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In the most recent Bridging Research and Practice feature in Exchange magazine, Victoria Long-Coleman, Ph.D., a second-generation family child care provider and coach with Quality Care for Children shares how providers who received online credentials describe the professional insights they use to improve their skills:

• Observation Feedback from Others, including Quality Rating Improvement System technical assistants
• Observing Others, primarily informally, on the job.
• Explicit Training, typically without coaching or mentoring
• Conversations, with directors, supervisors, co-teachers and parents
• Self-Study and Reading, including parenting experiences and trial-and-error

However, “participants rarely described experiencing any sort of apprenticeship, in which they were guided in developing practical expertise by a master practitioner whose task was to nurture and develop their skills and ingrain in them the professional standards of the early childhood education field. Participants also did not describe their deliberate efforts to seek sources of insight regarding practical expertise.”

Among Long-Coleman’s suggestions:
“Center directors who capitalize on the expert-novice structure already existing in their classrooms can do much to support the apprenticeship of assistant teachers and create a professional cadre of teachers who possess practical expertise. State agencies could call on center administrators to change the job description of lead teachers, to include deliberate action to develop the practical expertise of assistant teachers.”

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