Presents an inventive approach to professional development in early childhood education and care settings. Focuses on how early childhood programs shape the stories of individual children, the importance of planning physical environments to shape stories and remembering the power of the social-emotional environment, and the need to include…

Presents child-care directors' opinions regarding influences on their thinking about staff development. Suggests strategies for keeping professional-development efforts on track, such as using the questions emerging from working with children as a basis for learning, incorporating time and systems for thinking about learning, forming a book/study…

Details steps to make day care staff training well-targeted, creative, and useful. The steps are: identify training needs, select training topic and define the target audience, define training goals, select methods of presentation and activities, provide good training resources for future use, evaluate training, and infuse the training with…

Describes the change strategies involved in moving a mediocre child care program onto the road to excellence. Highlights strategies focusing on changing staff perceptions of themselves and their practices with families, obtaining honest observations of staff, visiting other programs for inservice training, examining educational practices in terms…

Describes infant-toddler training-of-trainers workshop in which trainers respond to trainee resistance through role-plays illustrating respectful and disrespectful ways of training and through discussions focusing on accepting and acknowledging the feelings of trainees and trainers. Asserts that forming diverse training teams, valuing opposing…

Examines ways to use effectively the technology involved in teaching and learning online as they pertain to training child caregivers. Provides guidelines for early childhood administrators to prepare themselves to teach an online or web-enhanced course or training program. Identifies challenges and barriers confronting online learners. Lists…

Suggests ways child care directors can support staff in their professional and personal development and still maintain a solvent operation. Suggestions include conducting an all-agency training audit, creating a training accountability chain within the agency, providing information about and expectations for training and its outcomes, and…

Describes recent state initiatives to improve child care for Mississippi children. Efforts include development of a child care director's credential, on-site training through staff at mobile training vans, initiatives to heighten consumer awareness and help parents make informed choices, voter education projects, and free yearly conferences for…

Describes efforts of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Center for Career Development in Early Care and Education, the Council for Early Childhood Professional Recognition, and the Child Care Employee Project to help make work in the early childhood field a feasible career. Provides addresses and phone numbers for…

The child care workforce is changing. More than ever before, directors must contend with faculty whose educational levels, job expectations, and career aspirations differ widely. Teachers vary in their experience, professional demeanor, stages in career development, and most recently, generational differences that impact the significance and…

Highlights some recent social developments which have hastened the increase in school-age child care and provides facts and figures on the nature of school-age care today. Areas covered include the beginning of the school-age care movement, the emergence of a professional newsletter, organization of the National School-Age Care Alliance, federal…

Summarizes national studies relating staff education/training to child care quality. Finds that more training/education yields higher quality, but no study identifies the most effective dimensions of training/education for improving teacher behavior or child outcomes. Suggests that a common nomenclature for education/training is needed for…

Argues for developing a storytelling culture in early childhood programs to encourage staff enthusiasm and engagement. Describes five development strategies: (1) descriptive observation; (2) using children's books in staff meetings; (3) creating persona doll stories; (4) using stories from professional literature; and (5) creating visual stories…