Professionalism in Early Childhood Education

Introduction

In recent years, many have questioned whether ECE meets the definition of a profession (e.g., Feeney, 2012; Goffin, 2013, 2015). There seems to be a consensus that it currently does not, and review of the list provides evidence that this conclusion is accurate. While ECE has developed some of the characteristics in the Criteria for Defining a Profession, not all are currently in place. For example, a Code of Ethical Conduct, put forth by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC, 2011), has been in existence for several years, though there is no universal requirement that ECE practitioners are aware of or abide by this code. Similarly, in terms of standards of practice, many states have adopted a set of guidelines defining the skills and knowledge necessary to provide quality childcare. However, each state can define these guidelines as they see fit, and a wide variety of licensing requirements can be found across the US. As guidelines, they carry no authority over the continued practice of a practitioner who chooses not to follow them.

Moreover, these competencies are often set by the state legislature and defined by the state agency responsible for childcare licensing, rather than being defined and agreed to by the profession. This fact points to the absence of autonomy. Having autonomy is another marker of a profession. Licensed childcare, a central mode of delivery in ECE, is heavily regulated by the state, rather than by the profession, providing notable evidence for the lack of autonomy in ECE, another critical feature in a profession.

Further, prolonged training with rigorous entry requirements is not required for entry into ECE with any consistency. Similarly, too many in the general public still view childcare as “glorified babysitting”, as opposed to all of us saying that ECE is recognized as being based on specialized knowledge, or that there exists a particular set of practitioners who alone can do the work of ECE.

This analysis should make it clear that ECE has work to do before it can claim the title of profession and before those engaged in this work can claim to be professionals. Identifying this reality has not, however, made it easy for ECE to move toward the status of profession. While numerous efforts have aimed to solve the problem, no large-scale success has been achieved. Early childhood educators remain unrecognized for the significance of their work, remain undercompensated. The field of early childhood education remains fragmented and siloed with no clear definition of its boundaries, and little specialized knowledge required for entry (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015).

NAEYC’s efforts: Power to the Profession and the Unifying Framework

A hopeful initiative has, however, recently emerged. Beginning in 2017, NAEYC (the National Association for the Education of Young Children), the leading professional association for those engaged in the work of ECE, made a significant investment in achieving this goal. This initiative, titled Power to the Profession and conducted by a task force representing 15 national ECE-related organizations, created a Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession. According to the Power to the Profession Task Force (n.d.), the framework is designed to “…set a vision for how to drive the significant and sustained public investment that will allow all children, birth through age 8, to benefit from high-quality early childhood education provided by well-prepared, diverse, supported and compensated professionals” (para. 3). The title of the framework, including the term profession, as well as the focus on preparation and support of the professionals illustrate the focus of moving ECE to this status, while also recognizing the need for public funding to achieve this long-standing goal.

Power to the Profession was a multi-year process that involved 8 “decision cycles” in which decisions on the defining issues of the field were presented to stakeholders for feedback. At each cycle, practitioners in the field responded in writing to the proposal, engaging in focus groups and other means of providing feedback. After this process, each proposal was revised and finalized. In March of 2020, the results of the 8 decision cycles were presented in the Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession. The recommendations in the framework are summarized in the table found in the appendix to this chapter. In addition to summarizing the recommendations, the table includes how they address the 8 criteria of a profession identified earlier in this chapter.

The recommendations that make up the Framework are notable in their effort to address at one time as many of the issues facing ECE as possible.

Naming and Defining the Profession

The first issue addressed by the Task Force was what to call the profession. This is a long existent problem with ECE, but many do not accept this and use other names such as early care and education or early learning, and so on. The difficulty was not just about agreeing to a single name but determining which practitioners working with young children were part of the profession. A long-held aversion to exclusion has made it difficult to draw a boundary around who is “in” and who is “out” of the profession. But this decision is necessary to define a field as a profession. After much deliberation, the Task Force chose to call the profession Early Childhood Education, and the professionals are called Early Childhood Educators. Further, a boundary between the profession and the larger field of early childhood was drawn, delineating the professionals from other allied practitioners who, while still engaged in work that support children and families, are not early childhood educators and not part of the profession.

