Who’s teaching the teachers? Teacher educators’ cultural competence, work burnout, and efficacy.

According to professional organizations in the early childhood education (ECE) field, teacher educators are responsible for preparing an effective, culturally competent ECE workforce. Research centered on the cultural competence of ECE teacher educators is virtually nonexistent and understanding how cultural competence is associated with work burnout and efficacy among teacher educators is underexplored. This session will review a study that helped fill these gaps and provide attendees opportunities for reflection on strengthening their cultural competence.

Empowering early childhood teacher candidates to exercise inclusive practice.

This session features a project that was implemented in a curriculum development class through a cultural competency grant. The presenter will discuss the learning opportunities that teacher candidates engaged in and the valuable insights gained from analyzing assessment information. The audience will brainstorm the different ways they could adapt the project in their respective institutions.

Persona dolls as mirrors and windows: Reflections on supporting teachers for anti-bias education.

This presentation is a reflection of my practice on the use of a persona doll project in a graduate level ECE course. It describes the project, and the resources and activities offered to support the project. Snippets of teachers’ persona dolls, and the story scenarios that they developed around the dolls are shared. Windows and Mirrors (Sims Bishop, 1990), an approach for supporting positive sense of identity, and respect and empathy for diversity in children, through representations of self, and of others, is used to framework to analyze patterns in teachers’ projects and reflections. Implications of supporting teachers’ learning to use persona dolls as anti-bias tools are discussed.

Using Black feminist photovoice to explore identity, power, land and family partner.

Strong teacher-family relationships are important but challenging and may risk perpetuating historic and systemic injustices. This study explores the efficacy of an assignment designed to help pre-service teachers understand power dynamics between teachers and families. Building on previous work, we use Black feminist theory and Indigenous perspectives on land education to explore how interacting with mundane experiences at home and on campus can help students to understand their identities in relationship to power and land.

The power of joyful reading.

Award winning authors Eric Litwin and Gina Pepin will share how to transform your classroom (and school) into a “reading playground” - a space in which children read along to, sing to, dance to, and celebrate words and texts. They will show that when young children are immersed in joyful and engaging shared reading experiences throughout the day, something wonderful happens. Students learn to love books, enjoy reading, and see themselves as readers. They also gain reading skills and knowledge, which prepares them for reading instruction.

Preservice teachers’ TPACK growth on technology in early childhood education.

The purpose of this research is to examine how technology integration in teacher preparation courses impacts the preservice teacher's (PSTs) beliefs on technology and technological, pedagogical, content knowledge (TPACK). And this session can benefit early childhood teacher educators gaining how to prepare early childhood candidates for integrating educational technology.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_13_0LqOGrAA1MZTKYJ2jg/

Early childhood credential completion cohort.

This presentation will highlight the ongoing results of multiple grant-funded cohorts of participants that are being prepared by specialized integrated programs ($1 million; US Department of HHS). We will also report preliminary results of our investigation of 4 research questions related to the project.

Self-care problem solving pathway: Addressing self-care in early childhood teacher preparation

The session begins with a brief review of the literature addressing early childhood teacher stress, burnout, and self-care. Using the Self-Care Problem-Solving Pathway, the presenters will share seven recommendations for teacher educators (TE) to address new Standard 6e: Develop and sustain the habit of reflective and intentional practice in their daily work with young children and as members of the early childhood profession. Additional discussion of TE’s approaches to addressing teacher well-being will be facilitated.

Our purpose is to identify the benefits and barriers of collaborative teaching between early childhood education and special education faculty at the preservice level in order to better prepare our preservice teachers to collaborate with other professionals for the benefit of the child. To reduce or remove the various challenges and barriers related to collaboration at the preservice level, adequate training in collaboration should be provided before preservice teachers are expected to collaborate with others.

Becoming play warriors: Advocating for the Oklahoma Play to Learn Act.

This session shares the advocacy journey from idea to law of the Oklahoma Play to Learn Act through the lived experiences of advocates, including a teacher educator, teacher, graduate student/parent, and state lawmaker. The panel will share their stories, highlighting successful advocacy strategies that can be integrated into early childhood teacher education programs. Common themes and implications will be discussed. An example of an advocacy assignment will also be shared.