The Clayton Early Learning Institute is pleased to have received funding from the Rose Community Foundation to further the work of the Research and Evaluation Department. This generous grant allows us to leverage our current research and evaluation efforts to make a greater contribution to the field of early childhood education.

Since its inception, the Institute has been involved in a variety of research and evaluation studies that have gathered information about classroom and site quality, staff training and professional development, and child outcomes. Thanks to the Rose Community Foundation, we will be able to combine data across these studies to answer larger questions about early childhood education.

We will explore what types of activities best prepare teachers to be effective in the classroom, how teachers use data for instructional planning, the best ways to support children learning two languages, and what combination of services leads to the best outcomes for children.  We will disseminate the results of these efforts through a series of Research to Practice reports on our website.
 

We are pleased to announce our first Research to Practice report, entitled What Difference Does Teacher Education Make for ECE Classroom Quality Outcomes by Mary Maguire Klute and Karrie Godwin.  Research suggests that a high quality ECE experience can have a potent impact on later school success. Naturally, a variety of stakeholders are interested in identifying factors that contribute to high quality. Requiring ECE programs to meet standards for teacher education has been a popular strategy, largely because it is relatively easy to determine if programs have complied. However, much like in K-12 education, research suggests that simply requiring a teacher to obtain a degree does not ensure a high quality classroom environment. We contend that more attention needs to be paid to defining effective early childhood teacher practice and replicating components of teacher preparation programs that produce excellent teachers.  Read the full report here.