1-160 - ECE Workforce Supports, Experiences, and Wellbeing: Determinants and Consequences for Classroom Processes and Child Outcomes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Early care and education (ECE) teachers play pivotal roles in ECE classrooms: they instruct children in academic content, support the development of underlying capacities that enable children to learn, and foster a classroom environment characterized by supportive adult-child and peer relationships (IOM & NRC, 2015). But for ECE teachers to fulfill these roles, it is important that they have the professional supports needed as well as supports to reduce teacher stress and promote overall wellbeing.

The proposed panel features 4 papers that will expand knowledge on the supports, experiences, and wellbeing of the ECE workforce, providing new information with implications for enhancing ECE teacher practice and health, ultimately improving classroom processes and children’s learning.

Paper 1 will document variation in ECE teacher supports and wellbeing across publicly funded center-based preschools serving low-income children, and will assess whether those characteristics are associated with observed classroom processes. Paper 2 will take a deeper dive into sources of ECE teacher stress that are particularly salient in today’s political climate, focusing on teachers’ exposure to anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigrant uncertainty. Papers 3 and 4 examine the role of ECE teacher professional development (PD); Paper 3 investigates whether PD supports often provided by ECE programs predict different aspects of observed teacher practice and preschoolers’ language, math, and executive function competencies. Paper 4 focuses on a specific dimension of PD, exploring how a coaching program aimed at improving the quality of teacher-child interactions affects trajectories of classroom quality and child learning over one school year.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Sara Vecchiotti, Foundation for Child Development

Individual Presentations

• To Whom Little Is Given, Much Is Expected: ECE Workforce Supports and Wellbeing and the Classroom Processes They Drive - Presenting Author: Anna Johnson, Georgetown University; Non-Presenting Author: Owen Schochet, Georgetown University; Non-Presenting Author: Annie Partika, Georgetown University; Non-Presenting Author: Sherri Castle, University of Oklahoma Tulsa; Non-Presenting Author: Diane Horm, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa; Non-Presenting Author: Deborah Phillips, Georgetown University

• Navigating Uncertainty And Threat: Sources Of Stress And Support Among The Prek-3rd Grade Workforce In New York City - Presenting Author: Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez, NYU School of Medicine

• Teacher Professional Development Supports, Classroom Practices, And Child Outcomes In Low-Income Preschool Programs - Presenting Author: Michelle Maier, MDRC; Non-Presenting Author: Anne Kou, MDRC

• The Impacts Of Professional Development For Early Childhood Educators On Trajectories Of Classroom Quality - Presenting Author: Kathryn Gonzalez, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Olivia Healy, Northwestern University; Non-Presenting Author: Luke Miratrix, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Terri Sabol, Northwestern University