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Head Start Classrooms And Children’S School Readiness Benefit From Teachers’ Qualifications And Ongoing Training, Seung-Hee Claire Son, Kyong-Ah Kwon, Hyun-Joo Jeon, Soo-Young Hong

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Background Teacher qualifications have been emphasized as a basis of professional development to improve classroom practices for at-risk children’s school readiness. However, teacher qualifications have often not been compared to another form of professional development, in-service training.

Objective The current study attempts to investigate contributions of multiple types of professional development to school readiness skills of low-income preschoolers. Specifically, we examined the significance of teachers’ education level, degree, teaching certificate, teaching experiences as well as specialized in-service training and coaching support as these teacher trainings are linked to preschoolers’ school readiness through proximal classroom practices.

Method We used a multi-level …