Projects

We Grow Together: The Professional Development Tools for Improving Quality for Infant and Toddler Care

2015–2023

Project Overview

Objective

To support Early Care and Education (ECE) programs and staff to deliver quality services that promote positive outcomes for infants and toddlers. 

Project Motivation

Building on the Quality of Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers (Q-CCIIT) project, this project aims to support infant-toddler caregivers by offering them professional development materials on a website in the context of supportive coaching.

Partners in Progress

  • The University of Oklahoma-Tulsa
  • ZERO TO THREE
  • Consultants: Margaret Burchinal, Martha Zaslow, and Jay Buzhardt.

Prepared For

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation

From fall 2018 to spring 2019, caregivers participating in the We Grow Together field test improved their observed practice in the Support for Social-Emotional Development domain of the Q-CCIIT.

In 2015, ACF funded Mathematica and our partners to conduct the Professional Development Tools to Improve the Quality of Infant and Toddler Care (Q-CCIIT PD Tools) project. This project seeks to build on the Q-CCIIT measure (Atkins Burnett et al. 2015) by developing professional development (PD) materials and resources to improve the quality of caregiving in early childhood settings serving infants and toddlers. We Grow Together: The Q-CCIIT Professional Development System aims to help infant-toddler caregivers understand how caregiver-child interaction supports development. We Grow Together provides training, strategies, and materials to help local PD providers scaffold the implementation of high quality practices by infant and toddler caregivers. The system is designed for use in center-based classrooms and family child care homes (FCCs), in both Early Head Start (EHS) and community-based settings.

Read More
Video

We Grow Together Professional Development System

We Grow Together includes materials designed to enable trained local PD providers to support caregivers in learning to implement responsive practices with the infants and toddlers in their care. The goal is for caregivers to adopt the practices as habits and make these practices a regular part of how they interact with the children.

To access a version of this video with audio descriptions, click here

Related Staff

Louisa Tarullo

Louisa Tarullo

Senior Fellow

View Bio Page
Shannon Monahan

Shannon Monahan

Principal Researcher

View Bio Page
Felicia Hurwitz

Felicia Hurwitz

Researcher

View Bio Page

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