{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.011310711909514305, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.654867256637168, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Life-Long Preparation of Early Childhood Teachers: A Professional Development System for the Coming Millennium

Preparing early childhood teachers for the new millennium will require major challenges. At the forefront of such challenges will be the establishment of statewide and community wide comprehensive professional development systems that will support the education, training and career growth of teachers over a lifetime of service to children. These systems will mitigate the complex barriers to professional growth that have marked the early childhood profession since its inception. This article examines some of these barriers and explores some positive signs of support for improved preparation and in-service education of early childhood teachers. These signs have developed from recent changes in attitudes, economics, and institutions in our country. This increasing recognition of the importance of teacher quality, and the need for a supporting framework to achieve this quality, has resulted in the emergence of comprehensive early childhood professional development systems in almost all fifty states. These emerging systems will serve the teachers of tomorrow by linking all the elements of professional preparation and growth into a sequential, coherent whole. This article explores major components of emerging professional development systems and describes the potential role of the teacher educator in the system. Such systems approaches to this complex problem are more likely