The illustration from the Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) depicts the relationship between the field of ECE–everything outside of the profession–and the profession designated by the orange section at the top of the circle. The profession as proposed, includes three roles:

• Early Childhood Educators who provide direct service to children birth to age 8 and on whom the Unifying Framework is focused.
• Professional Preparation Faculty and Trainers who instruct, observe, and monitor the practice of aspiring ECEs.
• Pedagogical and Instructional Administrators who guide the practice of ECEs.

In addition to defining the profession and the professionals, the Framework identifies three designations of early childhood educators. Creating these designations addresses a confusing jumble of titles and roles in the current field, creating a uniform approach to defining responsibilities (scope of practice) and preparation. The Task Force also recognized the current reality that the scope of practice attached to a specific level of professional preparation differs by setting. For example, in Birth to age 5 settings, a practitioner with an associate degree may hold the position of lead teacher in a classroom. That same level of education would commonly be tied to an assistant teacher position in a K-Grade 3 setting.

Defining Professional Standards and Professional Preparation Delivery

The Unifying Framework (Power to the Profession Task Force, 2020) also addressed the need for a unified system of professional preparation for EC Educators. The Framework recognizes the role of higher education in professions, both in informing the content of professional preparation, and delivering high quality preparation that successfully graduates competent professionals. The Task Force selected the updated and revised NAEYC Professional Standards and Competencies as the standards for professional preparation. Given that a profession is defined partially by the existence of standards for practice set and defined by the profession, choosing standards developed by NAEYC rather than a state licensing entity is appropriate. These revised standards were released at the same time as the Unifying Framework and include a “leveling” of the standards, further illuminating the distinction between the 3 designations. This “leveling” guides professional preparation programs to pitch the content of coursework appropriately to the different designations and further underscores the differences in scope of practice. This approach was used to address the current reality that many practitioners have worked in the field for many years with no college coursework and are not willing to undertake a college education but wishing to remain employed in the newly named profession. These designations recognize the contribution of all professionals regardless of scope of practice. The Framework additionally recommends that all early childhood educators must first complete a general early childhood education program before specializing in, for example, a focus on an age group such as preschool or toddler aged children.

In addition to adopting professional preparation standards, the Framework calls on institutions of higher education to be accountable through accreditation by a governing body to ensure delivery of competently prepared early childhood educators. Moreover, the Framework calls on higher education to work to ensure seamless transition across educational systems, access to higher education by an ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse population and diversity in faculty that prepare early childhood educators.

Finally, the Framework recommends that once all the requirements just described are in place (i.e., higher education access to all who seek it, effective higher education that produces competent educators, and a uniform set of standards) then early childhood educators should be licensed upon completion of a program of professional preparation.

Professional Compensation

The Framework also addressed the requirement for increased compensation for the current and future ECE professionals. Using public school salary scales as a minimum benchmark for comparable compensation is recommended. That is, assuming comparable qualifications, experience and job responsibilities, the compensation for an Early Childhood Educator should be comparable regardless of setting (i.e., private childcare, state funded preschool, public school kindergarten). The Framework also calls out the importance of a benefits package for all EC educators regardless of setting. The Task Force was clear that without increased compensation as described above, the other requirements outlined for early childhood educators in the Framework could not be instituted. In other words, any increase in education or responsibility resulting from the Unifying Framework would necessitate a matched increase in salary. The Task Force also recognized that employers that hire Early Childhood Educators should be accountable for providing comparable compensation (salary and benefits). The Task Force indicates that such accountability would be impossible without a financial investment from the federal government, which requires a recognition of ECE as a public good that serves all society.

Purpose of the Unifying Framework

As described here, the point of developing the Unifying Framework was to address the issues that have kept Early Childhood Education from claiming its status as a true profession. By formalizing ECE as a profession, those who do this work will be well-prepared and well-compensated, finally receiving the status and recognition they have long deserved. While this is accurate, it does not explain why doing so is important.

Those who have argued for defining ECE as a profession have claimed effectively that the well-being of children is what is at stake. If ECE remains a fragmented, unrecognized, under-compensated occupation, many children will not have access to the early education that research has consistently shown improves each child’s developmental and learning outcomes. NAEYC, the association that originally called the 15 representative entities that made up the Task Force has a vision. This vision, sometimes called an audacious one, is to unify as a profession to argue for ECE as a public good which should be supported by our tax dollars. The goal of these efforts is to have ECE be recognized as a profession so that those that do that work are well-prepared, well-compensated and supported so that the children who receive their efforts will be set on a positive trajectory for their futures.

