Health, has been added. All of the illustrations are new also. The authors of the original volume, Marion L. Faegre and John E. Anderson, were joined in the preparation of this revision by Dale B. Harris, Dr. Anderson's successor as director of the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota. In his long and distinguished career Dr. Anderson has served as president of the American Psychological Association and of the Society for Research in Child Development, as editor of the Psychological Bulletin and as advisory editor of Parents' Magazine and Childhood Education. Mrs. Faegre, author of numerous other works on child development, served for many years as consultant in parent education in the U. S. Children's Bureau, Washington, D. C. Whether this book is used as a text for teaching or as a reference or guidebook for the individual, it admirably fills the need for a practical, authoritative source of instruction and advice.
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