Early Educator Voices: Oregon--Work Environment Conditions That Impact Early Educator Practice and Program Quality. Report

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Berkeley, 2521 Channing Way #5555, Berkeley, CA 94720. Tel: 510-643-7091; Web site: https://cscce.berkeley.edu/

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Oregon Department of Education, Early Learning Division

Early educators are the key to quality early care and education (ECE) services, and there is broad consensus that high-quality care and learning environments for young children depend on educators who are skilled at nurturing children's development and learning. Yet, inadequate working conditions and low pay routinely hamper educators in their efforts to apply effective teaching and caregiving practices (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015; McLean et al., 2021). The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) had the opportunity to ask early educators about their working conditions. Educators employed in both center- and home-based programs were surveyed throughout the state of Oregon. Notably, this was the first CSCCE study utilizing the Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) tool to capture the experiences of family child care (FCC) providers and their staff and also the first SEQUAL study to examine working conditions after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report examines the results of the SEQUAL survey across settings and roles of early educators in Oregon.

ERIC

2023

ED629668