Quality of Professional Practice

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.

Foundation for Child Development Grants in Action The early care and education (ECE) field is paying special attention to elevating the educational requirements of early educators and simultaneously increasing compensation.

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

We can close the gap between research, policy, and practice.

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 two-page brief explains the formation of the New York City Early Childhood Research Network Summary and current studies examining the early care and education workforce within New York City’s Universal Prekindergarten Program.

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.