Promising Approaches to Professional Development for Early Childhood Educators

Currently there is considerable interest in professional development (PD) for in-service teachers as a tool for strengthening the impact of early childhood classrooms on children’s learning and development. PD is a central feature of recent policy and programmatic initiatives aimed at improving the effects of programs for young children across a range of early childhood sectors, including child care, state-supported prekindergarten, and Head Start (MartinezBeck & Zaslow, 2006). The view of PD as the pathway to better student outcomes is not limited to the early childhood period. Increasingly, education reform is synonymous with teachers’ professional development (Sykes, 1996).