Developing a Learning Agenda on Early Care and Education Apprenticeships

^Instrument 1. ECE Apprenticeships Meeting Discussion Guide

This guide will be used by the project team to facilitate whole group and breakout session discussions with meeting attendees, as described in Supporting Statement A. Based on the discussion during the convening, not all questions may be asked and some questions may be tailored if needed.

During the meeting, the project team will describe to participants the following information:

• This meeting is for a project titled “Developing a Learning Agenda on Early Care and Education (ECE) Apprenticeships,” which is funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Broadly, the goals of this project are to examine what is known about ECE apprenticeship programs. Ultimately, the project will develop a learning agenda, which is a report that highlights areas for future research for the field.

• This meeting will last 2.5 hours.

• Participation in the meeting is voluntary. Participants may skip any questions they don’t know the answer to or prefer not to answer.

• The feedback gathered during the meeting will be used to inform the learning agenda.

• Although the project team does not consider any of the information that will be discussed during the meeting as being at all sensitive in nature, Urban and ACF will keep answers private. The learning agenda we produce from this work will not include direct quotes and will combine information from all meeting participants so that any information included will not be attributed to any individual respondent.

• An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number and expiration date for this collection are OMB #: 0970-0630, Exp: 03/31/2027.

The Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: This collection of information is voluntary and will be used to inform ACF’s understanding of the ECE apprenticeships. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 3 hours per response, including the time for preparing for and attending the meeting. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number and expiration date for this collection are OMB #: 0970-0630, Exp: 03/31/2027. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to Tricia DelGrosso; [email protected].

Participant Characteristics

• What is your name and affiliation?

• What is your role as it relates to ECE apprenticeships?

• What do you hope to learn at today’s meeting?

Meeting Logistics

• If you did not respond to the questionnaire we sent by email with the agenda and advance materials before the meeting, please list in the chat box the breakout rooms you would like to participate in during sessions 1 and 2. We will do our best to accommodate your preferences in a way that ensures diversity in representation across the breakout rooms.

Breakout Session 1 (choose one)

o Exploring the development and implementation of ECE apprenticeships

o Understanding the financing and costs of ECE apprenticeships

o Understanding participation and access

o Measuring outcomes and effectiveness

Breakout Session 2 (choose one)

o Exploring the development and implementation of ECE apprenticeships

o Understanding the financing and costs of ECE apprenticeships

o Understanding participation and access

o Measuring outcomes and effectiveness

Whole Group Discussion Questions On Key Findings

Project findings and overall themes

• What do you think about the findings?

  • What resonates as consistent with your understanding or perspective?

  • What is missing based on your experience or perspective?

  • What surprised you?

  • What suggested changes do you haves?

  • What are your reflections on the listed short- and long-term outcomes?

    • Are these the right outcomes? What should be changed? What is missing?

  • What other reflections do you have about the overall findings?

Breakout Session Discussion Questions

For this topic area we have identified [#] potential research questions to guide future research. We want to get your input on whether these questions reflect those that you want answered to inform your work. [For any of these questions, we may probe on the ages of children served (i.e., infant/toddler vs. preschool), funding type (e.g., Head Start funded vs. state/local publicly funded vs. privately funded), apprenticeship type (e.g., registered vs. non-registered), and setting type (e.g., family child care vs. center-based)]

• What changes, if any, do you recommend to the questions listed?

  • Probes: Will the answers to these questions help inform how apprenticeship programs are delivered? Will they help build the knowledge base about core characteristics of apprenticeship programs that drive outcomes?; Will the answers to these questions help inform our understanding of how programs are financed and what they cost?; Will the answers to these questions help the field understand who has access to and is participating in and completing ECE apprenticeships?; Will they inform our understanding of the types of supports that could help improve participation and program completion for ECE apprentices?; Will the answers to these questions measure key outcomes of ECE apprenticeships? Will the provide information on the effectiveness of ECE apprenticeships?; and so on. If not, how should they be changed to better get at these topics?

• What outcomes are important to measure? How do you define “success” for ECE apprentices? For employers? For the broader ECE workforce? For the ECE field? For children and families? What does it look like? How would you measure it?

• What is missing? What other questions should future research explore related to [insert topic]?​

  • Probes: Why are these questions important to add? What gap(s) in knowledge do they fill?

Next, we want your input on questions that you considered highest priority versus those that are medium or lower priority. When we think about prioritizing, it is important to consider how valuable or important having answers to these questions would be to your work on ECE apprenticeships. For example, the answers to these questions might help inform program design or improvement, inform your approach to recruiting apprentices and supporting them while they are enrolled in the program, or inform your understanding of the potential outcomes or impacts of ECE apprenticeships on apprentices, employers, and the community more broadly. However, we also need to consider which questions are feasible to answer given what we know about ECE apprenticeships and the data that are available. There might be some questions that are easy to answer but the findings would have little impact on your work or the field’s understanding of ECE apprenticeship. As a result, we might not consider these questions a priority or perhaps we would consider them the lowest priority if they could add some information to the knowledge base. Other questions might be easy or challenging to answer and the answers would provide important or valuable information for your work on ECE apprenticeships or the field’s understanding. For this exercise, these questions would be the highest priority.

• Among the research questions, which are the highest priority? The lowest priority? Not a priority? Why? ​

• What factors might make answering these questions challenging? Why? ​

Now that we have your input on questions that are important for future research to answer, we will think about the types of research designs that can help us answer the questions.

• What types of studies should be considered to answer the questions?

  • For example, studies documenting implementation, measuring outcomes, documenting costs; case studies of multiple apprenticeship programs; surveys of many individuals, either from one or multiple apprenticeship programs; studies that follow participants over time (longitudinal studies); and so on.

• What types of data can we use to answer questions? What if any of these questions could be answered by data already available or collected?

  • For example, program administrative data, data from surveys of apprentices and/or other staff involved in delivering apprenticeship programs, qualitative interviews and focus groups with apprentices and/or other staff involved in delivering apprenticeship programs, and so on.

• What other reflections and input do you have for us?

Whole group response to breakout sessions findings

In each of the breakout sessions, you discussed questions that can guide future research, including questions your group considered highest priority, lowest priority, and not a priority. Now we have an opportunity for representatives from each group to share what they discussed, and for the full group to provide input on questions to guide future research, including highest priority questions. [For any of these questions, we may probe on the ages of children served (i.e., infant/toddler vs. preschool), funding type (e.g., Head Start funded vs. state/local publicly funded vs. privately funded), apprenticeship type (e.g., registered vs. non-registered), and setting type (e.g., family child care vs. center-based)]

• What questions did you identify to guide future research? What questions, when answered, could help inform your work related to ECE apprenticeships?

  • Are there other questions the whole group would like added? Should any questions be removed? Why?

• Which questions did you consider highest priority? Lowest priority? Not a priority? Why did you consider [QUESTIONS] highest priority?

  • Should other questions be considered highest priority? If so, which questions? Why? ​

• If different perspectives emerge across or within breakout sessions, what were they? What issues emerged?

• What factors did you identify that might make answering these questions challenging? Why? ​

  • Are there other factors that are important consider?

• What other reflections and input do you have for us?

  • What else would you like to share with us today?

  • What are we not considering?​

  • What important factors did we not hear about today?​