Professional Development In Head Start – Part 3: Overview of the PD pages

To highlight this priority the PD content is organized in three broad interrelated components: Professional Development Systems; Foundations for Staff Development; and Individual Career Development. These reflect our comprehensive approach to professional development across Head Start and early education programs serving infants, toddlers, young children and their families. So how can you get the most out of the ECLKS’s Professional Development pages?

Understanding that these three components flow from the broader early childhood systems level to program systems to the individual is useful as you explore the information, resources and materials available in the ECLKC Professional Development section. So, let’s take a closer look:

Professional Development Systems address national, state and local standards, registries, alliances, credentialing and licensing requirements that inform the nature and scope of professional development. Foundations for Staff Development incorporate a systems approach at the program level. Resources reflect program-level requirements for effective staff development. Individual Career Development reflects a focus on the individual employee and his or her vision, goals, motivation, and approaches to learning.

For the program facilitating individuals’ professional and personal goal attainment includes providing long-term options and training programs.

So, as you can see these three components are the framework used for organizing the PD resources on the ECLKC and this will help you target your searches for relevant information, materials and training tools. We have pulled them together in this way so that it is clear what will help you immediately if you are seeking professional development opportunities or planning on providing professional development for your staff.

Lastly, one section that I want to highlight is the PD-to-Go and E-Catalogue (tab)—it’s my favorite section. It includes content organized by topics and service areas. PD-to-Go offers ready to go, “off-the shelf” resources. This includes everything you need to conduct a session that addresses a specific workshop topic, for example, learning objectives, target audience, etc. ... So if you are a professional development coordinator, education manager, or consultant this section is for you.

So—enough of my talking—we want you to get started exploring ... We know that staff in our HS and other early childhood programs across the country do the most important work. We hope that some of these PD materials will help you and others meet our collective goal of preparing children and families for success in school and in life. Thanks for watching!