Sharon Lynn Kagan’s scientific contributions

In this important new book, Sharon Lynn Kagan and her colleagues focus on the nearly 5 million individuals who have the responsibility of caring for and educating nearly two thirds of the American children under age 5 who spend time in nonparental care. Providing the most thorough synthesis of current research on the early care and education teaching workforce to date, the authors address frequently asked questions about teacher quality, teacher effectiveness, and the professional development necessary to achieve both and call for a series of bold changes that would transform the early care and education workforce. Featuring the voices of teachers, parents, and policymakers, vignettes help the reader understand the various layers involved in early care and education.

Throughout the history of early childhood education in the US, child care and early education programs have been clearly divided. The term child care has been applied to programs that are intended primarily to protect the health and safety of children. In contrast, early education has been used to describe programs that are focused on academic skills, often provided by schools, and offered to children who are 3, 4, and 5 years old. Over the past decade, Head Start-State Collaboration grants, the creation of collaborative councils and administrative structures, and state efforts to promote unified professional development and quality-rating plans have proliferated, exemplifying the movement toward more coordination and integration in early care and education. During the last 5 years, significant policy developments aimed at educationalizing and systematizing early childhood education have been increasing in prevalence. These changes are permeating and changing the nature of the field. This chapter discusses these trends, providing insight into and evidence of the increasingly educationalized and systematized nature of early care and education. More specifically, this chapter addresses the factors that are accelerating these trends and provides key indicators of these phenomena, using concrete examples from recent policies and practices. The chapter examines what is simultaneously the driving force of contemporary educational policy and the source of these trends--the accountability movement. This chapter reviews shifts in how accountability is understood in early care and education and proffers that accountability efforts are necessary but insufficient if not done in a systematic and appropriate manner. The chapter closes with a discussion of one critical and often underaddressed aspect of accountability: the alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Testifying before the National Education Goals Panel some years ago, a kindergarten teacher dramatically impressed and moved the assembled group of governors and legislators with her words: "I am a kindergarten teacher and I have the best job in the whole world. My kids and I love each other." She went on to tell how she scavenged junk from neighborhood vendors for the children's science and art projects because supplies at her inner-city school were lacking. Even more poignantly, she noted very real tensions: "I am pressured to be everything to everyone; I am caught between developmental and disciplinary approaches to pedagogy and curriculum; and I am tossed about between play and formal instruc-tion." She closed her comments with a simple question: "How am I supposed to keep the hopes of my families and children alive when my own dreams for the possibilities of kindergarten are so diminished?" Like this caring kindergarten teacher more than a decade ago, we are all desirous of reconcil-ing the pressures on kindergarten today with our knowledge of child development and early child-hood pedagogy. We are all eager to make the kin-dergarten experience as rich and as contributory to young children's development as possible. We want this even as we recognize that, for many, kindergarten remains the overlooked year, over-shadowed by the policy fanfare of prekindergarten and the domination of standards, testing, and the regularities of school. Stated differently, we all are desirous of retaining the uniqueness of kindergar-ten culture against a society demanding academic assimilation. How do concerned educators and policy makers buck the tide, or at least reconcile it with the needs of today's young children? What is worth holding onto from kindergarten's past? How do we align the social constructions of children from that past with the genuine need to consider the deep-seated and historically underaddressed issues of inequity of access and inequality of service? How do we create environments for chil-dren that are culturally sensitive, are respectful of current realities, and transcend the vagaries of the kindergarten debate? Simply said: What is it we want kindergarten to be and do? And how do we achieve it? These ques-tions frame this chapter.