Ongoing, Web-Mediated Professional Development Focused on Teacher–Child Interactions: Early Childhood Educators' Usage Rates and Self-Reported Satisfaction

Abstract

As the pre-kindergarten teacher workforce continues to grow in the United States, the promise of early childhood education depends in large part on in-service professional development. Given mounting evidence that the quality of teacher-child interactions is a fundamental ingredient for young children's learning in classrooms, the challenge becomes how to develop and test models of teacher education that facilitate teachers' development of these instructional interaction skills. In this paper, we describe how an innovative program, MyTeachingPartner (MTP), addresses the challenge of providing an enduring, classroom-focused, and scalable professional development experience that focuses on facilitating high quality teacher-child interactions. Feasibility and usability results from two years of MTP implementation suggest high levels of teacher engagement, buy-in and satisfaction, as well as some challenges related to sustaining these levels over time. Implications for scalable implementation of interaction-focused professional development in early childhood are discussed.

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