Piloting a Hybrid Mentoring Program for Mexican Public Childcare Centers

• In Event: Meeting Early Childhood Educators Where They are: Professional Development Innovations to Enhance Quality Classroom Experiences

Abstract

Between 2018 and 2020, a nationwide study in Mexico assessed the quality of service delivery in public childcare centers for children under three, using the CLASS-Toddler (Class Assessment Scoring System). Results from this work, on a nationally representative sample of the main childcare providers in the country, showed high levels of structural quality (e.g., center’s physical condition, availability of toys), but low levels of process quality (i.e., quality of child-caregiver interactions). In response to these results, the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), one the main childcare providers in Mexico—with more than 1,300 centers—started working with the Inter-American Development Bank to design and implement a quality assurance system centered on promoting process quality. A desk review and consultations with leading experts on mentoring programs in Latin America and the United States (Advisory Committee) were carried out to identify lessons learned. The Practice Based Coaching Model (Snyder, Hemmeter, and Fox 2022) was chosen as the key reference model since it could be adapted to the IMSS context. An initial mentoring program was then designed and further refined through three iterative piloting-adjustment cycles in 16 IMSS centers across the country. For the pilot, one mentor-to-be was selected in each center and trained by experienced trainers. As part of the training process, the mentor-to-be had to put into practice the mentoring model she was learning with three caregivers who worked in her same center, under close supervision of the trainers. The evaluation relied on rapid (agile) assessment methods, which allowed to quickly assess the effectiveness of the coaching program components by testing different conditions and provide actionable results to integrate improvements into further testing in the next cycle. Two focus groups were carried out with mentors-to-be as well as mentees in each cycle. Qualitative interviews and qualitative surveys (on Google forms) were also collected to assess the mentors’ motivation, content assimilation and appropriation, as well as any enablers and bottle necks to the implementation of mentoring model in the childcare centers. In addition, the Advisory Committee provided recommendations at the end of each cycle which were incorporated before the next cycle. The final hybrid coaching program will focus on 12 essential practices to improve caregiver-child interactions and rely on a Toolbox for Mentors that will include: infographs on the 12 practices, videos showing effective interactions as well as coaching strategies, tools for planning, observing and providing feedback, and a checklist for the continuous monitoring and evaluation of process quality at the centers. We are currently working on developing the Toolbox and a scalable training strategy to train 129 mentors in 129 childcare centers over the second half of 2023.

Authors

• Erika Dunkelberg
  Presenting Author

• Vesta Richardson

• Aurora Bautista

• Marta Rubio-Codina, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

• Silvana Freire