Tonia Renee Durden

Race still matters: preparing culturally relevant teachers

This qualitative study explores racial identity development of teacher candidates during a teacher preparation program dedicated to preparing teachers for diverse classrooms. Two black teacher candidates in the US demonstrate their racial identity development through critical reflections offered throughout the program. Findings suggest that teachers’ racial identities shaped their constructions of culturally relevant (CR) pedagogy. Implications for teacher education programs include considering how the development of CR pedagogues is influenced by teacher candidates’ racial identities and experiences.

Gateway to Quality: Online Professional Development for Family Childcare Providers.

High-quality family childcare (FCC) can positively influence all areas of a childs growth and development. Thus, it is important to invest in efforts to increase quality, including providing professional development to enhance the skills of those caring for children in their homes. This study explores the characteristics of FCC providers who engage in an online professional development program. Findings show that a majority of these providers are female, had at least a high school diploma, and are licensed or registered. Content areas most frequently selected for professional development include ways to support childrens social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development. The frequency of access and range of coursework completed implies that online learning is accessible for the FCC workforce audience and has the capacity to meet state requirements for professional development. Future directions to extend this research are discussed.

Forming ethical identities in early childhood play

development. Therefore, in Video 2 there is a collection of relatively short videos – between 1.5 and 13 minutes approximately – of Orson interacting with significant others at different points in time, from as early as the day he was born. These sequences include main achievements and developments during the first year, such as early conversations, interest in objects, independent feeding, stranger anxiety, social referencing and joint attention. All these sequences are described in Manual 2, with accurate explanations of the developmental significance of the behaviours and interactions observed, together with useful suggestions for how to use these sequences to develop the ability to observe early interactions, and how to encourage these skills in professional training. There are also suggestions on how to foster parental skills at this stage. The videos and manuals are clear, easy to follow and well designed, in such a way that evidence, research and practice can be easily linked. There are also suggestions for further reading listed at the back of each manual. In sum, the manuals and the videos constitute an invaluable source for professionals in charge of training practitioners, trainees in early years, and even parents, to achieve improved understanding of children’s development and, also, improved practice. That all the evidence in the videos is collected through natural instances in everyday situations of interaction is a clear strength of this publication, as the evidence on early child development is often collected in the context of set-up laboratory situations. Nevertheless, probably the main contribution of the sequences is the longitudinal perspective. Even when real-life situations could be observed, it is not common to have the opportunity to follow up the same child through a longer period of time. In this sense the videos clearly reflect the astonishing advance in cognitive, emotional and social development achievable by most children. This amazement cannot be accomplished by isolated observations or simply reading books about development: only in the naturalistic observation of particular children can we grasp the magnitude of the qualitative and quantitative changes occurring during this wonder year.