Dr. Aisha Ray

 Dr. Aisha Ray has helped the Early Childhood Field through her extensive research. The paper is called:

  Preparing Early Childhood Teachers to Successfully Educate all Children: The contribution of State Boards of Higher Education and National Professional Accreditation Organizations.

Here are two excerpts from a paper,

 "A growing consensus acknowledges that teacher preparation and professional  development must help all teachers gain knowledge and practice skills that contribute to

the educational achievement of all children (Ladson-Billings, 1999; NAEYC, 2002; Ray,2000)."

 further into the research paper

"Throughout this paper we have asserted that the developmental and educational needs of children with seven characteristics—race, ethnicity, culture, language, immigrant status, special needs and social class—need to be placed at the center of early childhood teacher standards; that their developmental and educational needs must be defined and understood from cultural and ecological perspectives; and that research suggests that teachers need specialized knowledge to contribute to positive educational outcomes. A new conceptualization of teacher standards should identify these areas of specialized knowledge competent teachers need to have for children with these characteristics (e.g., culture) and multiple characteristics (e.g., culture, social class, language)."

http://www.plan4preschool.org/documents/contributions-state-boards.pdf:

To find out more about Dr. Aisha Ray and other research she has done. www.erikson.edu/default/faculty/faclistings/aisha_ray.aspx

              

So many teachers have benefited from her work.  We all go to college and know we are following the standards set before us, but how many of us consider the work of the people who have put these standards into place or are challenging the current ones to change to meet the needs of our changing world?