Examining the influence of early childhood educators’ professional development on the quality and effectiveness of supporting young children with challenging behavior

Abstract

Social-emotional competence is crucial to young children’s quality of life. In children’s early learning years, educators play an important role in supporting the social-emotional development of young children and providing children with safe, warm and positive learning environments. Yet, due to children’s individual needs both academically and behaviorally, educators in early childhood settings may need different professional learning opportunities as supportive resources to meet the needs of an individual child. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between educators’ professional development (PD), educators’ characteristics (demographics and emotional regulation rating) and the use of evidence-based practices when supporting young children who exhibit challenging behavior. In this study, 48 early childhood educators were being observed using the Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT; Fox, Hemmeter, & Snyder, 2014) and measured by a Teacher Survey. Findings from the present correlational study offer promising associations between interesting variables. Though the results were restricted to small sample size, we have preliminary data to use in future studies to develop an effective professional development system as a strong support for future in-service educators.