Page 47 - Gateways for Early Educators

Gateways for Early Educators
professionalsxlvi and this is evident in the new First 5 CA Impact funding where there is an intention to have quality improvement programs within the existing infrastructure align to provide coordinated support.
The number of training hours in which the core participants engaged related to changes in some areas of knowledge and practice outcomes. Training hours related to knowledge of how to help children and families, use of quality practices in the program, ability to impact children’s early language and literacy development, ability to impact children’s social and behavioral development, and the ability to impact children’s social and behavioral development. In the past, training hours had been an area of the participant experience not related to change in knowledge or practice. Systematically, the Gateways program did not have a way of connecting participants to trainings based on their goals or to develop trainings based specifically on participants’ goals. Most QI and QRIS programs across the nation develop training sessions based on the QIP areas of the participants. If this were the method for designing training, the relationship between QIP and training would likely be found in more areas. However, this program was not provided with the level of funding for training to be able to accomplish that. Nevertheless, participants have expressed that the coaches made the connection between training and coaching for them. For example, some focus group participants indicated that the coach would direct them to trainings related to goals the participant was working on. Other coaches would ask about trainings participants had attended and would connect information from the training to information in the participants’ program. While this was not a systematic strategy employed by all coaches, this may explain some of the relation between training and knowledge and practice outcomes. In future program planning for funding opportunities, a separate and significantly larger pool of funds should be considered to develop training sessions that have topics directly aligned with QIP areas. It would be expected that correlations between training and outcomes would be found at that point.
As seen in Table 18 above, number of coaching hours (program intensity) is related to all of the areas of knowledge and practice change queried. That is, the more hours of coaching participants received, the greater the change in each of the knowledge or practice area. Nevertheless, as indicated in earlier sections of this report, further analyses are needed to determine optimal coaching intensity.
Research Question 11: What was the reach of the Gateways for Early Educators Program for 2011-2016?
One of the most notable strengths of the Gateways Program has been the capacity to reach a diverse population of early childhood educators across Los Angeles County. As seen in this next section, the impact of the Gateways Program has been significant in terms of geographical and demographic reach since its launch. The program has demonstrated a capacity to serve a highly diverse population, inclusive of all segments of the ECE workforce through a successful county wide program.
2016
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