“I Want to Say the Right Thing”: Developing Translingual Literacy Practices Through Early Care Educator and University Researcher Partnerships

An early care educator (ECE) and university collaborative model of teacher learning offers a distinct departure from common top-down models of professional development. Implementing a Social Design-Based Experiment, ECE and university partners collaborate to explore translingual picturebooks to address curricular inequities in their school settings. Featuring the experience of one white, middle-class ECE (Tamara) in a Midwest rural suburban school, we identify three critical components of this ECE and university researcher collaborative inquiry model: role of ECE as mentors and supporters, picturebooks as tools, and role of university partners as facilitators. Tamara's experience highlights the critical components of the model, and its location within ECE professional development and the ongoing socio-political issues shaping early care education today. We conclude by discussing why relationships and well-being among ECE are central to how they experience professional development that centers equity in racially, linguistically, and ethnically complex early care education classrooms.