NAEYC Professional Standards and Competencies

As described in the previous section of this chapter on the Unifying Framework, a new set of professional standards (Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators; NAEYC, 2020) have been adopted by NAEYC and are proposed as the unifying standards of practice in the profession of childhood education. This newly adopted position statement represents the core body of knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values that early childhood educators must demonstrate to be effective teachers of young children. The previous professional standards set by NAEYC were written as expectations for higher education programs—what they must teach to successfully prepare early childhood educators. The revised Professional Standards and Competencies are written as expectations for the individual professional—what he/she/they must know and be able to do as an effective educator.

The standards are organized into 6 core standards:

1. Child Development and Learning in Context
2. Family-Teacher Partnerships and Community Connections
3. Child Observation, Documentation and Assessment
4. Developmentally, Culturally, and Linguistically Appropriate Teaching Practices
5. Knowledge, Application, and Integration of Academic Content in the Early Childhood Curriculum
6. Professionalism

Each standard contains 3 to 5 key competencies that clarify the core with a total of 22 key competencies.

NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct

A common characteristic of professions is that they have a document spelling out the moral responsibilities to society and guiding principles for professional behavior. Because a profession is viewed as the group that can uniquely perform an important social need, and because often the service is provided to a vulnerable population, it is critical that there is a clear statement about how ethical behavior is defined. Without that, the power that resides with the professional role has the potential for exploitation of the population being served.

Although the field of early childhood education is still striving to be viewed as a profession, it has had a code of ethics since 1989 and began the work to develop a code at least 10 years prior to that (Feeney & Freeman, 2018). Beginning in the mid-70’s, NAEYC leadership was advancing efforts to develop a code, with a code of ethical conduct adopted in 1989. The code was updated in 2005 and most recently reaffirmed and updated in 2011. The code exists as one of several position statements that NAEYC has adopted as guides to assist early childhood educators in making informed decisions on issues facing the field/profession and promoting dialogue on the issues using a common language provided by the statement. All NAEYC position statements, including the Code of Ethical Conduct in its entirety, are available on the association’s website, naeyc.org. The code is focused on early childhood educators—those working directly with children and families. Supplements have been written to apply the code to the work of Early Childhood Program Administrators and Early Childhood Adult Educators as well. Multiple articles in NAEYC’s publication Young Children have addressed the use of the code, providing professionals with numerous opportunities to practice applying the code to real situations faced in the work of early childhood education.

Structure of the Code of Ethical Conduct

The NAEYC Code is organized by several components:

• Core Values
  • Appreciate childhood as a unique and valuable state of the human life cycle
  • Base our work on knowledge of how children develop and learn
  • Appreciate and support the bond between the child and family
  • Recognize that children are best understood and supported in the context of family, culture, community, and society
  • Respect the dignity, worth and uniqueness of each individual (child, family member, and colleague)
  • Respect diversity in children, families, and colleagues
  • Recognize that children and adults achieve their full potential in the context of relationships that are based on trust and respect
• Conceptual Framework

The framework is an organizing structure for the code. It is divided into four sections that address an area of professional relationships: with children, with families, among colleagues, and with the community and society. Each section includes an introduction to the primary responsibilities of the professional in that setting. Each section also lists a set of ideals and principles.

Ideals are aspirational. They represent what we strive for as we do our work with children and families; they are our goals. Principles are more concrete—they could be considered the objectives that allow us to achieve our goals or aspirations (ideals). The principles guide conduct and help professionals resolve ethical dilemmas. Ethical dilemmas are “moral conflicts that involve determining how to act when an individual faces conflicting professional values and responsibilities” (Feeney & Freeman, 2018, p. 19).

• The four professional relationship areas
  • Ethical Responsibilities to Children

The first section focuses on the profession’s beliefs about the unique and valuable nature of childhood and the vulnerability of this stage of development. Consequently, early childhood educators have responsibility to ensure the safety, health, and emotional well-being of children. Moreover, this section of the code addresses the profession’s commitment to respecting individual differences, to helping children learn to cooperate with peers and to the promotion of children’s self-awareness, competence, self-worth resiliency and physical well-being.

