EO Center Resource Alert

Division for Early Childhood (DEC)

Page 3 provides an overview of Standard 2: Partnering with Families and highlights the importance of culturally responsive, family-centered practices that build strong partnerships between educators and families. It emphasizes trusting relationships, shared decision-making, identifying family strengths and priorities, and supporting families across assessment, planning, intervention, and transition. The following page include practical vignettes across birth-to-three, preschool, and early elementary settings that demonstrate how educators collaborate with families in real-world settings to support communication, participation, and meaningful child and family outcomes.

CONNECT: The Center to Mobilize Early Childhood Knowledge

Through real-world scenarios, videos, activities, and practical tools, participants learn strategies for developing positive relationships, engaging in shared decision-making, and addressing challenging conversations with families. This module emphasizes evidence-based, family-centered practices that support meaningful collaboration and improved outcomes for young children and their families.

Early Childhood Personnel Center (ECPC)

These resources are aligned with DEC's EI/ECSE Professional Preparations Standard 2: Partnering with Families. It offers examples of readings, assignments, and authentic learning experiences that help learners apply evidence-based practices through reflection, guided practice, feedback, and real-world application in early childhood and early intervention settings.

Early Childhood Personnel Center (ECPC)

This case study follows a young child and family as they work with an early intervention team, highlighting key components of family-centered practice. Discussion questions and supporting resources help learners connect evidence-based family engagement practices to real-world situations.

Early Childhood Personnel Center (ECPC)

This collection of brief videos and multimedia resources brings family-centered practices to life through authentic examples from families, early interventionists, and early childhood professionals. Topics include building trusting family-professional partnerships, culturally responsive practices, supporting family decision-making, using tools such as ecomaps, and engaging families throughout assessment, planning, intervention, and transition processes.

The field of early intervention offers a broad array of career opportunities including developmental specialists, service coordinators, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, infant mental health specialists, and more. Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) federal regulations requires states to have policies and procedures to ensure that qualified personnel are available to support the early intervention system for infants and toddlers with disabilities.

This resource includes a competencies framework and an assessment tool to measure a set of priority competencies in pre-service students who are preparing to work with infants and toddlers with special needs. These tools are designed for instructors and trainers teaching the pre-service infant/toddler workforce and could be used for practitioners to engage in self-reflection.

A unified vision outlining essential content knowledge and practical skills for entry-level early childhood educators in Michigan, detailing what they should know, understand, and demonstrate in their teaching practices. These standards capture the profile of a well-prepared beginning teacher, equipped to support and respond to the holistic needs of young children.

The first stand-alone standards to focus specifically on the preparation of EI/ECSE professionals who work with young children ages birth through eight years who have or are at-risk for developmental delays and disabilities and their families in homes, classrooms, and other community settings.

These standards support the growth and development of all children throughout the state, birth to kindergarten; to support early childhood professionals in recognizing individual developmental trajectories and expressions of learning, and to guide programs toward the highest quality in their operations.

This set of standards and competencies describe what early childhood educators should know and be able to do. As such, there is a core body of knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions that early childhood educators must demonstrate to effectively promote the development, learning, and well-being of all young children.

Encourage your students and recent graduates to explore job opportunities from employers across Michigan. Our job board features current openings in Special Education, Early Intervention, and Early Childhood fields—perfect for those seeking their first position or next career step.

(Note: If you’re an employer looking to post a job, please email the link to eotweb@edzone.net.)

The Central Directory includes a category specifically for Early Intervention Research in Michigan. Click the category to discover current projects, reports, and research focused on Michigan’s youngest learners.