Children, Families, Communities, and Professionals: Preparation for Competence and Collaboration in ECD Programs

Under the broad banner of education, training, and collaboration across systems, this paper examines, through analysis of seven individual projects, issues and insights associated with three central themes: (1) the link between ECD programs and children\u27s school readiness; (2) the promotion of parenting enrichment programs as a childcare quality enhancement strategy and the fostering of parent-school collaborations; and (3) curricular design for personnel training and strategies for (a) increasing societal awareness of ECD issues and (b) nurturing professional networking and partnership building across key stakeholder groups. The primary works discussed in the paper include one empirical study testing specific hypotheses with a large data set, one international comparative case study of school-community collaboration, and several program development projects employing multiple methodologies to gather various forms of data as input into the program development process. The paper emphasizes the discussion of intriguing and critical issues connected to the main thematic sections, in the hope that the issues raised would inform future research, policy formulation, program development, and program-level practice