The first section contains 12 ideals and 11 principles (note there is not a 1 to 1 correspondence of ideals to principles). The first principle is identified as taking precedence over all the others in the Code:

“We shall not harm children. We shall not participate in practices that are emotionally damaging, physically harmful, disrespectful, degrading, dangerous, exploitive, or intimidating to children” (NAEYC, 2011).

• • Ethical Responsibilities to Families

The second section addresses the responsibility to the families served by early childhood educators. Given the belief that the family is of primary importance, and that the family and the teacher have a common interest in the child’s well-being, educators have a responsibility to communicate, cooperate and collaborate with the child’s family. The second section contains 9 ideals and 15 principles.

• • Ethical Responsibilities to Colleagues

The third section of the code addresses responsibilities to colleagues. This section is divided into two subsections, one focused on responsibilities to co-workers and one related to responsibilities to employers. The responsibility to colleagues is to establish and maintain relationships that support productive work and professional needs. The focus here is on trust, confidentiality, collaboration, and respect for the dignity of each human. It also includes responsibility for holding co-workers and employers accountable for their own professional ethical conduct. The first subsection contains 3 ideas and 4 principles and the second contains 2 ideals and 5 principles.

• • Ethical responsibility to Community and Society

The final section of the code recognizes the responsibility of the educator to provide programs that meet the diverse needs of families, to assist families in getting access to needed services, to work together with other agencies and professionals and to help with developing programs needed, but not available. This section contains 7 ideals and 11 principles.

Using the Code of Ethical Conduct

The Code of Ethical Conduct provides a tool to use in a variety of ways to ensure ethical conduct and to resolve ethical dilemmas that arise as a part of the complexity of early childhood education. While the code of ethics is a guide, it is not a recipe for specific behaviors to be enacted in any particular situation. However, the Code does identify a number of specific responsibilities. These ethical responsibilities are either things we should not do, or things that we are required to do. Some of the responsibilities are presented as ideals, some as principles and include the following:

To be familiar with the knowledge base of early childhood care and education and to keep current through continuing education an in-service training.

[To]…maintain confidentiality and…[to] respect the family’s right to privacy.

To establish and maintain relationships of respect, trust, and cooperation with co-workers.

To provide the community with high-quality (age and individually appropriate, and culturally and socially sensitive) education/care programs.

[To]… be familiar with laws and regulations that serve to protect the children in our programs.

[To] not harm children.

[To]…not participate in practices that are disrespectful, degrading, dangerous, exploitative, intimidating, emotionally damaging, or physically harmful to children.

[To]…not deny family members access to their child’s classroom or program setting.

In hiring, promotion, and provision of training…[to] not participate in any form of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin, culture, disability, age, or sexual orientation.

These ethical responsibilities are clear cut. They communicate what must and must not be done. So, one way the code serves your work is to provide clear cut guidelines for how to behave. In addition, the code is meant to help in navigating ethical dilemmas. In this case, the professional is faced with two equally justifiable actions but often includes a conflict between the interests of two involved parties. For example, it may require placing the needs of the child above that of the parents or of a group over an individual. The code can help sort out the best course of action in a situation, but the process requires thoughtful consideration of the various interests, needs, and priorities of one person or group over the interests, needs and priorities of another.

Reflection Consider this ethical dilemma (from Feeney & Freeman, 2018, pg. 52). Think about how you might resolve this ethical dilemma, considering your professional obligations and conflicting needs. Kali, the mother of 4-year-old Chase, has asked his teacher, Sondra to keep him from napping in the afternoon. She tells Sondra, “Whenever Chase naps during the day, he stays up until past 10:00 at night. I have to get up at 5:00 in the morning to go to work, and I am not getting enough sleep.” Along with all the other children, Chase takes a one-hour nap every day. Sondra feels that he needs it to engage in activities and stay in good spirits through the afternoon.

