Relationship-Based Early Childhood Professional Development

Leading and Learning for Equity

Marilyn Chu, Kimberly Sopher-Dunn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367473310
• eBook ISBN: 9781000429954
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Learn how to use Relationship-Based Professional Development (RBPD) strategies to foster equitable, inclusive and socially just communities of collaboration and learning in PreK to age 8 programs. Packed with illustrative vignettes, checklists, and reflection questions to guide understanding, this resource helps administrators and teacher-leaders establish a cycle of inquiry to better understand each other's common work and build more effective partnerships. Aligned with the NAEYC's Power to the Profession objectives, you'll find this book filled with invaluable tools to strengthen your professional community and better support your students.

1
Growing Our Own Early Childhood Education Teachers and Leaders

Marilyn Chu and Kimberly Sopher-Dunn

DOI: 10.4324/9781003034919-2

Chapter 1 will support you to reflect on yourself and others you mentor, coach or supervise as both a learner and a leader through relationship-based professional development (RBPD). Begin by considering the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s (NAEYC) statement that there is

a growing body of research and professional knowledge that underscores the complex and critical ways in which early childhood educators promote early learning through their relationships—with children, families, and colleagues—that are embedded in a broader societal context of inequities in which implicit and explicit bias are pervasive.

(2019, p. 3)

In the field of Early Childhood Education (ECE), awareness of our need to continuously grow professionally is essential, but it is not enough. The future of young children demands that we take action to build on the ECE core values of playful learning with high expectations for the development and the well-being of everyone in our program communities. This means we need to consider how to grow both our daily professional relationships as well as understand the complex structural influences that impact different teacher and child outcomes. Since child and teacher learning opportunities are impacted by who we are, where we live and what resources are available to us, the NAEYC affirms that “all early childhood professionals have a professional obligation to advance equity … and work to eliminate structural inequities that limit equitable learning opportunities” (NAEYC, 2019, p. 1).

This work requires our attention to eliminate obvious or explicit bias and “not participate in practices that discriminate against children by denying benefits, giving special advantages, or excluding them from programs or activities on the basis (of their social identities, immigration status, family structures, etc.)” (NAEYC, 2016). It also means doing the ongoing work of examining program outcomes to monitor for less obvious or implicit bias, such as Black boys being expelled at two to three times the rate of other children in many US preschools (Administration for Children and Families, 2016; Gilliam, Maupin, Reyes, Accavitti, & Shic, 2016). Examining “attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner” (Kirwan Institute, 2015) is the role of the PD professional to model and to promote the elimination of implicit bias.

REFLECT

• Consider at least one strength you have in promoting professional relationships and learning among young children, families and colleagues.
• Have you ever discovered patterns that needed changing in your teaching, program practices or an ECE system by looking at data or listening to families?
• What do you want to learn more about, after reviewing the chapter topics?

Begin with an overview of foundational RBPD knowledge, strategies, skills and associated research (Appendix A-1 and A-2) with a specific chapter focus for:

• considering where you are on an ECE professional journey of learning and leading in collaboration with the wisdom of local families and communities,
• understanding an RBPD framework for ECE practitioners with relationships, reflection, equity and inquiry at the center of teacher learning,
• noticing essential interactions, dispositions and qualities as the seeds to grow our own ECE teachers and leaders who represent the diversity of local communities, and
• developing the capacity to enact interprofessional competencies needed in the directors, principals, ECE teacher-leaders, adult educators, mentors and coaches who ultimately influence teachers to enhance children’s learning and positive development.

Relationships, Reflection, Inquiry and Equity at the Center of ECE Professional Learning and Leading

The potential of a relational, reflective, inquiry and equity focused early childhood professional development process is summarized in the State of Washington RBPD competencies. These competencies frame the learning process as a collaborative partnership:

Relationship-based learning is unique because it offers a collaborative partnership that is based on a foundation of mutual respect and understanding and an acknowledgment of the unique perspectives and approaches of individuals. This approach honors the identity, voice and experiences that adults bring to a learning interaction and strives to meet them where they are in their development.

(Abrams, Chu, & Mendybaeva, 2019, p. 2)

RBPD can be applied to contexts similar to this snapshot of early childhood professionals:

• ECE teachers are working with families and children from prenatal to age 8, guiding children in playful, but intentional, indoor and outdoor learning experiences. Thoughtful and culturally responsive planning with considerations for emergent curriculum are the focus of teacher weekly planning time.
• Home visitors, early interventionists, family home and center-based directors and teachers are making ongoing decisions with families. Dialogue in the home language of families happens in both virtual and face-to-face contexts to plan for children’s positive development and learning.
• Public and private primary school principals and teachers of children from ages 3–8 are reflecting together in grade-level teams to discuss core practices for meeting rigorous and equitable learning goals for children. Creative methods of connecting remotely with ‘learning pods’ of children in homes, child-care and after-school programs is a new layer of learning for these colleagues due to community health considerations.

Your Journey of Learning and Leading in ECE

What professional development characteristics are appreciated by such a responsive, creative and caring group of hard-working adults? Practice-focused and collaborative professional learning (McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013; Zeichner, 2012) is reported to have the greatest appreciation by ECE professionals. Teachers emphasize that they want learning in a community over time by sharing knowledge, goals and strategies best suited to their work (Domitrovich et al., 2009). A relational foundation for teacher learning is based in research that indicates teacher collaboration does more than simply make a positive program climate. Collaboration is associated with increases in teacher instructional effectiveness, which result in meaningful advances in children’s achievement (Rohacek, Adams, & Kisker, 2010). Head Start teachers who were coached in their classrooms by respected colleagues, resulted in children’s “greater emotional support, and teachers talked more frequently and in more cognitively complex ways with their young students than those teachers who participated only in workshops” (Domitrovich et al., 2009).

The relational PD focus is centered on learners who are operating in specific circumstances, yet who are influenced by common professional values, beliefs, standards and guiding principles. Teachers are invited, in this framework, to participate as whole people who are members of professional and local communities (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). An examination of the evidence base shows a community of professional practice approach is most impactful when it involves all of the following:

• active learning,
• sustained over time,
• connected to a collaborative, job-embedded learning community,
• focused on specific content, and
• facilitated by a person with expertise to support reflection who is able to model and give feedback about implementing new practices (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, Gardner, & Espinoza, 2017).

Collaborative professional relationships alone are not all that is needed to influence teacher learning to produce thriving children and schools. Collaborative relationships are often the motivation and the foundation for inviting and sustaining what Implementation Science calls the ‘competency drivers’ of professional development (Metz & Bartley, 2012). Effective professional relationships have the potential to facilitate the increasing abilities of everyone in an educational organization, in part because everyone in such a community is a valued part of an RBPD process.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Introduction: Why Do Early Childhood Education Professionals Need Relationship-Based Professional Development?
• 1 Growing Our Own Early Childhood Education Teachers and Leaders
• 2 Applying Interprofessional Competencies for Early Childhood Education Professionals
• 3 Facilitating Learning and Inquiry in Early Childhood Education Professional Communities
• 4 Navigating Systems for Equitable, Inclusive and Socially Just Early Childhood Education Programs
• 5 Sustaining Bi-Cultural Leadership in Early Childhood Education