Our Mission
Our mission is to promote quality childhood care and education for Oregon's children and families by providing a professional development system for practitioners.
We commit to social justice and cultural responsiveness by recognizing the diverse input of Oregon’s early learning professionals to guide our policies and practices.
Land Acknowledgement
Portland State University is located in the heart of downtown Portland, Oregon in Multnomah County. We honor the Indigenous people whose traditional and ancestral homelands we stand on, the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tumwater, Watlala bands of the Chinook, the Tualatin Kalapuya and many other indigenous nations of the Columbia River. It is important to acknowledge the ancestors of this place and to recognize that we are here because of the sacrifices forced upon them. In remembering these communities, we honor their legacy, their lives, and their descendants.
Our Commitment to Equity
We are committed to inclusive practices and policies that promote a socially just and culturally responsive approach to our mission.
We believe the diversity of the early childhood workforce is a source of strength, inspiration, innovation, and happiness. People carry with them the wealth of their values, beliefs, traditions, abilities, and customs. Diversity, then, enriches and strengthens our field and must be supported.
We bear responsibility for promoting social justice and equity through our leadership of Oregon's early childhood professional standards. Acknowledging that dominant cultures have historically oppressed certain groups, we aspire to foster and promote respect and compassion for all races, cultures, ethnicities, nationalities, sexualities, genders, abilities, and social classes. We devote particular attention to the disenfranchised, marginalized, and oppressed.
We seek to include and invite a variety of communities in helping to inform our policies and practices. To increase our own awareness and consciousness, we assume a posture of learning and professional development in culturally responsive practices and social equity.
This is what our commitment looks like in action:
- Seeking feedback from members of a wide variety of communities so voices from all groups of people can participate.
- Widely recruiting and actively sustaining diverse staff.
- Creating a safe and positive work space.
- Attending and providing culturally responsive professional development.
- Developing and promoting culturally responsive standards and policies.
- Advocating and seeking culturally responsive and equity-guided input in discussions.