The authors of the Code suggest a process for applying the code to ethical issues and dilemmas (Feeney & Freeman, 2018). As you consider the steps, think about the situation described in the reflection above. The steps they suggest are described here:

1. Determine if your issue/problem even involves ethics. Does it involve concerns about right and wrong, rights and responsibilities, human welfare, or an individual’s best interests? If so, it is an ethical issue.
2. Determine if your issue involves legal responsibility. If so, you must follow the law. Issues involving child abuse are examples involving legal responsibilities.
3. Next determine if the issue involves an ethical responsibility. Recall that ethical responsibilities are clear cut expectations about how a professional early childhood educator behaves. There is no question about what must be done (or not done).
4. Determine if your issue is a true ethical dilemma requiring hard choices between conflicting moral obligations. Consider the needs of all involved and your professional obligations to each. Are there conflicting obligations requiring you to prioritize one over another? Are core values in conflict? If so, you have an ethical dilemma to resolve. Here are some steps to decision making about an ethical dilemma:

a. Identify the conflicting responsibilities. Consider the people involved and determine their needs and your obligations to them. Then turn to the Code for guidance. Review the Core Values and Ideals in the related section of the Code. You may need to get more information if you decide you do not have the full picture. It may also be helpful to refer to program policies or community laws.

b. Brainstorm resolutions. Now that you fully understand the issue and the conflicting values, needs and obligations you can think about how to solve the problem. Do not yet reject any ideas but generate as many ideas as possible. Then go back and consider the equity and feasibility of your ideas.

c. Consider ethical finesse. In some situations, it may be possible to solve the problem without having to choose between two options. This approach is known as ethical finesse and is characterized by the ability to amicably resolve the situation, delicately maneuvering without anyone feeling like they did not have their needs addressed. For example, in the scenario in the reflection box above, is it possible to resolve the dilemma in a way that both the needs of the child and the parent could be addressed? Could the teacher work with the parent to develop more effective bedtime routines, or could they experiment with having the child go down for nap a little later, sleeping less time in the afternoon to see if this made a difference? Ethical finesse should be used sparingly (Kipnis, 1987). If we rely too often on ethical finesse, it is possible we are avoiding ethical responsibility and not meeting our obligations.

d. Look for guidance in the NAEYC Code. If ethical finesse does not result in a satisfactory resolution, utilize the Code to determine the action you can defend morally and prepare to act. Look to the Core values for guidance. Then review the Ideals and Principles to clarify your responsibilities. Make sure you feel you have all the necessary information. It may also be helpful to review your program’s policies or discuss the issue with a trusted colleague.

e. Decide on a justifiable course of action. The next step is to make the choice between the alternatives, basing your decision on the ethics presented in the Code. In the previous nap-time example, if the attempts to help the parent with bedtime routines and/or a shorter nap did not solve the problem (i.e., the child became sleepy at nap time and was grumpy in the afternoon without a full nap) then the decision to reinstitute the nap procedure for this child is necessary. The responsibility to meet the physical needs of the child outweighs the need of the parent to get more sleep. It can be difficult to take such a stand, but having the Code, and your knowledge of child development on your side of the decision can be reassuring and affirming.

f. Implement your resolution and reflect. After making the decision and putting it into play, it is important to reflect on the process to determine what you have learned. Did you learn something about how you communicate with families? Did you learn something about how program policies are set and shared with parents? Or did you mostly learn about your own comfort level with these kinds of decisions?

The process of applying the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct is not an easy one. Nonetheless, this important marker of a profession is critical in the work of early childhood education. Given the vulnerability of our “clients” and the inherent power we wield in that relationship, it is incumbent upon us to be aware of our ethical obligations and become proficient in the use of tools to assist with fulfilling our ethical responsibility. Numerous resources for practicing the use of the Code are available from NAEYC.

Professional Standards, Core Knowledge, and Competencies in Colorado

Professional Standards, Core Knowledge and Competencies are the foundation of a professional development system.  Professional Standards are widely accepted expectations for what professionals should know to be competent.  Core Knowledge identifies what individuals providing early care and education experiences need to know in order to facilitate child learning and development. Competencies identify the observable skills that individuals providing early care and education experience need to facilitate child learning and development.

