Moving Forward Together: The Supportive Environment of the Focused Child Care Network
Abstract
Home-based providers value relationship-based, individualized professional development, and focused child care networks (FCCN) are an effective professional development program that encompasses those values and influences provider’s practices and beliefs. Briefly, the aim of this study was to understand how participation in a focused child care network influenced early educators' attitudes, practices, and beliefs. Specifically, we examined influences on interactions with children and their families, engagement in Oregon early care and education systems (e.g., the quality rating and improvement system [SPARK]), and overall knowledge about child development. This report first provides an overview of the method and analytical approach, then results from the FCCN study are presented and considerations for future work and policies are shared.