How to Engage Early Childhood Students in Person or in the Virtual World

During the COVID-19 pandemic, early childhood teacher educators were required to adjust their instructional strategies, assignments and field experience requirements in light of changes in course delivery systems and school closures. The purpose of this Roundtable session will be to share evidence of how one instructor navigated these demands and designed innovative techniques for engaging students. The presenter will share assignment descriptions and students’ work products to provide evidence of the successes and challenges of teaching innovatively during this period of rapid change.

How Teachers of Young Children Can Foster Play through Virtual Teaching and What That Means for Teacher Educators

This research explored how play-based learning can be fostered through virtual teaching with young children. The findings include the challenges preservice and classroom teachers experienced when trying to foster elements of play through virtual formats. The findings also highlight ways preservice and classroom teachers were able to support and scaffold play-based learning experiences through synchronous and asynchronous teaching formats through inquiry-based lessons, open-ended activities, pretend and imaginative play, games, movement activities, and child-directed investigations.

Teacher and Child Effects of Mindfulness Based Intervention for Early Childhood Teachers

This round table will discuss the methods, findings, and implications of a mindfully-based intervention causal-comparative study focused on practicing Head Start teachers serving a primarily Hispanic population. The intervention group received 12 weeks of consultation through group sessions at school sites. We will provide a summary of findings and discussion of both quantitative and qualitative analyses of our data as well as copies of instruments and manuscripts published from this project.

Training in Conscious Discipline as a Predictor of Pre-K Teacher Stress

This study uses survey data from Pre-K teachers to examine patterns of stress among teachers prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We will share results related to teachers’ self-reported overall and domain-specific stress and consider whether training in Conscious Discipline predicts levels of teacher stress. We will discuss implications for reducing stress and supporting early childhood teachers.

Improving Teacher Candidates’ Competencies: Family/Community Partnerships

This paper session shares a case study that explored teacher candidates' demonstration of NAEYC competencies in remote read-alouds and podcasts. Based on these assignments, teacher candidates’ understanding of engaging families and communities were analyzed to inform future coursework and curriculum. Specific enhancements that focused on better supporting candidates’ use of Pyramid Model steps and strategies in practice will be presented.

Rethinking Home-School Partnerships: Lessons for Teacher Education from Latinx Parents During the COVID-19 Era

We will describe our study questions, method and results. Then we will invite participants to describe approaches they have used in their settings to promote knowledge, skills and dispositions to promote more meaningful home-school interactions with families. We will also discuss with attendees the importance of creating opportunities for aspiring and current teachers to explore families’ sociocultural practices so that teacher candidates can use them in their teaching and curriculum.

Teaching for Black Lives Matter in Early Childhood Teacher Education

In this session, ECE faculty will share their yearlong study group work to center Black lives within their ECTE program.

COVID changed education and interrupted students’ preferred learning modality. This incompatibility led students to feel anxious and hesitant, leading to a lack of confidence in their ability to succeed in the course. This research shares that students believed remote education would lack social presence and require a need for more self-regulation. Implications for practice will be discussed, including alternative practicum experiences and new best practice for educating pre-service teachers.

Practicum Experiences: Priorities for Support and Resources for Improvement

This session focuses on early childhood practicum experiences in 4-year institutions of higher education. Survey data were collected from 228 teacher preparation programs across the country. Questions focused on criteria for placements, support for cooperating teachers, learning experiences for students, and resources needed to improve practica. Findings will be discussed in terms of resources needed to support cooperating teachers and to provide high quality practicum experiences as well as next steps for research and practice.

Benefits and Challenges of Faculty Team Teaching; Student Perspectives

This session will focus on students’ perspectives of the faculty team taught courses in an interdisciplinary early childhood teacher education program from two different schools within a university. The results related to benefits and challenges of team teaching will be shared, and will be compared with the results from the past 22 years(Hestenes et al., 2009). Participants will be engaged in a discussion of strategies to address students’ concerns found in the study And next steps for practice and research.

The pandemic has brought virtual teaching and learning to the fore for teacher educators as well as teachers of young children, students, and their families. We have all been witnesses to both the advantages and challenges of virtual learning. This session will share the lessons learned from a College of Education providing a fully online early childhood educator preparation program and will discuss the challenges still ahead as we navigate the unexpected events of 2020.

Teacher Candidates’ Perceptions of Learning in Virtual Classes

This session familiarizes participants with how teacher education students view virtual learning; ways in which their learning was enhanced; and what challenges made learning difficult. Findings revealed that communication is the most important factor influencing how learning in a virtual environment is perceived and can be subdivided further by communication with faculty, communication with peers, and virtual communication. Specific findings and strategies related to each of these subareas will be shared in the presentation.

Design Experiments in EC Teacher Ed: Embracing Expansive Learning

Using Bateson’s concept double bind that suggests the power of cooperative actions to create new forms of agency, we have turned to Engestrom’s theory of expansive learning to offer a roadmap for change that imagines education actors who are capable of creating their own futures. The presentation is crafted to be an hour in which each half hour has two presentations of 10 mins each with 10 mins at the end of each for discussion.