Core Knowledge and Competencies can be used in a variety of ways, including:

• Early Childhood Professionals
  • Self-assessment to identify strengths and areas of growth
  • Create a professional development plan
  • Make informed decisions about a career in early childhood
• Program Administrators
  • Clarify and communicate knowledge required of staff
  • Identify training and staff development needs and formulate staff development plan
  • Assess current staff to identify knowledge gaps for the purpose of recruiting new staff with a higher level of competency
  • Link level of competency to compensation level
• Developers and Providers of Training
  • Organize, identify and advertise training using Core Knowledge areas and levels
  • Assess current offerings across all content areas and levels of competency
  • Use as framework for developing comprehensive systems of training
• Higher Education
  • To develop and facilitate articulation between institutions of higher learning
  • Evaluate course content and guide future course development
  • Use as a basis for mapping to state and national ECE content standards
• State and Local Agencies
  • Develop policy, initiatives and funding that will increase the level of competency of early childhood professionals
  • Identify common goals to improve inter-agency coordination
• Early Childhood Advocates
  • Educate parents, policymakers and general public about the areas of professional practice in early childhood and the need for competent professionals
  • Reinforce the concept of professionalism for the field of early childhood
• Parents
  • Assess content knowledge of potential or current caregivers and teachers of their children
• Others
  • Appreciate the degree of knowledge and skill required for professional competency in early childhood
  • Support public and private investments, incentives and initiatives that encourage and facilitate professional competency

Advocacy

The role of advocate, both for the clientele professionals serve, and for the profession itself, was not included in the list of commonly accepted criteria of a profession presented at the beginning of this chapter. Nonetheless, advocacy is identified as an important obligation for many professions, including early childhood education. Note that both the NAEYC Professional Standards and Competencies and the Washington State Core Competencies for Early Care and Education Professionals include professionalism as a core standard area, and both include advocacy as a competency area.

Advocacy is defined as any action that supports or defends a specific cause or issue. The goal of advocacy is to cause change and can be accomplished through a variety of activities. Often those of us in the early childhood education field feel uncomfortable with the idea of advocacy. It may feel too political, too aggressive, or require one to be able to speak eloquently about an issue. None of those characterizations need be true about advocacy. There are many ways for an early childhood educator to become engaged in advocacy without experiencing any of this discomfort.

Advocating for Children and Families

Part of the advocacy obligation for early childhood educators is standing up for the rights of those we serve—young children and their families. As members of a profession, we have access to evidence-based information and have acquired first-hand knowledge about what children and their families need to successfully grow and develop. It is our professional responsibility to speak out against initiatives that are counter to this knowledge and are not good for children or families.

Advocating for the Profession

Speaking out on behalf of the workforce that does the work of early childhood education is another form of advocacy that early childhood educators are called to. Advocating for recognition, for compensation that is comparable to similar professions, for regulation that is not in opposition to what we know to be good for children and families are all ways of advocating for the profession. When advocating for the profession, it is important to recognize the difference between one’s personal interest and the best interest of the entire profession. Sometimes what is important for the profession may result in imposition of requirements that may create a hardship for the individual professional. For example, advocating that inclusion in the early childhood education profession should require a certain level of educational preparation may mean that one will need to pursue additional education. As a part of the profession, one is called to advocate for what is best for the profession, rather than what one wants to do as an individual.

Methods of Advocacy

One way of organizing the myriad methods of advocating is to divide it into personal and public advocacy (Feeney, 2012).

Personal advocacy

Personal advocacy happens during your workday and includes speaking up about what you know to be best practice for young children. When you share information with parents, co-workers, or agencies you cooperate with, you are advocating for children’s rights. When you refer your families to reliable agencies within your community or provide them with written resources, you are advocating. Too often early childhood educators feel reluctant to respond to calls for advocacy. Advocacy does not have to involve a public event; it can occur through the relationships you have already built as an educator.

Public advocacy

Public advocacy takes place when you speak out to address issues of concern in the larger community. It might surprise you how compelling it can be to hear the story of those working directly in the field. Policy makers need data and statistics, but even more, they need to hear how real people are affected by the policies they set. They want to hear from the front-line workers about the reality of their days spent caring for and educating young children.

However, even public advocacy does not require a public display; it can include voting with early childhood education in mind or writing to your congressional representatives at the state or federal level. Public advocacy can, however, involve engagement that is more visible to others:

• Testifying at a legislative hearing
• Attending a public rally for an early childhood issue or during the state legislative session
• Participating in a community awareness event, such as Week of the Young Child
• Writing a letter to the editor of your local paper on some specific early childhood issue
• Visiting your state or federal representative or senator to share your perspective on the importance of early childhood education.

As early childhood practitioners, we can feel isolated and consequently limited in our ability to influence policy makers or the public at large. Luckily, at both the state and national level, advocacy groups exist to provide support individuals in their advocacy efforts.