Effective Early Childhood Professional Development

Margaret Burchinal, Ph.D., Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute, CB 8185, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599. Dr. Burchinal is a senior scientist at the FPG Child Development Institute. She has served as the primary statistician for many child care studies, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development study of early child care and youth development; the Abecedarian Project; the National Center for Early Development and Learning 11-state prekindergarten evaluation; and the Cost, Quality, & Outcomes Study. Jason T. Downer, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at the University of Virginia's Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning in Charlottesville. He is a clinical-community psychologist whose work focuses on the identification and understanding of contextual and relational contributors to young at-risk children's early achievement and social competence. Specifically, Dr. Downer is interested in the role of fathers in children's early learning, as well as the development of observational methods to capture valid, reliable estimates of teacher-child interactions in prekindergarten through elementary classrooms. Dr. Downer also has a keen interest in translating research-to-practice through school-based, classroom-focused interventions. Bridget K. Hamre, Ph.D., is Research Associate Professor in the Curry School of Education and Associate Director of University of Virginiaa s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Dr. Hamrea s areas of expertise include student-teacher relationships and classroom processes that promote positive academic and social development for young children, and she has authored numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts on these topics. This work documents the ways in which early teacher-child relationships are predictive of later academic and social development and the ways in which exposure to high-quality classroom social and instructional interactions may help close the achievement gap for students at risk of school failure. Dr. Hamre leads efforts to use the CLASS(TM) tool as an assessment, accountability, and professional development tool in early childhood and other educational settings. Most recently, she was engaged in the development and testing of interventions designed to improve the quality of teachersa interactions with students, including MyTeachingPartner and a 14-week course developed for early childhood teachers. Dr. Hamre received her bachelora s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and her mastera s degree and doctorate in clinical and school psychology from the University of Virginia. Carollee Howes, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Improving Child Care Quality, Department of Education, and a professor of the Applied Developmental Psychology doctorate program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Howes is an internationally recognized developmental psychologist focusing on children's social and emotional development. She has served as a principal investigator on a number of seminal studies in early child care and preschool education, including the National Child Care Staffing Study; the Family and Relative Care Study; the Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study; and the National Study of Child Care in Low Income Families.Dr. Howes has been active in public policy for children and families in California as well as across the United States. Her research focuses on children's experiences in child care, their concurrent and long-term outcomes from child care experiences, and child care quality and efforts to improve child care quality. Dr. Howes is the editor of Teaching 4- to 8-Year-Olds: Literacy, Math, Multiculturalism, and Classroom Community (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2003) and the coeditor of The Promise of Pre-K (Pau