In an effort to alleviate the existing teacher shortages in the field of early childhood education (ECE) across the United States, there is a necessity for teacher preparation programmes to accommodate ECE in-service teachers or graduate students (who do not have the chance to enroll in traditional graduate teacher preparation programmes due to…

In 2015, AMS Board members suggested that the board create a program that would meet the need for more AMS-credentialed leaders, to assist with succession planning for both AMS and Montessori schools. An advisory committee was created to oversee the program and ensure that its mission was upheld. What came out of this work was AMS's Emerging…

Overcoming challenges to quality early education in developing nations, TEACH Rwanda, one high-performing education system, offers a model of childhood learning through sensitive teacher dispositions, child-centred play, and culturally relevant materials. This manuscript provides a unique window into the practices of a quality early childhood…

Practitioner research is an approach increasingly used by and with teachers, including in early childhood (EC) education. Studies outlining the benefits of educator engagement in research show learning, empowerment and self-determination in professional direction. There is also a sense of achievement for university researchers when they research…

This article describes a statewide online alternative teacher preparation program in early childhood special education. The history and evolution of the program is explained along with the programmatic changes that resulted from working with noncertified teachers with a wide variety of backgrounds in both rural and urban districts. Challenges and…

As teacher shortages or teacher turnover rate continue to proliferate in the field of early childhood education (ECE) across the United States in the past few decades, there seem to be a pressing need for teacher preparation programmes to accommodate prospective ECE pre-service teachers (who do not have the chance to enroll in traditional teacher…

Child- and family-serving programs in community-based settings wield tremendous power for improving the lives of infants and toddlers. In this article, three authors, from Ohio, Montana, and Sierra Leone, describe the principles of adaptive leadership and will share their real-world applications. Their stories explore critical questions for…

The Investigating Quality (IQ) Project was conceptualized as a multiple systems approach to transforming early childhood education, care, and development (ECE/ECD) in British Columbia, Canada. Those systems extended from provincial government to local programs, from innovative policies to new approaches to practice. Fortunately, the tenure of the…

The introduction to this Special Topic Collection has two parts. To provide background and context for the articles in the collection, Part 1 tells the story of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study program at the National Center for Education Statistics. It offers an abridged history of this program and describes the designs of the two national…

Early childhood professionals do many things to support young families. This is true now more than ever, as researchers continue to discover the long-term benefits of early, healthy, nurturing relationships. This article provides an overview of the development of an advanced practice perinatal depression algorithm created as a step-by-step guide…

This article describes the process for alignment of the personnel preparation standards developed by the Council for Exceptional Children and Division for Early Childhood with the standards developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The results identify areas of convergence across the two sets of standards and areas…

Teacher shortages are a pervasive global issue that is expected to continue, especially in low-performing, high-needs schools [O'Connor, E. A., Malow, M. S., & Bisland, B. M. (2011). Mentorship and instruction received during training: Views of alternatively certified teachers. "Educational Review," 63(2), 219-232]. In an effort to…

Poverty-related factors place children at higher risk for disabilities and also serve as barriers to families accessing services for their children and themselves. Early childhood practitioners can play a critical role in supporting families by providing services to overcome these obstacles and by working in partnership with specialized early…

Vivian Gussin Paley, a MacArthur Award-winning author and former kindergarten teacher, has written 12 books that chronicle her work in promoting the fantasy play of young children. A major focus of her books is a process that she developed called "Doing Stories" or "Storytelling/Story Acting" (ST/SA). The ST/SA process requires only that teachers…

This issue of the Focus series published by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) provides an overview of how all state prekindergarten programs in the SREB region are performing on three measures of program quality: (1) class size; (2) ratio of students to instructional staff; and (3) instructional staff qualifications. Findings indicate…