Advancing theory-based logic models and project management strategies for early education initiatives in Pennsylvania 2016 IDEPEL Conference Saint Joseph’s University Aubrey H. Wang and Philip Sirinides

Early Care and Education in 2016 Early care and education is a priority for many federal, state, regional, and local leaders. There is unprecedented attention and activity to expand access to quality early childhood services. What are the frameworks and processes that support the various initiatives in PA to expand access to quality?

Goals of this Round Table We hope that participants will: reflect on their current process for planning and implementation of ECE services, learn about specific tools that are useful for current and future ECE initiatives, think collaboratively about ways to improve our work as an ECE community. Specifically, we want to focus on three tools that can be applied in sequence to ECE efforts.

Theory-based policy and project management process Agile Project Management State of the art project management process used to develop a flexible project plan that identifies implementation obstacles, allows continuous improvement, team input, and delivering quality programs. Logic Model A process used to identify and bring into discussion short-term and long-term goals, policy assumptions, policy inputs such as resources, strategies, and activities, policy impacts, and policy outputs. Theoretical Framework Provides a picture of the relationships among the key variables and stakeholders who are assumed to relate to the intended policy outcome(s).

Relevancy and Utility There are currently many ECE initiatives at state and local levels that are moving forward. Everyone is working hard and doing their best. One goal today is to think about how our theory-based policy and project management process could be useful and important for improving efforts and accomplishing goals. It may be that there are aspects of our theory-based policy and project management process that are already part of your process. It may be that there are opportunities for you to make significant enhancements.

Theoretical Framework Throughout the roundtable discussion, consider the following for the ECE initiatives that you work on: Is there a clear framework or theory guiding the development of all policies/programs? Theoretical Framework For each program, is there a logic model that describes the alignment between the program goals, assumptions, inputs, impacts, and outputs? Logic Model For each program, is effective project management being used to identify and communicate about implementation obstacles, continuous improvement, team input, and delivery of quality programs? Project Management

Join us at Round Table 9 at the 2016 IDEPEL Conference! Watch this youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TycLR0TqFA