Strengthening Preschool Dual Language Instruction Through Learning Stories and Long-Term Practitioner Inquiry

Three early childhood educators/teacher inquirers report on the value of adapting and integrating the approach of learning stories from New Zealand within several long-term inquiry groups (in-person and online) in and outside California. We pay particular attention to the benefits of learning stories for both teacher inquiry, curriculum planning, and family engagement. In doing so, we report on key elements and implications from our work over the last three years of inquiry work integrating learning stories.

Beating the Odds: Induction Designed to Keep New Professionals in the Field

How do we keep strong early career professionals IN early intervention/early childhood special education? Research indicates that fifty percent of educators leave the profession within the first five years. This session examines the evidence supporting an early career induction mentoring model and presents a project aimed to foster early career professionals’ growth in their practices and leadership as a retention strategy. This session will also offer lessons learned during its implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professional Development with PreK Teachers on Critical Literacy

In this study, researchers partnered up with seven 4-year-old classrooms to investigate critical literacy interactions during teacher read alouds. The researchers offered a series of virtual asynchronous professional development sessions where teachers learned how to embed critical literacy within their read alouds.

Supporting and Exploring Early Elementary Teachers’ Pandemic Pedagogies With Artwork

This session will focus on ways in which teacher educators can support early elementary prospective and practicing teachers to engage PreK-3 students in developmentally appropriate discussions of the pandemic using artwork. We will discuss a project designed to support early elementary school teachers and their students to discuss and process their feelings about the pandemic, both day to day struggles as well as looking to the future for our communities’ and society’s betterment.

Learning from Immigrant Parents with Young Children in an Urban City

This paper is a part of a larger study that focuses on the ecology of immigrant families and their integration in a urban Northeast city to understand the systems and supports surrounding young children of immigrants from birth to age five with the overall goal of improving developmental and educational outcomes of young children birth to age 5. The purpose of this particular paper is to investigate the research question: “What are the life satisfaction and the social, economic, and educational experiences of immigrant families with young children in a highly urban city?”

Pandemic Pivoting: Preparing Preservice Early Childhood Teachers via Methods & Placements

We advocate for focusing on opportunities presented by COVID-19 and using them to expand creative, engaging, and effective options for practicum and methods-based experiences for future teachers. Rather than asking, “what limitations are put upon us?”, we call the early childhood pre-service educator community to ask, “what can we do that we did not have an option to do before?”

This presentation will share a mixed methods study that examined how early childhood professionals provided educational experiences to young children during the Covid-19 crisis. The challenges and opportunities they encountered will be explored with a focus on how lessons learned can be applied to both emerging and long-standing early childhood care and education models.