Training Programs

Quality preschool starts with supporting teachers


 

World Teachers’ Day poses the opportunity to celebrate teachers and their important role in the lives of young children. Early years educators are a part of children’s lives at a critical time in their development. These professionals — through their day-to-day interactions — have the opportunity to transform a child’s developmental trajectory. Today we revisit a blog post by Vidya Putcha of Results for Development, which shares key insights for decision makers to strengthen the roles of early years teachers.

Preschool — often the first time that children interact with the education system — can be a powerful opportunity to support children’s growth and development at a critical stage in life. In Ukraine, the government has acted on a strong commitment to preschool education by providing families with affordable opportunities through its public system of education. However, like many other countries, the system struggles to keep pace with demand. In 2014, for example, 90,000 children were waiting for places in public preschools, with 15,000 in Kyiv alone. Additionally, more attention is needed to improve the quality of preschool programs.

Finding ways to better position and support preschool teachers, who are at the core of the system, is crucial to addressing these challenges. In an effort to learn more about their role and provide recommendations for how to strengthen this workforce, Results for Development (R4D), the Ukrainian Step by Step Foundation and the Institute for Education Development recently carried out a study on preschool teachers in Ukraine. This research was published in a new report, Supporting the Early Childhood Workforce at Scale: Preschool Education in Ukraine, and surfaced critical insights which may be illuminating for policymakers in other countries looking to strengthen the roles of personnel working with young children and families:

1. Provide ample opportunities for hands-on learning early on in preschool teachers’ training.

While nearly all preschool teachers in Ukraine have completed some higher education in teaching, a number of preschool teachers we spoke with described having limited practical opportunities during their higher education. Higher education programs were described as being heavily lecture-based and focused on outdated approaches, with opportunities for student teaching often coming too late in the program and facilitated by teacher educators with very little teaching experience themselves. We also learned that it is difficult to sustain a healthy pipeline of preschool teacher candidates, as many graduates of teacher training colleges and universities do not go on to work in preschools. This may be a product of higher education institutions not effectively fostering a professional interest in preschool teaching among its students.

Hands-on learning can help prospective teachers understand how to apply new knowledge to their work in preschools. At the same time, these opportunities may allow teachers to reflect on their future careers and help to sustain their interest in the field.

2. Offer a range of in-service trainings and ensure that teachers have opportunities to connect and learn from one another.

Encouragingly, preschool teachers are able to receive in-service training every five years with funding from local budgets. We heard that teachers appreciate these opportunities and particularly enjoy being able to connect with and learn from peers. Teachers we spoke with advocated for more of these opportunities, which suggested to us that practical knowledge from peers may better address their professional needs than training courses. However, while these in-service training courses seem to be beneficial to teachers, there are concerns about the quality and variability of the trainings, in particular, that teachers have limited choice in offerings which often do not reflect varying needs and interests.

Many teachers are already poorly compensated so it is important that they have access to training and professional development opportunities that do not require their own personal financial investment. Since teachers may have varying experience and backgrounds, designing different types of training courses, giving teachers the freedom to choose those that best meet their needs, and facilitating peer learning opportunities, can help in ensuring the relevance of offerings.

3. Provide more targeted support on engaging with parents and identify ways in which feedback from parents can be incorporated in programs. 

Teachers and other school personnel frequently noted that communication with parents was their biggest challenge. Teachers felt that parents were not involved enough in their child’s development and ignored recommendations on how to support children at home through activities such as reading. At the same time, although many parents we spoke with lauded preschool teachers in public institutions for the work that they do despite low pay and heavy workloads, we learned that a growing number of families are enrolling their children in private preschools as they are drawn to the modern approaches that teachers in these school employ as well as the flexibility offered by these schools.

Efforts to better understand these dynamics could help in strengthening relationships and ensuring that families’ needs are being met in public institutions. Teachers also need support from senior teachers and leaders to help them better communicate with parents in order to ensure complementary home and school environments.

