~Getting to Know Your International Contacts- Part 2~
CHILE:
Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), “A Good Start,” is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile, to improve early childhood education through teacher professional development. This project wants to improve the quality of education for four to six year olds in the area of language development. Parent engagement is also a part of this project.
Un Buen Comienzo began in 2007 with four demonstration sites, and has expanded to sixty schools. National and international actors from both the public and private sectors are participating in the effort to expand the project. The actor’s commitment is about two years.
A cluster-randomized experiment in all 60 schools will contain several comprehensive evaluations. This type of longitudinal evaluation in early education has not been carried out in any other country in Latin America and will place Chile at the forefront of demonstrating the impact of a high-quality early education.
BRAZIL:
This video is a collective project of the Global
Children’s Initiative. In collaboration with local experts, this project aims
to use the science of child health and development to enforce stronger policies
to benefit young children and families in Brazil.
Reinforcing the latest research in the biological,
behavioral, and social sciences as well as institutional and leadership development
strategies, the initiative provided attendees with the knowledge and tools to
design and implement public policies and
social programs for young children in Brazil. The program
ends with participants developing science-based action plans to strengthen
early childhood policies in Brazil and within their local areas.
Reference:
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.
(2010). Global Children’s Initiative. Retrieved
from: http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/
Nancy, I totally enjoyed your post, and I wanted to read more. Perhaps, the US can learn a bit from Chile’s dedication to professional development. The term “actors” in this situation challenged me a bit, although I guess you mean teachers; I haven’t heard them referred to as actors before. What a wonderful topic to share, language development… I would be interested in finding out the results. I wonder how the schools and/or teachers were chosen and specifically what the teachers were doing in their classrooms to encourage language development. This is definitely something I will continue to look into. Thanks for sharing; your posts are always informative and interesting!
ReplyDeleteNancy,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the actions that Chili is taking to improve the education system through teacher professional development. It begins with the educators and without qualified teaching staff, children are left struggling to meet expectations and may not be exposed to quality education. Hopefully over the course of the two years and through the use of the evaluations Chili learns crucial actions to keep in place and shares that with other international contacts such as the United States.
I was interested to read what you posted about Chili. I had read the same thing you did about Brazil's efforts to use the sciences and leadership development to boost early childhood efforts. Like Erika, I hope that countries with successful efforts share what they have done with others. Just like professionals network together in a community to help children and families, it is important for countries to share research and evidence-based practices, so all children can benefit!
ReplyDeleteNancy,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post this week! I think professional development is so crucial to education. It is refreshing to read about a country that is striving to improve their education system through teacher development. I was unsure what you meant about the term actors? Is this in reference to teachers or are actors committing to this organization?