Bridging Cultures in Early Care and Education: A Training Module is a resource designed to help pre-service and in-service early childhood educators, including infant-toddler caregivers, understand the role of culture in their programs. It is also intended for professionals who work with children and their families in a variety of other roles, such as social workers, special educators, and early interventionists, and for use in college courses focused on early childhood education and child development. The module explains and illustrates how early childhood educators can use the organizing concepts of individualism and collectivism as a means of understanding cultural conflict and difference. These concepts have been shown to be highly useful in improving home-school understanding across cultures. Based on real-life examples of cultural dilemmas in early care and education settings, participants engage the concepts of individualism and collectivism to solve a variety of scenarios in a dynamic and engaging manner. *Chapter 1 introduces the Bridging Cultures for Early Care and Education approach, provides a brief history, and explains the training module. It presents the conceptual framework of individualism and collectivism, which is at the heart of the training. *Chapter 2 provides the information needed for a two-hour workshop, including a script and notes to the facilitator. The script is not meant to be read word for word. Rather, it is offered as a guide, based on a pilot-tested approach. Appendices at the end of the book contain transparency masters for the overheads referenced in the script, and masters for suggested handouts. *Chapter 3 offers ideas for augmenting the basic two-hour training by expanding it over a longer time period. It also identifies additional diversity resources that can complement the Bridging Cultures training. *Appendices providing additional information, data, and bibliographic resources are included. This module originated as part of the Bridging Cultures Project at WestEd--a nonprofit research, development, and service agency working with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.

Diversity in Early Care and Education explores the rich diversity encountered in programs and environments for chidlren, ages birth to 8, including those serving children with special needs.

Introduces prospective/in-service teachers to an anthropological framework & to research & practice base that will help them be more successful in teaching students from various immigrant cultures. Focuses on home-school communication & parent involvemen

Professional development resource for teacher educators, based on the Bridging Cultures Project to improve homeschool communication and parent involvement.

Practice in Building Bridges will be valuable for teacher educators, trainers and program directors in doing staff and professional development. Many of its activities can also be used by individual students, teachers, and practitioners for personal work.

Early childhood education programs are expected to provide exemplary care for all children—poor and affluent, children of color and White children—while also adapting care to include children’s families and cultures. These two sets of expectations are often difficult for teachers and programs to meet. In this book, Carollee Howes shows how high-quality programs successfully adapt child development guidelines within cultural contexts, and why quality needs to be and can be measured in culturally specific ways. This important book: Closely examines ECE programs considered exemplary for low-income children of color. Shows how directors and teachers successfully use practices derived from their cultural communities to implement universal standards of child care. Identifies the commonalities in good early childhood programs that are shared across class, race, and ethnic communities. Offers best practices based on extensive assessments, interviews, and observations. “Will have immediate relevance for policy debates, for understanding the mechanisms of program effects, and for educators who wish to deepen their knowledge of practice.” —Robert C. Pianta, University of Virginia “I urge all higher education faculty, in-service teacher trainers, accreditation observers, researchers, text-book writers and policymakers of standards to read this book.” —From the Foreword by Louise Derman-Sparks

Readings for Bridging Cultures: Teacher Education Module is highly recommended for use by teacher-educators and professional development specialists who use Bridging Cultures: Teacher Education Module. It is also useful for teachers and students interested in understanding the role of culture in education. It includes five previously published articles and one book chapter, each selected for a specific purpose: *"Bridging Cultures in Our Schools: New Approaches That Work" explains the framework of individualism and collectivism, the Bridging Cultures Project, and the seven points of home-school conflict that are identified in the Module. *"Bridging Cultures With Classroom Strategies" and "Bridging Cultures With a Parent-Teacher Conference" describe teacher home-school communication. *"Cross-Cultural Conflict and Harmony in the Social Construction of the Child" and "Conceptualizing Interpersonal Relationships in the Cultural Contexts of Individualism and Collectivism" are the original research cited throughout the Module that provides the empirical basis for the Bridging Cultures framework. *The introductory chapter from Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development portrays the constructs of independence (individualism) and interdependence (collectivism) as developmental scripts with implications for theory, research, and practice.