Spotlight on High-Quality Early Care and Education for the Whole Child
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Together with dedicated early childhood educators and practitioners, WestEd strives to ensure that all young children have a safe, healthy, emotionally secure, and intellectually rich introduction to education.
These six resources are designed to help early childhood professionals promote healthy development and equitable learning for the whole child.
Early Childhood Online Conversations, Webinars, and Videos
Conversation Series: Providing Culturally Responsive and Individualized Care. WestEd’s Peter Mangione talks with leading scholars and educators in early care and education in this popular series. Representing a wide variety of interests in the field, guest speakers and PITC staff share their scholarly and practitioner perspectives. View the recorded conversations.
Joyful Reading and Writing with Young Children: Research to Practice Guidance. These resources share practical strategies for teachers to promote joyful reading experiences and support language and literacy development for multilingual learners ages 3–8. The resources are based on the What Works Clearinghouse practice guide, “Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade,” the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition teaching practice brief, “Integrating Language into Early Childhood Education,” and other research-based guidance. Learn more.
Early Childhood Curriculum and Training
New PITC Curriculum. Supporting Discovery, Amazement, and Marvel for Infants and Toddlers. The Program for Infant/Toddler Care (PITC) is one of the most widely used training systems for infant and toddler caregivers. Supporting the efforts of center- and home-based and family care teachers and providers, this new curriculum facilitates high-quality, individualized learning and healthy development for children from 0–3. Visit the PITC Curriculum page for details.
PITC Online Infant & Toddler Group Care Course: Now Enrolling for September 2021 and January 2022. This course focuses on the PITC approach to infant/toddler care and addresses how to support healthy social-emotional development and learning in group care settings. Course topics include an exploration of different temperament tendencies; stages of social-emotional development; development of self-esteem, security, and social competence; socialization and guidance, and program policies that best support the healthy social-emotional development; learning, culture, and families. Register today.
Early Childhood Development and Learning Research
Including Relationship-Based Care Practices in Infant-Toddler Care: Implications for Practice and Policy. Research suggests high-quality care and learning programs that begin early in life carry the potential to improve developmental outcomes and close gaps in academic achievement for young children. This fact is especially true when the care is relationship-based. This brief describes relationship-based care practices, shows the research supporting the need for quality relationships in infant and toddler care, and more. Read and download.
Supporting Family Engagement and Strength-Based Relationships
Quality Counts California Virtual Family Engagement Toolkit. The Quality Counts California (QCC) virtual family engagement toolkit for childcare providers is part of a statewide initiative to strengthen California’s early learning and care system. QCC collaborated with a variety of childcare providers, professionals, and experts to develop the toolkit with the goal of helping the early childhood workforce to build strengths-based relationships with the young children and families in their care through meaningful engagement. Learn more.
Watch this video about the toolkit.
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