Abstract
Current US policies call for a child care teacher workforce that can support program quality and enhance infants’, toddlers’, and preschoolers’ learning and development. Given minimal state pre-hire requirements, this context has implications for the workforce’s in-service training. Yet, there is limited research on who participates in training, the focus of what is offered, and variations in participation rates across topics. Also needed is a better understanding of the role online training might play in meeting the workforce’s in-service needs. To address these interrelated issues, I present descriptive analyses of a convenience sample of aggregate data from a US-wide online child care training provider. Enrollees’ ages and education levels reflect the larger child care workforce. The majority of the offered training is at the beginner level and 1 h in duration. Since 2010, enrollees completed an average of 10–12 online training hours annually. Roughly one-third of the completed training was related to planning a safe, healthy learning environment. These findings suggest the need for more rigorous research on child care workforce participation in training, particularly related to the extent to which online training can respond to policies aimed at enhancing workforce capacity to support program quality and young children’s learning and development.
Highlights
The current US policy context is increasingly focused on enhancing the child care workforce’s knowledge and skills as a means for improving program quality, implementing early learning guidelines, and supporting the cognitive and developmental outcomes of children age birth to 5 years (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council 2012)
The study’s results expand the field’s understanding of workforce participation in online training, and have implications for the extent to which such training is likely to support policies aimed at improving child care quality and promoting young children’s learning, as well as the topics to be addressed through future research
This study provides a preliminary glimpse of the online training aimed at, and completed by the US child care workforce
Summary
The current US policy context is increasingly focused on enhancing the child care workforce’s knowledge and skills as a means for improving program quality, implementing early learning guidelines, and supporting the cognitive and developmental outcomes of children age birth to 5 years (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council 2012). Ackerman ICEP (2017)11:12 and of Pediatrics Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care 2005; Peisner-Feinberg et al 2001) This focus on enhancing the workforce’s knowledge and skills is warranted, as 40 US states require newly hired, child care teachers for children age birth to 5 years (and defined here as the adult who works directly with children in a specific classroom and is counted in the classroom’s staff–child ratio) to attain only a high school diploma or less. Data on paid family child care providers suggest that just 15% have attained a Bachelor’s degree (National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team 2016)
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