CHAPEL HILL -- Better teachers give preschoolers from low-income families a head start. That idea and the need to address increasing public concern about the quality of teachers teaching preschoolers is the focus of a new $2 million grant recently awarded to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's FPG Child Development Institute.

"In North Carolina, 78 percent of early educators have no degree beyond high school and most see lack of time and access to college level coursework as primary roadblocks," said Pam Winton, a senior scientist at the UNC institute and co-director of the new project with Debra Torrence.

Named Project IMPACT ("Improving and Maximizing Professional Development Access and Consultation for Teachers"), the two-year project will focus on increasing the knowledge of 100 early childhood educators in 10 mostly rural N.C. counties.

The project will develop a research-based model for high-quality professional development that will integrate distance education courses for credit with intensive on-site consultation.

"Another indication of the need for this work is our increasingly diverse population," Torrence said. "For example, in North Carolina, the Latin American population jumped 394 percent during the 1990s. Our existing early childhood teacher education programs are not prepared to meet the needs of teachers needing professional development and support."

Partnering with the FPG institute on the project are the N.C. Division of Child Development, Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina and the N.C. Community College System.

The 10 counties involved are Bertie, Columbus, Edgecombe, Halifax, Pasquotank, Richmond, Robeson, Scotland, Tyrell and Vance. Out of the state’s 100 counties, these 10 have the greatest percentages of children from low-income families.

At least 375 children, including those at risk because of developmental or environmental factors, are expected to participate in the project.

"IMPACT is far more than a one-time, short-term project," said Winton. "This work will build North Carolina’s capacity to create a sustainable and replicable high quality professional development system that reaches early childhood educators in all areas of the state, especially those in rural communities."

Torrence said the distance courses developed are expected to be replicated by the community college system and available statewide on all 58 of those campuses. The training modules and curricula developed will be available to faculty and local consultants across the state.

The project draws on the FPG institute's considerable expertise in these areas. For example, the distance education model will be based on a model developed by another institute project and the on-site consultation model draws from the institute’s long-term, statewide Partnerships for Inclusion project.

The grant was awarded by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education in the U.S. Department of Education.

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Contacts:
FPG institute: Winton, 919-966-7180 or winton@mail.fpg.unc.edu; Torrence, 919-962-5777 or torrence@mail.fpg.unc.edu; or Loyd Little, media relations, 919-966-0867 or loyd_little@unc.edu.
NC Division of Child Development: Kathy Shepherd at 919-662-4567 or Kathy.Shepherd@ncmail.net
Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina: Becky Wrisley at bwrisley@preventchildabusenc.org
NC Community College System: Audrey Bailey at baileya@nccs.cc.nc.us