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4.9: NAEYC Professional Standards and Competencies

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    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.

    Each of the standards has also been “leveled” to correspond with the three ECE designations described in the Unifying Frame (ECE I, II & III). The leveling documentation is presented as a first attempt to identify the differences in the breadth and depth of content in the programs that prepare professionals with differing scopes of practice. A sampling of the leveling descriptions for one of the key competencies (1a—Understand the developmental period of early childhood from birth through age eight across physical, cognitive, social/emotional, and linguistic domains including bilingual/multilingual development) is presented in Table 4.9.1.

    Table 4.9.1- Leveling of Key Concept 1a (Understand the developmental period of early childhood from birth through age eight across physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and linguistic domains including bilingual/multilingual development) by 3 levels of ECE Scope of Practice

    ECE I ECE II ECE III
    Identify critical aspects of brain development including executive function, learning motivation, and life skills Describe brain development in young children including executive function, learning motivation, and life skills Describe brain development in young children including executive function, learning motivation, and life skills
      Describe ways to learn about children (e.g. through observation, play, etc.) Evaluate, make decisions about, and communicate effective ways to learn about children (e.g. through observation, play, etc.)

    References

    National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2020). Professional standards and competencies for early childhood educators. https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/globally-shared/downloads/PDFs/resources/position-statements/professional_standards_and_competencies_for_early_childhood_educators.pdf

    This page titled 4.9: NAEYC Professional Standards and Competencies is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Brenda Boyd & Linda Felch.