Learning in Context: Urban Early Childhood Educators Earning a Bachelor’s Degree

• In Event: Early Childhood Teacher Preparation and Professional Development

Abstract

State and professional standards increasingly call for early care and education teachers to obtain a bachelor’s degree, yet little is known about these educators’ higher education experience and its impact on their professional practice. Through interviews with educators and their workplace supervisors, this study examined the higher education experiences of twenty five educators who were enrolled in a public urban university early childhood teacher education program. This study explored how relational and contextual factors influenced 1) progress toward degree completion and 2) the transfer of learning into practice. Understanding how higher education degree completion contributes to improvements in teaching practices is critical to efforts to strengthen higher education and early care and education program quality.

Author

• Anne Douglass, University of Massachusetts - Boston