The past two decades of research have underscored the concerning use of exclusionary discipline in early childhood education settings and the need for professional development to support educators to use evidence-based practices. Existing professional development, such as coaching and infant/early childhood mental health consultation, are effective but pose implementation challenges due to time and resource demands. The need for scalable, cost-effective professional development that focuses on social and emotional development and challenging behavior is higher than ever. Short, online, self-paced courses (what we refer to as “micro-courses”) are one approach to addressing these challenges. In this paper, we examine initial evidence for how a micro-course can support in-service early childhood educators to learn and use evidence-based universal strategies to support positive behavior, which may indirectly reduce exclusionary discipline. We leverage quantitative and qualitative data from 25 educators who piloted the course in spring 2022 to report on early childhood educators’ engagement and satisfaction with the micro-course and whether educators report any changes in their knowledge or practices. We found that early childhood educators actively participated in the micro-course, found the experience useful and relevant, and reported changes in their knowledge of and comfort with positive behavior support practices as a result of participation. This study can inform future policy, practice, and research efforts to equitably support children's positive behavior, prevent challenging behavior, and eliminate exclusion in early childhood settings.

中文翻译：

---

微课程试点研究，以促进积极的教学实践并防止幼儿期的排斥性纪律

过去二十年的研究强调了在幼儿教育环境中使用排斥性纪律的令人担忧的问题，以及支持教育工作者使用循证实践的专业发展的必要性。现有的专业发展，例如辅导和婴儿/幼儿心理健康咨询，是有效的，但由于时间和资源需求而带来了实施挑战。对可扩展、具有成本效益的专业发展的需求比以往任何时候都更高，这些专业发展侧重于社交和情感发展以及具有挑战性的行为。短期、在线、自定进度的课程（我们称之为“微课程”）是应对这些挑战的一种方法。在本文中，我们研究了微课程如何支持在职幼儿教育工作者学习和使用基于证据的通用策略来支持积极行为的初步证据，这可能会间接减少排斥性纪律。我们利用 2022 年春季试点该课程的 25 名教育工作者的定量和定性数据来报告幼儿教育工作者对微课程的参与度和满意度，以及教育工作者是否报告了他们的知识或实践方面的任何变化。我们发现，幼儿教育工作者积极参与微课程，发现这种体验有用且相关，并报告了由于参与而使他们对积极行为支持实践的了解和舒适度发生了变化。这项研究可以为未来的政策、实践和研究工作提供信息，以公平地支持儿童的积极行为、防止挑战性行为并消除幼儿环境中的排斥。