4. Hire and train auxiliary staff to offset challenging workloads and allow for more targeted support to children with special educational needs.

While teachers were strongly motivated by a desire to work with children, they described heavy workloads often resulting from large class sizes and paperwork. This was often further compounded by insufficient time and experience to provide individualized support to children, particularly those with special educational needs who were more frequently part of classrooms after the recent shift to inclusive education in the country. A new initiative to introduce the role of teacher assistants to support inclusive classrooms has been met with great enthusiasm and has potential to alleviate some of these challenges.

Efforts to deploy and mainstream auxiliary staff roles can help to unburden teachers and improve their ability to provide individualized support to children.

Empowering preschool teachers to thrive in their day-to-day interactions with young children can be challenging, given limited resources and the complexity of working with this population. While the insights above are only a small sample of how we can course correct, they offer ideas for how the early childhood workforce can be supported to make a lasting change in the lives of young children. The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative looks forward to supporting countries with knowledge and evidence as they embark on efforts to support these critical individuals. 

Did you find this interesting? Sign-up for our newsletter to receive updates about new resources and join the conversation about the early childhood workforce on Twitter.

 

Four challenges facing the early childhood workforce

Vidya Putcha and Maggie Gratz, Results for Development

We know that early childhood personnel – preschool teachers, home visitors, community health workers - are critical in the lives of young children, but who are these workers and how can they be best supported? The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), a global, multi-stakeholder effort, has been working to generate new knowledge and resources to help policymakers and program managers better address these very questions.

To understand country priorities and ongoing efforts around the early childhood workforce, a team from Results for Development and the International Step by Step Association conducted 43 key informant interviews across 15 countries — Bangladesh, Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Moldova, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zambia — earlier this year. We spoke with 28 country experts from implementing NGOs, multilaterals, and research institutions, and 15 policymakers, including program managers and government officials. This series of interviews helped us identify country priorities, learn about promising approaches, and gauge interest from policymakers and officials in piloting a needs assessment tool for diagnosing gaps and workforce needs.

Countries’ priorities surrounding the early childhood workforce, as well as their main challenges in offering workforce support were unique and context-driven. Nevertheless, we were able to deduce the following four, overarching takeaways from our interviews:


1. Training is a core challenge that programs are trying to tackle.

Experts, government officials, and program managers consistently noted the lack of training opportunities for members of the workforce, as a result of factors such as the high cost of scaling up training programs, as well as a scarcity of skilled trainers. Respondents also perceived training programs, where they existed, to be of variable quality given the absence of national standards and guidance, limited emphasis on experiential learning, and challenges experienced in supporting workers with low levels of formal education and familiarity with child development topics.

While there was acknowledgment that implementing widespread and effective training programs was a challenge, we heard from respondents about a number of efforts underway to address these training gaps for frontline workers in order to improve the quality of ECD services. Some examples that were given include: development of induction programs to onboard new personnel and partnerships with universities and civil society organizations to improve or design new training programs or diploma/degree programs for early childhood personnel. For example, in Ghana, Sabre Education has partnered with teacher training colleges and the Ghana Education Service to improve the experience of student teachers’ placements. Similarly, in Georgia, the Coalition of Early Childhood Intervention Organizations, have collaborated with government and universities to train early childhood intervention specialists.


2. Recruiting and retaining a strong workforce is a major challenge, and few countries are experimenting with efforts to address it. 

Policymakers and experts face challenges recruiting qualified early childhood workers who will remain in their roles over time. While programs find it difficult to attract qualified workers in general, the challenge is exacerbated in rural areas. Additionally, once workers receive training and better qualifications, they may be incentivized to leave the program for other jobs. This challenge is very much linked to the issues surrounding training discussed above as well as the poor working conditions and status of many workers. For example, we heard that many members of the early childhood workforce receive low pay and have insecure contracts, despite long hours, wide-ranging responsibilities and heavy workloads. 

