Professional Development Efforts

Florida's Agency for Workforce Innovation recently announced a partnership with Palm Beach State College's Institute of Excellence in Early Care and Education to lead in the creation of a statewide career advancement system for child care professionals that will be known as Florida's Early Care and Education Professional Development System. Funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, this $3 million project will support career advancement of early learning professionals statewide. The Institute will lead the work in collaboration with the state agency, Florida's 31 early learning coalitions, child care providers, the Children's Forum, and other stakeholders.

The goal of the project is to create a unified, seamless and integrated system that increases the competencies of the workforce, intentionally feeds into the primary grades, and links to the higher education system, in order to support the education and training that will encourage child development and lead to school success.

Resources and tools will be developed and made available to the state's early learning coalitions so that they can plan and implement professional development systems that are tailored to the individual needs of their communities.

Florida's Early Care and Education Professional Development System will include numerous components including:

The core competencies, which were developed by the state in 2009. The competencies will be embedded into the professional development of the workforce, across the state, in order to provide a consistent system that is based on best practices and that intentionally links non-credit training to college coursework. In order to do this, the Core Competencies will be used as the basis for development of informal and formal coursework for early care and education professionals. Additionally, the system will provide: access to a designed set of competencies that will be available online; an outcomes driven training design that is driven by the competencies; online presentations in the use of competencies for practitioners, directors, trainers, and advisors; and training manuals that support the seven core knowledge areas.
A cadre of master trainers who will receive instruction in outcomes driven training. These master trainers will be able to bring the design back to their coalition area trainers as a means of designing training that is supported by core competencies, focuses on child standards, and requires demonstration of transfer of learning.
A professional registry that will be designed in order to collect relevant information that can be used to make informed decisions about the needs of the workforce. The registry will provide data needed to follow the professional development achievements of practitioners, provide quality assurance for trainers and trainings, evaluate the availability of training based on core competencies, and provide critical workforce data.
The career pathway which will indicate which trainings and college credit courses will move professionals along a coordinated and sequential pathway that leads to qualifications, credentials, and degrees. The ladder will clearly identify achievement points and guide the design of a plan that will move practitioners toward goals based on the levels identified in the core competencies.
Tools and training that will be made available to early learning coalitions in the use of a career advising model. Career advising assists professionals to identify goals, develop short and long term training plans, and assess financial resources to help them gain the education and training needed to prepare children for success.
Guidance to assist early learning coalitions to build on and increase their current community collaboration. Through relationship building and joint decisions, local professional development systems will be integrated into the state's system. This process will embed passion, energy, and commitment to improve quality and success of the professional development delivery system.

Over the next 15 months, Palm Beach State College and their partners will be crisscrossing the state providing training and technical assistance that will support the professional development system's goals, and developing the tools that will be made available to all coalitions to help meet their training and collaborative needs. If you are interested in being part of this process, please contact Grace Kolbe at kolbeg@palmbeachstate.edu.

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Professional Development Efforts