Best Practices for Early Childhood Professional Preparation: Standards and Guidelines

Introduction

There is a strong body of arguments proving that experience before turning five years old shapes personality. Because childhood professionals help define and facilitate positive economic, social, and psychological trajectories in life (Leske, Sarmardin, Woods, & Thorpe, 2015), early childhood preparation has increased in significance. This paper aims at determining the primary requirements for becoming a top childhood professional and how they influence children’s lives.

Summary of Standard 2 – Building Family and Community Relationships

Professional childhood preparation is directed by numerous standards, e.g. NAEYC standards for early childhood professional preparation. The document is a set of 7 standards that distinguish the key functions of early childhood professionals. Standard 2, for example, defines that candidates should know how to build family and community relationships. It states that for achieving this goal, true professionals should be aware that success in early childhood education is impossible without the partnership with children’s communities and families.

For this reason, it is vital to know about the specificities of diverse families and communities and engage this knowledge in creating respective relationships to involve families and communities in children’s development (NAEYC, 2011). This standard is beneficial for becoming a better professional and advocate and advantages personal life as the whole by providing the necessary background on the functioning of society, especially diverse families within it.

Creating the Questions on the Standard

Early childhood professionals are required to be well-educated and competent within their field of work. They should be ready to answer any questions, for example:

1. How understanding diverse families help in advocating on behalf of children and their families?
2. Why do childhood professionals need to understand and apply knowledge in this area?
3. What characterizes well-prepared candidates?
4. How is cultural competence developed?
5. What are the specific skills possessed by well-prepared candidates?

Answering all of them proves that a person is a professional and can work with children. For example, the first question determines whether an individual realizes that diversity is the foundation of society and how understanding it can help become a children’s and/or families’ advocate. The other four questions are beneficial for checking whether a candidate knows the standards and how to utilize them in professional aspirations.

Getting to Know an Early Childhood Professional in a Community

To find out whether the manner of formulating the questions mentioned above is correct and provides the expected results, it is recommended to find an early childhood professional who would be willing to answer them. The area of interest is a local community. The format of the survey is email interrogation. The justification for conducting it is the fact that knowledge is a key contributor to becoming an effective childhood educator (Colker, 2008).

The purpose of communication with a chosen person is to find out how the standard was beneficial for becoming a better professional, if it was, and examine the professional’s theoretical background in the given area. Moreover, it aims at detecting whether there are some gaps in the educator’s knowledge, and, if any detected, motivate him or her to fill them. A childhood professional who is willing to participate in the survey is Katharine Snow. She has twelve years of experience working with young children and is interested in continuing this practice and becoming a better professional.

Conclusion and Further Steps in the Research

This paper provides the background for further research in the area of early childhood professional preparation. It presents the questions that can be used for determining the level of educators’ knowledge and proves that it can benefit professional and private life. Further steps include studying the rest of the NAEYC Standards and finding more people who would be willing to participate in an interrogation to determine the level of educators’ competence within a local community.

References

Colker, L.J. (2008). Twelve characteristics of early childhood teachers. Beyond the Journal. Young Children on the Web. Web.

Feeney, S., Galper, A., & Seefeldt, C. (2008). Continuing issues in early childhood education. Boston, MA: Pearson. Web.

Leske, R., Sarmardin, D., Woods, A., & Thorpe, K. (2015). What works and why? Early childhood professionals’ perspectives on effective early childhood education and care services for Indigenous families. Australasian Journal of Early Education, 40(1), 109-118. Web.

NAEYC. (2011). 2010 standards for initial early childhood professional preparation. Web.