Although these were raised as barriers, few respondents described efforts underway to address these challenges. This highlights an opportunity for countries — often facing persistent budgetary constraints — to exchange information around potential solutions. However, one country where we did learn of efforts to improve working conditions was Kenya, where Community Health Volunteers in Siaya County have begun to receive stipends and health insurance coverage as compensation for their work to support early childhood development and health service delivery more generally.


3. Generally, countries are not focused on implementing mentoring programs or establishing official pathways for career development.

Despite the potential for these efforts to augment and preserve training program outcomes, and motivate personnel in their day to day roles, very few respondents noted efforts underway to establish mentoring or other forms of ongoing support to early childhood workers. Respondents cited the limited supply of supervisors and their lack of technical expertise as a challenge. Additionally, without program or personnel standards, many countries struggle to create pathways for workers to develop professionally. However, we did learn of initiatives that would lay the groundwork for the creation of career pathways, such as developing worker competences and certification and licensing systems. For example, in Ecuador, child care and home visiting workers are now eligible to receive a certificate of work competences after completing a two-month theoretical and practical workshop which covers topics such as early childhood care, nutrition, health, early stimulation, and engagement with families.


4. Policymakers want more data to better understand the workforce and find ways to support them.

Policymakers want information about their country’s early childhood development workforce, but are hindered by data gaps in several areas. Understanding workforce training levels, demographics, working conditions, and other crucial factors — across sectors and at all levels of government — can guide future policy development and assist governments in identifying resource gaps. Building this foundation of comprehensive information on the early childhood workforce is therefore a clear priority in many countries. Compiling qualitative and quantitative data on key workforce roles is necessary, but it is equally important for countries to assemble a systems-level understanding of the early childhood workforce and its strengths and challenges, which can inform policy efforts to strengthen this workforce.

Over the next six months, the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative will continue to build on what we learned from those who are working every day to support young children and families. These conversations will guide and inform: (a) a compendium of country briefs, which will highlight promising workforce practices across geographies and services and (b) a needs assessment tool to support government officials and program managers. Stay tuned for more updates!

Did you find this interesting? Sign-up for our newsletter to receive updates about new resources and join the conversation about the early childhood workforce on Twitter.

 

Four ways policymakers can support the early childhood workforce

By: Vidya Putcha

By: Vidya Putcha

Child care workers, preschool teachers, teacher assistants, social workers, community health workers, nurses — these are just a sampling of the many women and men who work with our youngest children to ensure their healthy development. Through their day to day work and interactions, these individuals have the opportunity to transform a child’s developmental trajectory, but often do not receive adequate pay, training, support, or incentives in order to maximize impact.

We know that these individuals, collectively comprising the early childhood workforce, need to be better supported, but how?

As part of the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative, Results for Development and the International Step by Step Association helped to answer this question by carrying out landscape analyses on two critical themes relating to the workforce: competences and standards, and training and professional development. We studied these themes to not only understand the size and scope of relevant challenges but to surface promising approaches to addressing them.

Based on our research, we found that policymakers can undertake several actions to better support this workforce. Here are four such actions:


1. Develop job descriptions and competences for roles within the early childhood workforce.

Competences, which lay out what an individual should know and be able to do, can help guide training, recruitment and monitoring and mentoring. With more clearly defined competences, training curricula can be designed to help learners focus on specific areas based on their individual needs and the knowledge and skills important for their job performance. Competences can also guide recruitment processes and help staff and supervisors assess performance on a continuous basis. In particular, tools based on established competences can help supervisors assess performance, provide follow-up support and track progress over time

Policymakers looking to develop competences for a role for the first time should develop job descriptions which clarify the scope of a particular role if they do not already exist and also look to examples of competences from global or regional efforts to guide their process, such as the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance’s competences for para professional social service workers or ISSA’s Competent Educators of the 21st Century.


2. Ensure that all members of the workforce, regardless of their role, have opportunities to learn and grow — both prior to entry and while in their roles.

