A global goal for early childhood education and care is to ensure universal, “quality” provision that reaches all children. Achieving this goal requires a well-prepared workforce that is equipped to adapt to and deliver early childhood programs across the vastly diverse contexts and communities where children are growing up around the world. Yet currently there is a severe shortage of early childhood workers, particularly in “low resource” and complex communities. Evidence to support appropriate training for such workers is also lacking. In response, this paper presents findings from a case study of a large-scale training program for community-based early childhood workers in central-east India. A total of 650 community-based Village Communicators were trained to deliver a responsive caregiving package to parents of young children. Data collected over 3 months highlight how the unique contextually grounded, caring and reflexive approach to training resulted in profound personal and professional change among training participants. The findings are of significance in informing policy and practice associated with global goals for early childhood. First, they challenge the technical, programmatic approaches to training that are commonly adopted for preparing this workforce. Second, they evidence the potentially transformative, long-term impact of person-centered approaches to training that facilitate knowledge-sharing to understand local needs and attitudes. Third, they provide insight into ways in which training programs can support enhanced local relevance and effectiveness of early childhood services implemented for children and families across diverse contexts.

幼儿教育和保育的全球目标是确保向所有儿童提供普遍的“优质”服务。实现这一目标需要一支准备充分的劳动力队伍，他们能够适应并在世界各地儿童成长的极其多样化的环境和社区中提供幼儿计划。然而，目前幼儿工作者严重短缺，特别是在“资源匮乏”和复杂的社区。也缺乏支持对此类工人进行适当培训的证据。作为回应，本文介绍了印度中东部社区幼儿工作者大规模培训计划的案例研究结果。总共培训了 650 名以社区为基础的乡村传播者，以向幼儿的父母提供响应迅速的护理包。超过 3 个月收集的数据强调了独特的基于情境、关怀和反思的培训方法如何导致培训参与者之间发生深刻的个人和职业变化。这些发现对于告知与全球幼儿期目标相关的政策和实践具有重要意义。首先，他们挑战了为培养这些劳动力而普遍采用的技术、计划培训方法。其次，他们证明了以人为本的培训方法具有潜在的变革性和长期影响，促进知识共享以了解当地需求和态度。第三，它们提供了有关培训计划如何支持在不同背景下为儿童和家庭实施的早期儿童服务提高当地相关性和有效性的方法。