Early Childhood Professional Development: A Synthesis of Recent Research

The skills of early child care providers have been shown to influence how well child care experiences meet the needs of young children and the overall quality of this care. One influence on the skills of providers is their formal and informal training and education. The term professional development refers to all types of facilitated learning opportunities, both formal educational opportunities that result in awarding credit and informal training activities delivered to in-service early child care providers (NPDCI, 2008). Professional development can include a wide range of learning activities, including formal higher education, a variety of training workshops and activities, relationship-based training, and support through compensation, retention initiatives and other forms of financial support, such as scholarships (Weber and Trauten, 2008). This literature review explores the current status of research on the impacts of investments in different types of professional development in early child care settings.