Promoting School Readiness in Child Care Centers

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究的中心目标是提高服务于社会经济弱势社区的托儿中心的能力，以实施以证据为基础的课程组成部分和教学实践，促进入学准备。一个相关的目标是测试一个可持续的、技术辅助的专业发展支持平台——更好的儿童保育（BKC）的有效性，该平台由合作推广公司管理，将从宾夕法尼亚州7个经济压力县的372个符合条件的中心中招募72个儿童保育中心，为低收入儿童提供服务。这些中心努力提供基于证据的教育项目，尽管有兴趣这样做，但由于教师教育水平低，员工流动率高，获得课程材料和专业发展支持的机会不足。参与者将包括72名幼儿中心主任，约200名课堂教师和约600名4岁的学龄前儿童。将使用REDI（基于研究，发展信息）计划的课程组成部分和教学策略，包括促进社会情感学习的学前PATHS课程，以及三个基于证据的组成部分（即对话阅读，语音意识训练和字母中心活动）来培养语言新兴识字技能。BKC的技术辅助远程学习平台将用于扩展专业发展支持。课堂教师将能够访问带有视频的简短教程，演示如何授课和说明高质量的教学实践。此外，中心主任将接受培训，担任当地教练，从而为面对高教师流动率的项目可持续性提供基础。BKC平台将用于支持儿童护理中心主任的虚拟学习社区，这些主任将接受培训，以监控项目实施的保真度，并在课程组成部分和教学策略的应用方面指导教师。评估将采用严格的随机对照设计，采用多种方法衡量儿童和教师的成绩；它将评估儿童保育中心的短期可持续性，并跟踪儿童

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The central goal of this study is to enhance the capacity of child-care centers serving socioeconomically disadvantaged communities to implement evidence-based curriculum components and teaching practices that promote school readiness. A related goal is to test the efficacy of a sustainable, technology-assisted platform fo professional development support, Better Kid Care (BKC), managed by Cooperative Extension. 72 child-care centers will be recruited from more than 372 eligible centers serving low income children in 7 economically stressed counties in Pennsylvania. These centers struggle to provide evidence-based educational programming, despite an interest in doing so, due to low levels of teacher education, high staff turnover, and inadequate access to curriculum materials and professional development support. Participants will include 72 child care center directors, approximately 200 classroom teachers, and approximately 600 4-year-old prekindergarten children. The curriculum components and teaching strategies of the REDI (Research-based, Developmentally Informed) program will be used, including the Preschool PATHS Curriculum to promote social-emotional learning, and three evidence-based components (i.e., dialogic reading, phonological awareness training, and alphabet center activities) to foster language-emergent literacy skills. The technology-assisted distance learning platform of BKC will be used to extend professional development support. Classroom teachers will be able to access brief tutorials with videos demonstrating how to deliver lessons and illustrating high-quality teaching practices. In addition, center directors will be trained to serve as local coaches, thereby providing a foundation for program sustainability in the face of high teacher turnover. The BKC platform will be used to support virtual learning communities of child-care center directors, who will be trained to monitor the fidelity of program implementation and coach teachers in the application of the curriculum components and teaching strategies. The evaluation will use a rigorous, randomized-controlled design, with multi- method measurement of child and teacher outcomes; it will assess short-term sustainability in the child care centers and follow children as they transition to kindergarten.