Although some countries are prioritizing training and professional development for members of the early childhood workforce, opportunities remain limited for people who work with the very youngest children, auxiliary staff such as teacher assistants, and remote populations. In order to be effective in their roles, these individuals, often volunteers or staff without formal education, need a core set of knowledge and skills.

To ensure opportunities are available more widely, policymakers may consider using distance learning to reach remote and underserved populations or offering subsidies for training courses. Under the ECD component of South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme, which aims to upgrade the quality of existing ECD services and also support the expansion of the sector overall, government funding is available to support training fees and stipends for prospective and current practitioners working with children ages 0 to 4 and in Grade R (pre-primary).


3. Offer sufficient opportunities for practical skill-building in initial preparation and in-service training programs.

Prior to entering into the workforce, professionals and paraprofessionals need a better understanding of what they will do on a day-to-day basis and how best to approach their work. During field education or internships, they may be able to observe professionals and paraprofessionals in their jobs, apply theories and principles learned in the classroom to real life situations, and experience the issues inherent in working with different communities. Once they enter into their roles, members of the workforce can benefit from opportunities to receive feedback and discuss challenges in their day-to-day work through coaching and peer learning.

For example, the Madrasa Resource Centers in East Africa offers weekly reflection groups led by mentors which provide the space for early childhood development teachers to reflect on day-to-day practice. Such peer learning initiatives can be more effective than training and professional development imparted through lectures or presentations.


4. Ensure that training curricula and materials are relevant to local contexts.

Training and professional development curricula are often not tailored to local contexts and as a result, may not prepare early childhood workforce members to address issues that are relevant to the communities and populations they serve. For example, research from the social and child protection sector in West and Central Africa indicates that training materials and curricula are often imported from other countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., and not adapted to the needs of specific countries. 

However, there are some promising approaches that have been utilized. In supporting community health workers to integrate early childhood screening and counseling in their work in Mozambique, PATH utilized resources from the Care for Child Development (CCD) package as a starting point for developing training materials, which were then adapted to the Mozambican context. Due to the linguistic diversity in Mozambique and low literacy levels, PATH made the decision to use pictures in the training and counseling materials as much as possible. These visual tools are used as a basis for generating discussion and facilitating interactive exercises, and have been well-received by health workers.

Developing the next generation of the early childhood workforce will require a number of actions, including policy reforms which address difficult topics such as remuneration and incentives. And while the recommendations above will not, on their own, address the entirety of challenges facing this workforce, they may offer examples for how policymakers can better support these individuals through the establishment of sound competences and standards and investment in effective training and professional development.

Our work supporting the early childhood workforce continues. To stay engaged with new evidence and resources from the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative, sign up for the ECWI Newsletter today!


Vidya Putcha is a Senior Program Officer on the Global Education team at Results for Development (R4D), where she focuses on early childhood development.
 

 

Strengthening & Supporting the Early Childhood Workforce: A Global Overview

By: Radhika Mitter, program associate at R4D

Evidence is growing that early childhood development (ECD) services have a strong, positive impact on children’s development. Research from diverse contexts shows that interventions which promote nurturing care in early environments significantly improve childhood development and later adult outcomes. For example, a study of the Hogares Comunitarios de Bienestar program in Colombia, which provides child care and nutrition services to children under age six, found that adolescents ages 13-17 who had participated in the program were almost 20 percent more likely to be in school than those who had not participated. 

Despite increasing knowledge on the benefits of ECD, however, we still don’t know as much about one of the most critical parts of ECD programs: the early childhood workforce. Research shows that the workforce is one of the most important factors influencing the quality of ECD services. For example, in the early childhood education and care sector, evidence indicates that caregivers’ level of education and participation in training is a better predictor of program quality than other factors such as child-staff ratios or group size.

While we know that the workforce is important, key questions remain unanswered. What do early childhood professionals and paraprofessionals need to know and be able to do in order to perform effectively and how does this vary across contexts? What types of training and support do staff receive? How is the early childhood workforce recruited, monitored, and evaluated?

