Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) Project: A Breakthrough Series Collaborative for Improving Child Care and Head Start Quality, Phases I and II

2016 - 2026

The purpose of this project is to explore how child care and Head Start programs can improve the quality of services received by young children, while institutionalizing continuous quality improvement activities. The project assesses the feasibility of implementing a specific methodology for continuous quality improvement (CQI), the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC), that aims to promote the uptake, sustainability, and spread of evidence-based practices at all levels of an organization. Although the BSC has been successful in embedding CQI practices in other fields, this project is the first to systematically examine the implementation of this approach in Head Start and child care programs and systems.

The goal of the BSC methodology is to influence changes in the culture, climate, structures, and leadership within early care and education (ECE) settings as well as the knowledge, skills, beliefs, and attitudes of the practitioners participating in the BSC. The BSC methodology assembles cross-role teams that meet regularly and include program directors, teachers, and parents from Head Start and child care settings. The BSC teams are designed to create a shared learning environment in which CQI strategies are used to test evidence-based practices and make adjustments based on short-term, informal data collection and analysis. Experts in both the BSC methodology and the content area targeted for improvement facilitate the use of CQI strategies amongst the team members.

In Phase I of the CCL project (2016 — 2021), a BSC was designed and implemented focusing on supporting children’s social and emotional learning within seven ECE settings in an East Coast, urban area. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of building knowledge and skills to identify and manage emotions, feel and show empathy for others, effectively problem solve and cope with challenges, and build and maintain supportive relationships with others. A study to assess the feasibility of implementing a BSC was conducted alongside implementation to better understand whether a BSC could successfully improve SEL practices in ECE programs. The study used an embedded case study design and collected data from multiple sources across all phases of implementation of the BSC to understand the organizational and individual characteristics that relate to feasibility of this CQI method in ECE settings. The study also identified supports within the BSC that are associated with progress towards improvement.

Phase II of the CCL project (2021 — 2026) will build on the existing work and materials from Phase I to explore whether it is possible to integrate the BSC into existing training and technical assistance systems in Head Start and child care to enhance, instead of duplicate, existing efforts within those systems. Phase II will landscape the existing Head Start regional Training and Technical Assistance (T/TA) System and State QRIS systems to examine “business as usual” in providing training and technical assistance on SEL practices, whether there are current needs in the form of gaps between knowledge and practice in implementing evidence-based SEL practices in the classroom, the contextual variation within these systems, and to understand both program needs and ability to implement in-person training in the COVID context. Next, Phase II will design and implement a BSC within selected regional and/or state systems to determine whether it is feasible to do so, whether doing so addresses some of the challenges experienced in Phase I when the BSC was implemented at the program level, and the costs and perceived benefits of BSC implementation within ECE T/TA systems. The results of this phase will inform the design and implementation of an impact study of the BSC to be conducted in Phase III of the project.

OPRE has contracted Child Trends, with subcontracts to the University of Massachusetts-Boston, JRA Consulting, Ltd., the Center for the Study of Social Policy, and Mathematica Policy Research, to conduct the project.

Point(s) of contact: Nina Philipsen, Paula Daneri, Sarah Blankenship, and Ivelisse Martinez-Beck

This study is registered on the Open Science Framework under the title Culture of Continuous Learning Project: A Breakthrough Series Collaborative for Improving Child Care and Head Start Quality .

Information collections related to this project have been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under OMB #0970-0507 and #0970-0605. Related materials are available on at the CCL Information collection page on RegInfo.gov .

The most currently approved documents are accessible by clicking on the ICR Ref. No. with the most recent conclusion date. To access the information collections (E.g. interviews, surveys, protocols), click on View Information Collection (IC) List. Click on View Supporting Statement and Other Documents to access other supplementary documents.

Related Resources

The Distributed Leadership brief presents an overview of distributed leadership and its role in supporting quality improvement, as well as provide an example of how ECE settings can achieve distributed leadership from a quality improvement initiative called the Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) project.

State and regional early care and education (ECE) leaders can learn about a quality improvement methodology called the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) that can help ECE programs build their capacity for continuous improvement and make sustained changes in evidence-based practices.

Explore the Field Guide for Implementation of Breakthrough Series Collaborative in Early Care and Education to learn about the practical aspects of leading a BSC to support the use of evidence-based practices in ECE centers.

Explore the findings from OPRE's Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) project which explored the feasibility of implementing an innovative continuous quality improvement methodology, the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC), in early care and education (ECE) settings. The CCL case study offers ECE leaders in child care and Head Start a rich example and set of considerations for why and how a BSC might fit in a menu of options offered to ECE programs.

Explore the findings from OPRE's Culture of Continuous Learning (CCL) project which explored the feasibility of implementing an innovative continuous quality improvement methodology, the Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC), in early care and education (ECE) settings.

 

Making and sustaining improvements in practice in early care and education programs is challenging. Policymakers and practitioners are seeking new strategies to support improvement that can be tailored for and tested in the unique context of ECE settings. The Culture of Continuous Learning Project addresses this critical need in the field by testing the feasibility of using a structured method called the Breakthrough Series Collaborative for promoting continuous quality improvement focused on...

Promoting the quality of early care and education (ECE) is a central goal of state and national initiatives aimed at supporting children’s early learning and healthy development. Given these investments, program administrators, policymakers and researchers alike are interested in understanding how quality improvement activities can best target changes in practice that will support children’s development and can be sustained over time across a wide range of programs.

Advances in the science of improvement offer ECE a new framework for thinking about approaches to quality improvement. While some of the specific methods derived from improvement science have generated dialogue and investments in pockets of the ECE field, these methods are not yet widespread in practice.