Advancing the Profession

Foundation for Child Development Grants in Action The spring issue of the research journal, Future of Children, entitled “Research-Practice Partnerships to Strengthen Early Education,” details a promising approach to early care and education (ECE) research and practice and demonstrates its potential to improve educational outcomes of young children.

The early care and education (ECE) workforce plays a critical role in promoting children’s learning — especially through their interactions with children and through the enriching and nurturing learning environments they shape.

COVID-19, health disparities, and the ongoing killings of black people have highlighted decades of pain and injustice against people of color in general and African Americans in particular.

Unifying and strengthening the early childhood workforce may be the single most important step towards closing the opportunity/achievement gap.

The Early Childhood Leadership Development Consortium is a network of early childhood experts and advocates, committed to developing progressive and transformational leaders of early childhood center- and school-based programs, who will improve outcomes for all children birth through age eight.

In April 2015, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council released the report Transforming the Workforce for the Children Birth Through Age Eight: A Unifying Foundation (IOM/NRC Report). We view this report as the blueprint for the Foundation for Child Development’s work to support the preparation, competency, well-being, and on-going professional learning of the ECE workforce.

This full report discusses the implications of child developmental science for early care and education professionals in terms of necessary competencies and practices, as well as the systems change needed to better support the preparation, competency, professional development, and compensation for the early care and education workforce.

This report highlights problems nationwide with the licensing and preparation of teachers who work with young children in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade classrooms.