Resource Library

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.