Experiences with We Grow Together, a Professional Development System to Support Caregiver-Child Interactions for Infants and Toddlers

Infant-toddler caregivers often have few opportunities for systematic professional development (PD) and little is known about the specific PD strategies that may support their practice. This webinar will describe the professional development experiences of caregivers who participated in a field test of the We Grow Together (WGT) Professional Development System (Atkins-Burnett et al. 2020). WGT was designed to help infant-toddler caregivers in center-based settings and family child care homes understand how caregiver-child interaction supports development. It provides training, strategies, and materials to help local professional development providers scaffold the implementation of high quality practices by infant and toddler caregivers. 

In this webinar, we will describe the fall 2018-spring 2019 field test of We Grow Together, including participants’ experiences engaging with the PD system and whether the system could be used by early childhood professionals to support change in beliefs, knowledge, or practice when interacting with infants and toddlers. This work was funded by the Administration of Children and Families as part of the Professional Development Tools to Improve the Quality of Infant and Toddler Care (Q-CCIIT PD Tools) project. This webinar will address the following questions:

1. Who were the caregivers and PD providers in the WGT field test?
2. What types of relationships did caregivers have with their PD providers before participating in the WGT Field Test (fall 2018)?
3. What types of PD experience did caregivers and their PD providers have before participating in the WGT Field Test (fall 2018)?
4. What types of PD experiences did caregivers have during the WGT Field Test?
5. How did caregivers change from fall 2018 to spring 2019?

Participants will hear about a new professional development system that is being tested. Aspects of that system and challenges to how it was implemented may be relevant to participants current work. Learners will be able to:

• Define the purpose of the the We Grow Together (WGT) Professional Development System and Field Test
• Describe the PD experiences of caregivers and their PD providers during the WGT field test
• Recognize ways that field test participants changed from fall 2018 to spring 2019