A revised Core Body of Knowledge will be released in 2025. This is the second entry in a series previewing the revisions to the updated CBK. Read the first entry.
The 2024 edition of the Core Body of Knowledge is organized in seven core competency areas:
- Child Development and Learning in Context
- Family and Community Engagement
- Observation and Assessment
- Learning Environment
Managing Physical Space, Time, and Resources
Social-Emotional Climate - Curriculum and Teaching
- Health, Safety, and Nutrition
- Professional Engagement
- Social-Emotional Climate
The fifth core competency area, Curriculum and Teaching, is new. This section was added to expand upon content from the previous edition’s Environment and Curriculum area. It outlines competencies related to instructional approaches and strategies for engaging and motivating all children in meaningful learning experiences and supporting them as they advance toward ambitious learning and development goals.
Within each competency area are core competencies.
What are core competencies?
Core competencies are general statements about what early childhood educators should know and be able to do, and dispositions they should possess. The core competencies have a performance dimension. They can be observed, demonstrated, and assessed.
To communicate the complex layering of knowledge, skills, and dispositions within each core competency, and to provide enhanced planning support to those developing and providing professional learning, this edition of the Core Body of Knowledge includes three components that detail each competency:
- Knowledge, or factual or procedural understandings that ground competence.
- Skills, or technical or procedural abilities that enable competence.
- Dispositions, which encompass the habits of mind, values, attitudes, and social-emotional capabilities needed to fully demonstrate competence.
Early childhood educators advance along a continuum of practice over time, demonstrating these competencies with greater sophistication as they acquire and deepen knowledge, grow in skills and experience, and cultivate essential dispositions. Competencies are the foundation of competency-based teacher education and professional learning.
