Digital Badging – An exploration for the Early Childhood Education Workforce

The National Workforce Registry Alliance (Alliance) seeks to promote a framework that improves training, education, and ultimately the competency of early childhood professionals. Together with the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Council for Professional Recognition, and a work group of expert advisors, the Alliance is exploring the role of digital badging and its potential to contribute to career development.

Part 1: What is Badging?

Badging has the potential to weave together the disparate threads of education and training that currently texture professional preparation in the field. Through this work, the intent of the Alliance is to add value to states and their systems, to employers, and to practitioners, which ultimately benefits children and families.

Part 2: Exploring the Possibilities of Badges for the Early Childhood Workforce

For the workforce, a badge is not merely a graphic demonstration for show; it has embedded shareable, portable data points regarding participation in training and education and verification of achievements and qualifications of the learner. Badges can share valuable data points with employers, agencies, educators, and the practitioner herself making future professional development and career pathway plans.

Part 3: Considerations and Potential

As questions and ideas were explored, the Alliance and the work group identified basic principles as a framework for making badging meaningful for the early childhood workforce: overarching principles, training and trainer approval, and criteria for a badge issuer, competencies, portability, career advisement, compensation, a national authority, connecting to existing state systems.

Acknowledgements 
The National Workforce Registry Alliance thanks the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for the opportunity to explore badging for the early childhood workforce. The Alliance thanks the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Council for Professional Recognition for their partnership, and the expert work group members who added so much value to these discussions: Child Care Aware of America, National Afterschool Association, National Association for Family Child Care, National Head Start Association, National Association for Regulatory Administration, and ZERO TO THREE.