Information Dissemination: Child Development and Learning

Advocacy is a vital component of the early childhood professional's role. Advocacy can occur on a daily basis through supportive interactions with children and their families and connecting families to needed resources. At a broader and more public level, advocacy can occur when a specific message is developed and disseminated with the goal of positively impacting the lives of children, families, early childhood professionals, and the field as a whole.
Developing effective advocacy messages requires deep knowledge of a particular topic, an effective means of delivering the message, and the ability to design a research-based message that can serve to motivate others to your cause. Over the next 5 weeks, you will design three advocacy pieces. Each advocacy piece will use a different format a webinar, a podcast, and a white paper. Each advocacy message must be on a different topic and related to nurturing young children.
To prepare:
Select from the following topics, or choose another topic or topics of great interest to you:
Empathy
Self-regulation
Family cultures
Resilience
Risk factors
Note: If you have selected a topic or topics not on the list above, get approval from your Instructor before proceeding.
Across each of these topics, the information you develop needs to be responsive to the following:
Audience: For whom is this information being developed? (Families, early childhood coaches, policy makers, educators, etc.)
Role: Whom are you speaking as? Please select a role that provides your voice for each piece that is meaningful to you (educator, family advocate, administrator, coach, policy maker, researcher).
Goal: What do you hope to gain by sharing this information? What impact do you want to have on your target audience?