Unified Early Childhood Personnel Preparation Programs: Perceptions from the Field

Abstract: Two complimentary data sets were collected to gain an understanding of unified early child-hood (EC) and early childhood special education (ECSE) programs. The first data set, was obtained by interviewing 28 university faculty members who were key faculty administrating these unified programs. These data focused on the development and characteristics of unified EC and ECSE programs. The second data set was obtained from graduates from unified, dual, ECE, or ECSE Master programs. These data focused their perceptions regarding the knowledge base gained from their program of study. These data indicated that providing a unified vision of early childhood education is an on-going process. Respondents described many barriers and successes. All programs had course work from at least two different disciplines and collaboration among disciplines was prominent. Commitment and collaborative problem-solving were described as critical to on-going success. The data from program graduates provided some interesting trends that require further exploration and research. These data indicated that the trend towards unifying ECE and ECSE teacher preparation programs is to provide students with a broader set of competencies to address a diverse set of children and their families. Teacher preparation programs are chargedwith training individuals to meet the di-verse needs of the students and families in their educational environments. In order to meet this demand, personnel preparation programs for teachers of young children must reflect the recommended practices and personnel standards, which guide the field of early childhood/early childhood special edu-cation practice. A current practice in pre-school classrooms is the inclusion of children with disabilities with their peers. Although there has been much discussion related to the benefits and challenges related to the reali-zation of inclusive preschool programs (Mill