Portland State College of Education: Oregon Center for Career Development in Childhood Care and Education

About Us

OCCD provides leadership in the development and operation of integrated and statewide professional development standards and systems. OCCD promotes professional development to achieve high quality care and education for children, and creates and supports training and education.

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.

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.

Our Partners

The Oregon Professional Development System is an integrated and comprehensive statewide framework that weaves the childhood care and education profession together. The Oregon Professional Development System involves many agencies and programs that provide supports for professionals.

The profession of Childhood Care and Education includes all types of care and education for young children, before/after school, and summer care programs for school age children. Professionals in childhood care and education make a difference every day in their work with children and youth. High quality programs and services for children, youth and families result in the positive growth and development of children and youth, and a stronger social, educational and economic future.

Our primary professional development partners: