The National Association of Early Childhood
Teacher Educators (NAECTE) is found at www.naecte.org. This is my second week discussing this
organization and their website. Check
out the first week here.
I was a bit disappointed on my further inspection
of the organization because in order to get my hands on most things of
interest, I need to be a member. At this
point, I am not able to afford the membership, so I am left not being able to
see most of their resources for teacher educators.
The
organization does offer something called ResearchNets
to “facilitate scholarly pursuits on collaborative research projects.” This is a community network to allow access
to other’s research while you are working on your own, allowing for
collaboration and conversation on the topics.
The two active ResearchNets are “Teacher Research” and “Technology in Early
Childhood Education.”
Other
areas of the site that I can access are
- a listing of books published by NAECTE members,
- awards and grants presented by the NAECTE to its members,
- The NAECTE Foundation which raises funds to advocate, support research projects, and offer scholarships,
- Job Announcements (Which they currently have a great opportunity in Baltimore Maryland…), and
There
is a page containing five documents, which are their position
statements, by-laws, and policies. Happily,
the Position
Statement reiterates everything that I have learned about early childhood
appropriate practice and the importance of certification of our early childhood
teachers.
What
I found interesting was their second document: The
Early Childhood Teacher Certification Toolkit. This toolkit is put together to help
individuals or groups battle the powers that be in seeing appropriate laws and
requirements be put in place to support the position statement. While we all may not be fighting this
particular battle, it is a great resource to read through (or skim), because it
provides support and encouragement to persist and know that change happens,
even if it seems like a grueling long process…. Something that I need to
remember in my current state of unsurity of my future in early childhood. Now I am going to get back to re-reading that
first letter of the toolkit!
Hi Amy,
ReplyDeleteI also am not able to afford organization subscriptions and I have run into similar problems that information on sites can only accessible if you have a membership. I appreciate your thorough examination of this web site. I did scan through the certification tool kit and found it very interesting. My first thought was how great this document would be for school administrators to have. So often in duties at work and in my personal professional experience, I have observed that principals have very little knowledge of early childhood education or the benefits of a teacher having a specialized degree in early childhood. This document easily outlines information so that the admin can properly hire and maintain early childhood staff. Within the checklist a specific statement stood out, “Studies have found that even among non-degreed teachers, the number of hours spent in trainings and workshops in specialized early childhood education preparation is more predictive of success in positive student-teacher interactions than the number of years’ experience a teacher may have” (NAECTA, 2008, p. 17). This is so valuable as many organizations and school systems are cutting professional development due to funding. Teachers so often fight for PD because we know how valuable it is. Maybe if this information is shared, organizations would begin to understand its value and plan budgets appropriately.
National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Assocaition (NAECTA). 2008. Early Childhood Teacher Certification Toolkit. Retrieved from http://www.naecte.org/docs/Toolkit%20for%20use%20with%20NAECTE%20Position%20Statement%20on%20Teacher%20Certification..pdf