Article Link: http://www.exchangepress.com/article/higher-education-a-closer-look--part-2/5019002/
In Part 1 of this article, I described how the development of the early childhood workforce is affected by institutions of higher education (IHEs). In this follow-up article, I describe some promising practices in early childhood workforce development that create pathways for ECE professionals and the challenges these present to IHEs. Here I present the idea that two bridges are being built:• A bridge that allows a participant to walk into a college course, carrying some of their past recorded coursework, training, and supervised experience
• A bridge between the two- and four-year degrees. Both of these bridges are important. Both are essential to the capacity of IHEs to produce ECE graduates.
The variety of ECE roles and IHEs
There are many roles in the ECE field, some of them demanding less knowledge and skill than the role of teacher; and some of them demanding still more academic preparation. The ECE career lattice does not begin nor does it end with the role of teacher. The beginning point in a workforce development system for ECE is identification and alignment in progressive order of all the roles that need ECE competencies. Some of these roles will require the bachelor’s or equivalent ...