Quality Circle

Use the membership brochure and application form to join Quality Circle.

Our Purpose

Quality Circle is an association of Technical Assistance (TA) professionals committed to strengthening early care and education environments. The purpose of Quality Circle is to nurture and empower a diverse community of professionals through support, communication, education and advocacy.

Our goals are:

To educate ourselves and others about our work and the issues of quality improvement
To advocate for the needs of young children, teachers and directors and for technical assistant professionals
To communicate with and support each other in our common TA efforts
To articulate the important issues in early childhood and technical assistance and create a safe space for dialogue

Many voices. One vision.

Welcome

Welcome to the Quality Circle website. This site exists primarily to help members communicate with each other by providing a venue for discussion and feedback, an archive space, and resources for TA professionals. If you are interested, we encourage you to join us.

Learn more about Quality Circle and Technical Assistance professionals under About Us.

DAP Draft Version

The 2008 draft version of Developmentally Appropriate Practice is out and ready for review. You can download a copy at the site below as well as enter your comments. Please share this with your various networks. The NAEYC Board will have to take formal action to adopt this in the next few months.

http://www.naeyc.org/about/
positions/draftdap0208.asp

News

New Discussion Questions on Our Discussion Board

Join in the discussion on these new questions, from our mini-conference August 21:

How do you deal with...
- High caseloads for on-site consultants
- Turnover of consultants, teachers & family home providers
- Achieving large quality improvement gains
Is it useful to provide differing levels of intensity of TA depending on the goals and/or expressed needs of providers? 'A menu of services'
What qualifications or skills are of highest priority when hiring staff for on-site technical assistance?
How should accountability or monitoring be built into on-site technical assistance? How should success be measured?

Natural Resources Seeks Your Expertise and Help

Have Your Say: How Do You Define Approaches to Professional Development?

"Technical assistance" · "Consultation" · "Coaching" · "Mentoring" · "Reflective Supervision"

"Have you heard these terms being used interchangeably? A lack of consensus on what each term means is creating confusion. As a result, everyone involved in the professional development process--provider, teacher, and child--is affected. We invite you to be a natural resource by joining colleagues online to define these approaches or contribute examples of how you have used them.

"The National Professional Development Center on Inclusion, an FPG project, has created starter definitions from the existing literature. With your input, we hope to create and share definitions that can be used to support decisions about professional development."

--from the Natural Resources website, http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~SCPP/nat_allies/na_resources.cfm.

Childhood's End: Growing Up Too Fast

"Something is lost when little red wagons and mud pies make way for worksheets and tests." Edutopia.com posted this article in April.

Child Care Reauthorization Vision

This came to us by way of Exchange Everyday and we thought others might be interested: "Over the 30 years Exchange has been monitoring early childhood developments in the U.S., we have primarily observed the future of the field being sacrificed by disharmony among our major advocacy voices. However, in an unprecedented move, leading advocacy organizations have recently come to agreement on "A Vision for the Reauthorization of Child Care" (PDF)... (read more)

NPR News Stories Point to Importance of Creative Play

A recent story on National Public Radio explores how creative play develops executive function.

A recent story on National Public Radio explores changes in play since the 1950s.

Website by early childhood colleagues in Iowa

This timely website was created by early childhood colleagues in Iowa. Very informative! Share with others!

"Check out our new website--www.itsaboutourkids.org. It has everything you ever wanted to know about what Presidential candidates think about children's issues ... but were afraid to ask! It includes responses to a nine-question survey about children's issues (D's responded, R's didn't) and a matrix linking to all candidate websites for their position statements on children's issues. And it contains links to different multi-issue child policy organizations that show just where candidates get their positions."

There are two survey questions specifically on early childhood (child care and preschool) but others relate directly to other aspects of early childhood (child health, children with disabilities, child mental health, etc.).

NACCRRA National Study

This national study provides important information - here is a NC brief. What does this mean for us? Click here: http://www.naccrra.org/randd/data/docs/NC.pdf

Pelosi Announces National Summit on America's Children in May

WASHINGTON, March 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that she will convene a bipartisan summit in May to hear from national experts on recent scientific findings and how they relate to early childhood development. The National Summit on America's Children will take place in Washington on Tuesday, May 22, 2007. ... (read more)