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Preschool Teacher Education Alone Unlikely to Improve Classroom Quality or Learning |
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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Policymakers are increasingly requiring that public preschool teachers have at least a bachelor's degree, preferably in early childhood education. Rather than focusing solely on teachers' educational attainment, however, they should take a broad approach, supporting effective and comprehensive professional development activities. An analysis of seven major studies of early care and education suggests that policies focused solely on teacher education are not likely to increase classroom quality or boost children's academic gains. The analysis is published in the March/April 2007 issue of the journal Child Development. A group of researchers led by scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looked at seven major studies of preschool classrooms. Teacher education was considered over and above other potentially important factors, such as class size, length of school day, poverty, and children's skills when they started preschool. The researchers found that, for the most part, more teacher education was not linked to better classroom quality or greater learning. Neither teacher education nor teachers' degree---including whether or not the teacher had studied early childhood education--was related to classroom quality or children's learning.
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