| |
Recommendations for Key Stakeholders
|
The Purpose of the Leadership
Forum
The Leadership Forum is one important mechanism that the Child Care Bureau uses
to develop policy and research recommendations and provide technical assistance
to State, Territorial, and Tribal child care grantees and others on emerging
and pivotal issues. Since 1995, Leadership Forums have focused attention on
critical topic areas such as rural services, inclusion, mental health, infants
and toddlers, child care issues of the Hispanic community, and, most recently,
Literacy in Early Care and Education Settings.
Each Leadership Forum is a one-day meeting of leaders in the child care field
who share information, develop recommendations, and serve as catalysts for sustained
action toward identified goals. Publications and other products are developed
to capture information shared at the meeting. Past Forums have resulted in a
variety of Federal technical assistance activities, including the MAP to Inclusive
Child Care Project, the Child Care Research Collaboration and Archive, and a
focus on child care resource and referral services.
The 2002 Leadership Forum on
Literacy
An opening address on the importance of early literacy set the stage for the
keynote presentation by Dr. Susan Landry, who provided an overview of recent
research on early literacy and its links to practice. Next, a panel highlighted
State and community efforts to support early literacy development. In the afternoon,
facilitated workgroup sessions focused on specific areas related to literacy.
These topics included:
- child care delivery systems;
- professional development;
- family literacy;
- culture and language;
- infants and toddlers; and
- kith and kin.
The participants were charged with:
- identifying key issues and challenges
on the intersect between early literacy and the workgroup topic;
- developing specific recommendations
for practitioners, administrators, and policy-makers;
- increasing awareness of innovative
practices; and
- identifying available resources
to support Federal, State, and local action on the issues.
The Forum closed with a summation
of key issues raised during the day.
The recommendations listed below
are highlights of those offered by participants in the Child Care Bureau's National
Leadership Forum on Literacy in Early Care and Education Settings in February
2002.
Parents and Relatives
- Read with your child daily
- Surround your child with language
experiences (e.g., conversation, songs, storytelling, books, and magazines)
- Provide writing materials for
pre-writing practice
- Limit TV viewing
- Visit libraries and bookstores
- Choose a quality child care provider
who incorporates early literacy in daily routines
Child Care Providers
- Provide opportunities for rich
language experiences for children from birth on through play, exploration,
and routines that emphasize talking, speaking, using sounds and vocabulary,
singing, and other "fun" pre-literacy activities
- Link with local libraries to
expand access to books, audiotapes, and other materials and resources
- Incorporate "explicit teaching"
in language and pre-writing skills
- Provide books that children can
"read" with parents at home
- Provide books in children's home
language and set in culturally and linguistically appropriate settings
Early Childhood Teacher Educators
- Improve the translation of research
into practice, so that programs and teachers can make better use of existing
research
- Integrate social and emotional
development, early literacy, early numeracy, and school readiness in educational
discussions at every opportunity
- Identify effective models of
integrated curricula
- Create culturally and linguistically
relevant training
- Provide college-level classes
in participants' home languages
- Examine models for mentoring,
coaching, and apprenticeship
- Use distance-learning and other
technology to deliver training
- Align training with a defined
educational outcome (e.g., CEUs, CDA, BA, or MA)
Local Agencies and Community
Organizations
- Fund child care resource and
referral agencies to stimulate community partnerships and training on early
literacy
- Disseminate information on the
neurological benefits of bilingual or dual language immersion
- Provide "literacy kits"
in hospitals for the parents of newborns
- Build community partnerships,
especially with health agencies, employers, faith-based organizations, libraries,
youth mentors, and senior volunteers
- Involve minority communities
in identifying effective means of outreach
Researchers
- Create core areas of agreement
regarding research on literacy
- Clarify the definition of "evidence-based
practice" and the links between the research and the recommended practice
- Measure effectiveness of literacy
initiatives
- Create assessment tools that
are linguistically and culturally appropriate and standardized for children's
home languages
- Compare the effectiveness of
various professional development delivery methods
Policy-makers, Administrators,
and Funders
- Create public awareness campaigns
on the impact of quality child care on school readiness and early literacy
- Add to the CCDF core purposes
children's early development, including literacy
- Build literacy standards into
licensing standards and into tiered reimbursement
- Link compensation with teacher
training, thereby reducing the disruptiveness of provider turnover on literacy
efforts
- Define the skill sets and outcomes
for children related to literacy and school readiness
- Promote the benefits for children
of bilingual competence
- Create incentives for business
involvement in literacy initiatives
- Develop a financing framework
modeled after the higher education system
Child Care Bureau
- Showcase States progressing toward
funding a child care system that promotes quality
- Promote best State practices
for consistency and quality of care (e.g., reimbursement rates, family eligibility,
licensing, and resources)
- Incorporate incentives in CCDF
for State literacy standards
- Appoint representatives from
minority communities to advise the Bureau on priorities for cultural and linguistic
issues
- Establish a network or institute
to address professional development and licensing issues from minority perspectives
- Encourage Head Start to include
child care providers in training
- Publish blended funding guidelines
to promote acceptance of partnerships by program auditors
- Encourage the Child and Adult
Care Food Program (CACFP) to disseminate literacy information to providers
Continue
on to Good Start, Grow Smart: The Bush Administration's Early Childhood Initiative
Return
to the main page
of Literacy
in Early Care and Education Settings: National Leadership Forum Summary Materials
|
The document is for informational purposes only. No official endorsement of any practice, publication, program, or individual by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Administration for Children and Families, the Child Care Bureau, or the National Child Care Information Center is intended or is to be inferred. For additional information on this or related topics, please contact the National Child Care Information Center at (800) 616-2242 or info@nccic.org. |
