Here are the recommendations and resources I sent for consideration for NAEYC’s Power to the Profession initiative. I believe policy needs to say more about preparing monolingual and multilingual early childhood educators to teach children who are dual language learners.
Karen Nemeth
Here are a dozen reasons why:
Here is what I recommend:
Here are the resources on which these observations and recommendations are based:
Dual Language Learners: A National Demographic and Policy Profile from Migration Policy Institute (2017)
Immigrant and Refugee Workers in the Early Childhood Field: Taking a Closer Look from Migration Policy Institute (2015)
Preparing Early Childhood Teachers to Work with Young Dual Language Learners by Zepeda, Castro, and Cronin (2011)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4612351/
Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation from IOM (2015)
http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2015/Birth-To-Eight.aspx
On page 498, in the Blueprint for Action, this IOM report says that all teachers need:
Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English: Promising Futures from National Academies Press (2017) https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24677/promoting-the-educational-success-of-children-and-youth-learning-english
“Barely a third of principals think education schools are doing very or moderately well at preparing teachers overall. Only 16 percent believe they prepare teachers to address the needs of students with limited English proficiency.”(a report on Arthur Levine’s study in this Edweek post “Early-Education Teachers Need Better Training” (2015) http://bit.ly/1IKXpRm )
“NYSED believes that all teachers are teachers of ELLs.” From New York State Department of Education Blueprint for English Language Learner Success” http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/programs/bilingual-ed/nysblueprintforellsuccess.2016.pdf
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