Effective Early Childhood Professional Development: Improving Teacher Practice and Child Outcomes (NCRECE)

Professional development practices that really improve child outcomes—that's what every early childhood education program needs. With this authoritative research volume, administrators and policy makers will discover the latest findings on best professional development practices—and learn how to scale up successful efforts across an entire district or state.

Based on the annual leadership symposium of the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE), this book is a must for anyone engaged in high-level efforts to ensure teacher quality. Through clear explanations of cutting-edge research from two dozen respected contributors, readers will

• investigate specific, field-tested professional development (PD) models that improved both teacher practice and child outcomes (with a spotlight on Robert Pianta's effective MyTeachingPartner framework)
• learn how these models helped educators teach academic content areas (early literacy, math, and science) and improve children's social-emotional skills
• examine positive teacher attributes that PD efforts should target, such as increased self-regulation skills and reduced cognitive overload
• discover success strategies for scaling up professional development efforts through existing infrastructure and more investment in teacher quality (includes an extended case study on a comprehensive PD program in Texas)
• explore the policy implications of the professional development interventions described in this volume

Essential reading for early childhood administrators, policy makers, and researchers, this important book will help bring about widespread improvements in professional development programs—key to advancing teacher quality and better outcomes for young children.

Margaret Burchinal, Ph.D., Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute, CB 8185, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599. Dr. Burchinal is a senior scientist at the FPG Child Development Institute. She has served as the primary statistician for many child care studies, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development study of early child care and youth development; the Abecedarian Project; the National Center for Early Development and Learning 11-state prekindergarten evaluation; and the Cost, Quality, & Outcomes Study.

Jason T. Downer, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning at the University of Virginia. His research emphasizes the promotion of children's academic and social competence through targeted and preventive interventions during early schooling. Specifically, he engages in developing and evaluating school‐based teacher consultation and prevention programming designed to enhance teacher practices and provide students with equitable learning opportunities that increase academic success and strengthen social‐emotional skills. He is an academic 'grandchild' of Dr. Fantuzzo, and forever grateful for John's sage advice and modeling of community‐engaged scholarship.

Laura M. Justice, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at The Ohio State University. Dr. Justice is also Executive Director of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy as well as the Schoenbaum Family Center. A certified speech-language pathologist, much of her research focuses on identifying strategies to improve the language skills of young children, including those with disabilities.

Dr. Susan Landry, a nationally recognized expert in early childhood education, is the founder and director of the Children’s Learning Institute. Dr. Landry’s research into environmental factors that promote early cognitive growth and development led to her development of the framework for the Center for Improving the Readiness of Children for Learning and Education (CIRCLE), which led to the implementation of the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM) (now known as Texas School Ready!) in prekindergarten classrooms across Texas.

C. Cybele Raver, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Applied Psychology, The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University, Kimball Hall, 246 Greene Street, Room 403W, New York, New York 10003. Dr. Raver directs New York University's Institute of Human Development and Social Change. Her research focuses on self-regulation and school readiness among young children facing economic hardship, and she examines the mechanisms that support children's positive outcomes in the policy contexts of welfare reform and early educational intervention.

Carollee Howes, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Improving Child Care Quality, Department of Education, and a professor of the Applied Developmental Psychology doctorate program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Howes is an internationally recognized developmental psychologist focusing on children's social and emotional development. She has served as a principal investigator on a number of seminal studies in early child care and preschool education, including the National Child Care Staffing Study; the Family and Relative Care Study; the Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study; and the National Study of Child Care in Low Income Families.

Dr. Howes has been active in public policy for children and families in California as well as across the United States. Her research focuses on children's experiences in child care, their concurrent and long-term outcomes from child care experiences, and child care quality and efforts to improve child care quality. Dr. Howes is the editor of Teaching 4- to 8-Year-Olds: Literacy, Math, Multiculturalism, and Classroom Community (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2003) and the coeditor of The Promise of Pre-K (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2009) and Foundations for Teaching Excellence: Connecting Early Childhood Quality Rating, Professional Development, and Competency Systems in States (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2011).

Robert C. Pianta, Ph.D., is Dean of the Curry School of Education, Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Teaching and Learning and Novartis U.S. Foundation Professor of Education at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. A former special education teacher, Dr. Pianta is a developmental, school, and clinical child psychologist whose work focuses on assessment and improvement of teacher-student interactions and their role in fostering children's learning and development.

Dr. Pianta is a principal investigator on several major grants including the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education and the Virginia Education Sciences Training Program, and he has worked closely with the Gates Foundation-funded Measure of Effective Teaching project.

He is the author of more than 250 journal articles, chapters, and books in the areas of early childhood education, teacher performance assessment, professional development, and teacher–child relationships, and he consults regularly with federal agencies, foundations and universities.

Bridget K. Hamre, Ph.D., is Research Associate Professor in the Curry School of Education and Associate Director of University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Dr. Hamre’s areas of expertise include student–teacher relationships and classroom processes that promote positive academic and social development for young children, and she has authored numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts on these topics. This work documents the ways in which early teacher–child relationships are predictive of later academic and social development and the ways in which exposure to high-quality classroom social and instructional interactions may help close the achievement gap for students at risk of school failure.

Dr. Hamre leads efforts to use the CLASS™ tool as an assessment, accountability, and professional development tool in early childhood and other educational settings. Most recently, she was engaged in the development and testing of interventions designed to improve the quality of teachers’ interactions with students, including MyTeachingPartner and a 14-week course developed for early childhood teachers. Dr. Hamre received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and her master’s degree and doctorate in clinical and school psychology from the University of Virginia.

As Director of the Office for Policy and Communications of SRCD, Dr. Zaslow works to bring research on children’s development to policy makers and the broader public and to bring information about policy developments to the SRCD membership. She also oversees the SRCD Policy Fellowship program. As Senior Scholar at Child Trends, Dr. Zaslow’s research focuses on early childhood development and takes an ecological approach, considering the role of multiple contexts including the family, early care and education (ECE) settings, and programs and policies for families with young children.