Advancing as a Profession Update: 2023-24 Work Plan

by Susan Titterton

The initiative Advancing Early Childhood Education as a Profession had a busy summer creating a work plan for 2023-24. We’re now headed for an active year of outreach and planning toward implementation. This work is so complex and so worthwhile! Here are a few highlights:

• The Task Force is now sixteen strong with the addition and new energy of five early childhood educators. The Ambassadors group is also growing and will reconvene soon.
• We are developing a Pilot 2.0 to establish equivalence. Building on last year’s Pilot 1.0, we are trying out a process for experienced educators to demonstrate their competence — without needing to obtain additional credentials. The focus is on a flexible pathway to ECE II licensure, as we are guessing that a large number of current educators may have an interest in that designation. This is groundbreaking work toward implementing the recommendations of the Unifying Framework, and NAEYC leadership is following our efforts to create a process.
• With the goal of guessing less and knowing more, a Data Team will begin to identify: 1. what workforce data currently exists, 2. who has it, and 3. what further data we need to in order do well-informed implementation planning that serves the current workforce.
• Outreach continues with two new professional development sessions kicking off at the VTAEYC Conference and continuing into 2024. “Who We Are and What We Do” highlights resources in our Professional Identity Implementation Toolkit. “The Bridge to the ECE Profession” describes ways for the current workforce to transition into professional licensure, and will include a survey about pathways and necessary supports.
• We’re studying model legislation from the Commission on Professional Excellence in ECE to understand how it might be used to establish our profession in Vermont – as part of a national, unified profession. To find out more, see a brief on this. And, we set up a small Policy Team to start working with Vermont’s Office of Professional Regulation on the process for recommending this newly-recognized profession.

That’s just a sampling of the work underway to establish early childhood education as the respected and recognized profession it deserves to be.

Stay tuned and stay involved! Register for our PD sessions at the conference (or after, during winter 2023-24), and make sure your enews preferences are updated to receive our new newsletter specifically for early childhood educators and supporters highly engaged in the work to advance ECE as a recognized profession.

To learn more about our work, visit vtaeyc.org/advancing-as-a-profession.

In partnership,
Susan Titterton
Project Coordinator, Advancing as a Profession