The Certificate in Early Education Leadership caters to leaders and practitioners within the early education domain, encompassing:

• Directors responsible for overseeing early education settings, centers, or programs
• Administrators, coaches, and practitioners within both public and private school settings
• Leaders at the helm of early education service organizations
• State leaders and administrators involved in the early education sector
• Philanthropists, grant-makers, and advocates dedicated to supporting early childhood education
• Child care providers
• Educators specializing in Early Years Teacher Education

• Develop supportive and trusting relationships
• Examine the correlation between stress and early learning and development
• Foster unbounded learning in children across developmental domains
• Enhance the ability to pose open-ended questions and offer choices
• Strategize for addressing big and small stress in learning environments
• Integrate instructional and developmental domains in professional development opportunities
• Identify existing practices and structures promoting psychological safety
• Explore practices and structures leveraging diversity for enriched adult learning
• Strengthen learning in groups and model the learning process
• Implement regular team-building opportunities
• Utilize protocols to encourage diverse perspectives in groups
• Examine the influence of various stress types on children’s growth and development
• Evaluate the impact of stress on early educators
• Recognize the critical role of early education in promoting early learning and development
• Propose strategies to reduce stress and enhance well-being for both children and adults in early learning settings
• Model the learning process through inquiry and reflection on mistakes
• Acquire new strategies for supporting daily routines, continuity of care, system establishment, and supporting educators’ emotional regulation
• Devise an implementation strategy tailored to specific goals and challenges within your learning environment
• Analyze a case study reflecting on how insights from module 1 apply to early education settings
• Apply core knowledge and strategies from module 1 to your work in the early education setting
• Reflect on common challenges faced by early education leaders when implementing new strategies

• Prepare for challenges that may arise during plan implementation
• Differentiate between adaptive and technical challenges
• Distinguish between explicit and implicit norms, identifying norms promoting an adaptive culture
• Explain how understanding purpose, triggers, and tolerance levels can promote change
• Cultivate relationships, identify allies, and listen to different perspectives to bolster change
• Demonstrate how mobilizing people and collecting data can support adaptive change
• Utilize the Eight-Step Leading Change Approach for effective results and capacity-building
• Explore key steps in the change process, including preparation, implementation, and common barriers
• Consider how hidden commitments, assumptions, and mindsets impact the change implementation process
• Identify strategies for creating and communicating a vision and plan for change
• Recognize strategies for overcoming barriers to change
• Reflect on how personal identity and cultural norms inform experiences and perspectives
• Identify the benefits of working in diverse workplace environments
• Reflect on how personal identity, norms, and values influence perspectives and interactions
• Recognize key steps to engage in difficult conversations with colleagues
• Create equitable practices decreasing the impact of bias and supporting an inclusive culture
• Devise an implementation strategy tailored to goals and challenges within your learning environment
• Analyze a case study reflecting on how insights from module 2 apply to early education settings
• Apply core knowledge and strategies from module 2 to your work in the early education setting
• Reflect on common challenges faced by early education leaders when implementing new strategies
• Prepare for challenges that may arise during plan implementation
• Understand cornerstone competencies supporting educators’ work in early education
• Identify strategies for building educators’ cornerstone competencies
• Recognize roadblocks to building cornerstone competencies and ways to address challenges
• Describe how early cognitive development forms the foundation for early learning
• Identify skills and experiences associated with children’s cognitive growth
• Recognize how big ideas and guided play promote cognitive development
• Identify characteristics of talk for learning
• Explain how thinking routines and other “visible thinking” strategies promote children’s cognitive development
• Describe the use of suspension or exclusionary practices and their impact on children’s development
• Identify and cultivate key features of an early learning environment supporting effective classroom management
• Recognize how addressing these features may prevent the use of exclusionary discipline practices
• Explain how systems for collecting behavioral data can support children and educators
• Describe how the three principles of Universal Design for Learning benefit all learners
• Identify the three guidelines for each principle of Universal Design for Learning
• Explore examples of and strategies for designing learning experiences that provide multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement
• Devise an action plan tailored to goals and challenges within your learning environment
• Analyze a case study reflecting on how insights from module 3 apply to early education settings
• Apply core knowledge and strategies from module 3 to your work in the early education setting
• Reflect on common challenges faced by early education leaders when implementing new strategies
• Prepare for challenges that may arise during plan implementation

Prospective applicants must have successfully completed A-Levels, 12th Grade, Intermediate, or an equivalent of 14 years of education from a recognized institution with at least a second division. Individuals who do not meet these prerequisites for the specified program may receive personalized guidance on alternative related programs.

Candidates must thoroughly fill out all sections of the assigned supervised school experience placement form. It is compulsory to submit accurate documentation, including an immunization card. Those enrolled in the Certificate in Early Education Leadership program must commit to 100 hours, equivalent to 20 days with 5 hours per day, at the Meritorious Early Learning Center (MELC), our Lab School. Participants must follow provided guidelines and fulfill the requirements specified in the field placement handbook