Formative Data Collections for Culture of Continuous Learning Project: A Breakthrough Series Collaborative for Improving Child Care and Head Start Quality

Appendix C – Semi-Structured Discussion: Talking Points

Talking Points for the in-person semi-structured discussion:

• Introduction: The purpose of this discussion is to share information about a project we plan to conduct in the coming months. By sharing this information and having an open discussion, we hope to understand how early care and education programs, like the ones you represent, might be able to engage in the project activities. We are interested in understanding the strengths of your programs to see how we might be able to build on those, and we also want to understand how you see the needs of your program, to know if this project might support goals you have for your programs. We will not share any of the information that comes up during this discussion beyond our project team: your comments will be used only to inform our project planning and your responses will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. Your participation in this discussion is completely voluntary. We have 1.5 hours set aside for the discussion, and we will also ask you to complete a Strengths and Needs Assessment that will take no more than 20 minutes.

  • An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number for this information collection is 0970-0356 and the expiration date is 03/31/2018.

• About this BSC: Part of the CCL Project: This year-long BSC is being sponsored by a project called the Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) Project, funded by the federal Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation. One part of this project is to run a Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) to support children’s social and emotional learning in child care and Head Start settings. This BSC will work with up to 12 programs over a one-year period to provide ongoing supports as they focus on making improvements in their practices to support children’s social and emotional learning.

• What Is a BSC? (Background and Goals – generally): The BSC is a year-long quality improvement and professional learning experience. Over the course of a year, teams from each participating program will come together four times for a Learning Session that offers collaborative learning opportunities and team development. Then, in between each Learning Session, teams apply what they learned, testing changes, and participating in a range of supports for mutual and ongoing learning. This process helps to facilitate improvements that are led by members of the team, focused on enhancing children’s social and emotional learning and development. The Breakthrough Series Collaborative approach is different from other ECE quality improvement initiatives as it supports change by building capacity and recognizing leaders across an organization, instead of through a single coach or consultant working with individual teachers. The model promotes organizational change through collaborative teams that include staff at all levels and families, and engages teams in identifying solutions to the problems they face in their practice. A goal is to spread and sustain the use of practices that have been proven to work in early childhood programs. The model has supported practice and process improvements in the health, child trauma, and child welfare fields, but has not yet been widely tested in ECE.

• BSC Mission and Scope: The ECE social and emotional learning BSC will focus on a set of what we call “primary drivers”. Primary drivers are the most important things that need to be in place for social and emotional learning practices to be fully implemented in programs. These drivers are based on key aspects of the CSEFEL Pyramid Model, and have been specifically designed for this project by a group of local ECE and Pyramid Model experts.

• Discussion around BSC expectations and benefits

• Timeline and key dates for the CCL project: In the coming months, teams will be invited to participate in a mutual selection process, which will involve an application and, if selected, meetings with the BSC implementation team. Each interested ECE program will be identifying a team of 6-10 people that consists of teachers, program administrators, support staff, and parents. Describe these roles and considerations for team membership.

• Question & Answer Discussion