This book is intended for early childhood education mentors, coaches and other professional development educators including higher education faculty, program administrators and teacher-leaders.
Teachers engaged in professional learning communities or peer coaches will also find the book supportive of their professional development goals.
Groups planning quality improvement efforts may use the book as a resource in leadership development and as a companion to other research based coaching protocols.
Effective ways to nurture teachers, guide them toward greater professional effectiveness, and bridge the gap between the vision for quality and actual practices.
Packed with helpful reflective questions, illustrative mentoring and coaching scenarios, and ready-to-implement planning tools, this book is the ideal resource for anyone responsible for guiding pre-service, emerging, or experienced teachers as they encounter real world challenges in today’s early childhood programs. Each chapter offers a variety of ways to put teachers on the path to achieving greater professional effectiveness using responsive, relationship-based approaches. The focus is on encouraging reflection on current practices in order to achieve quality programs, meet teaching standards, and promote positive outcomes for children in these times of rising standards and, in many cases, lower levels of support.
Here readers learn to facilitate professional development by focusing on observed strengths through mentoring and coaching relationships that allow for safe conversations about what is happening, how it is affecting children, and how to investigate and try out needed changes. Included are ideas for supporting playful, inquiry-based learning and fostering the ability to explain and document why it is effective, using a process of mentoring for inquiry, reflection, and leadership.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Section I: Relationship Based Professional Development
Chapter 1: Relationship Based Professional Learning
Chapter 2: Building Professional Development Relationships with Adults
Chapter 3: Communicating to Support Teacher Awareness
Chapter 4: Adult Learning and Planning for Teacher Development
Section II: Mentoring and Coaching for Inquiry, Reflection and Leadership
Chapter 5: Readiness for Change and Learning through Inquiry
Chapter 6: Coaching to Connect Curriculum, Assessment & Teaching
Chapter 7: Supervisors and Teacher-leaders as Mentors
Chapter 8: Mentoring and Leadership for Professional Development
About the Author :
Marilyn Chu is an associate professor of early childhood education at Woodring College of Education, Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. Her teaching, writing, and consultation work focuses on infant/toddler development, partnering with families, and mentoring, coaching and leadership development in early childhood education. Her previous work directing family literacy and campus childcare programs, professional development with bilingual Head Start teachers and early primary school paraeducators has emphasized partnerships to develop culturally and linguistically relevant education programs for adults and children.
