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Gateways for Early Educators
Research Question 8: Do participants know about ECE career pathways and options as a result of their participation in Gateways?
To assess knowledge of career pathways the same questions as the prior two years were included on the annual core participant survey. Results should be interpreted with caution however. The same participants may not be enrolled from one year to the next and therefore any change from the prior year should not be interpreted as growth. These questions were collaboratively developed with LAUP and include:
 I know more about professional development opportunities for Early Educational professionals like me than before I participated in the program
 I learned about the different career options that exits in the field of Early Care and Education/Child Development
 I learned about the steps I need to take in order to pursue a College/university degree
Participants were asked to rate their level of agreement with each of these statements on a 4- point scale from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.” The survey was coded to identify the participants in order to link their survey responses to administrative data from the web-based database. The percent agreement with each of these statements for all core participants and for LACOCC RTT participants are presented in Table 17.
2016
Table 17. Percent Agreement Regarding Career Options, Educational Pathways, and Professional Development
Because of the Gateways Program...
Total Participants LACOCC RTT % Agree % Agree
I am working on a goal in career or professional development.
I know more about professional development opportunities for Early Educational professionals like me than before I participated in the program.
I learned about the steps I need to take in order to pursue a college / university degree.
92.0% 86.4% 90.0% 89.4%
88.6% 88.9%
I am working on a goal in the area of educational 93.1% 86.4% development.
I learned about the different career options that exist in the 91.8% 88.9% field of Early Care and Education / Child Developmen.t
Participants had high levels of agreement with all of the statements regarding career options and educational pathways. However, unlike prior years where participants in LACOCC RTT had rated these areas higher than all Gateways participants combined, this year participants in LACOCC RTT rated all but one item lower than Gateways participants. The 2015-2016 program year was a year of transition for LACOCC RTT. As such, part of this transition involved prioritizing and ensuring that LACOCC participants received a second rating in the program. Therefore, it is possible that LACOCC-RTT participants focused on shorter term goals that they could work on and achieve in order to impact their ratings (related to the environment) rather than focus on the longer term goals to impact their score on staff qualifications.
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