Answering these questions requires evidence that is global in nature and deeply textured to reflect the diversity of the early childhood workforce. Assessing and learning from the full breadth of early childhood efforts is no easy task, but it is exactly what we seek to do as part of the multi-stakeholder, multi-country Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI). Through the ECWI, we are carrying out a series of global landscape analyses on four critical themes: competences and standards, training and professional development, monitoring and mentoring, and recognition of the profession.

These analyses aim to establish the size and scope of the challenges faced by the early childhood workforce, while also highlighting promising practices countries have adopted in response to these challenges. Spanning a range of roles including professionals and paraprofessionals, paid and unpaid workers, and frontline workers and managers, from the education and care, health and nutrition, social protection and child protection sectors, these analyses aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of the workforce worldwide. Such a vast review and synthesis of literature on the early childhood workforce has never been done before and is sure to generate some interesting findings.

 

What are the keys to the strengthening the workforce?

We are focusing on four themes which are essential to the strengthening and support of the early childhood workforce:

  • Competences and Standards – Competences and standards ensure that there are agreed requirements and expectations for what early childhood workers should know and be able to do. They also lay the groundwork for the core principles, regulations, guidelines and procedures guiding their work with young children and their families.
  • Training and Professional Development –Since the early childhood workforce is very diverse, including, for example, many volunteers or staff without formal education, training and professional development opportunities support the acquisition of necessary skills and competencies.  
  • Monitoring and Mentoring – Creating systems for monitoring, evaluation/assessment, and continuous feedback and coaching are important for ensuring that workers receive information that they can use to improve their practice on an ongoing basis and for linking members of the workforce to pathways for career advancement.
  • Recognition of the Profession – Currently, the level of remuneration, working conditions, and status of the early childhood workforce are poor, even relative to primary teachers, nurses, social workers, and other similar professions. Recruitment challenges, high turnover, and low morale compromise the quality of provision. There is a need to explore ways to improve the attractiveness and perception of the profession and promote ways to give voice to practitioners in their daily work and in policy discussions, including through collective action.

 

Where we are now and what’s to come

We are currently working on the first two of four landscape analyses covering competences and standards and training and professional development, two interrelated themes. Clearly articulated competences and standards ideally inform the way that training and professional development programs and curricula are designed. Simultaneously, effective training and professional development programs align with predefined competences and standards to ensure that early childhood professionals are equipped with the skills necessary to perform successfully.

The two landscape analyses will provide an overview of general early childhood workforce trends, explore key themes that emerge from the synthesis of literature, and provide in-depth country reviews to illustrate how systems are tackling key workforce challenges.

Initial findings from our research show that the number of university-level pre-service programs are increasing worldwide. In China, for example, more than 250 university-based programs, including 61 with master’s programs, have been established in the social and child protection field since the late 1980s, when social work was legally recognized as a profession. However, universally, challenges persist regarding quality of educational opportunities and in terms of who has access to them. Additionally, while countries have made efforts to align training and professional development opportunities with nationally and internationally recognized competences and standards, gaps persist between policy and practice.  Evidently, despite progress made in raising the status of the early childhood workforce, more work remains to be done. With that said, several countries have made significant efforts to address these gaps. For example, Indonesia has established a set of agreed upon core competences and core subject areas to be applied by all universities and schools of social work, allowing for consistency in the types of competences and skills emphasized in formal training programs for social service workers. Similarly, in the early childhood education and care sector, New Zealand has developed a robust teacher education and course accreditation process that ensures alignment between teacher training programs and predefined quality standards.

Through the ECWI landscape analyses, we plan to highlight promising approaches countries have adopted to address pressing workforce challenges, and also identify areas for further work.

We hope that a diverse group of stakeholders working in ECD can use the findings of these landscape analyses to:

  • Generate lessons for countries looking for ways to support and strengthen the early childhood workforce
  • Enhance existing programs, policies, research, and advocacy efforts concerning the early childhood workforce

Stay tuned for findings from these two studies, to be shared in the coming months. 

 

Subscribe to Training Programs