By Mary E. Lyons, Tanya Espinosa Cordoba, Stephanie C. Sanders-Smith, and Michaelene M. Ostrosky
As NAEYC celebrates 100 years of promoting high-quality early learning, we acknowledge that its mission has been shaped by many notable figures in the field. Two such individuals, Drs. Bernard “Bud” Spodek and Lilian G. Katz, both served as president of NAEYC’s Governing Board while also shaping the field of early childhood education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and beyond. These leaders made significant contributions toward expanding how the field understands and responds to children through an asset-based lens:
Dr. Spodek advocated for the incorporation of special education content in early childhood teacher education programs. This was to ensure that future educators were prepared to provide inclusive settings for all children.
Dr. Katz advocated for children to learn through inquiry- and project-based work. This included children from low socioeconomic backgrounds enrolled in Head Start programs.
Their work resonates today. Early childhood educators face challenges in creating learning goals, environments, and experiences that honor children’s cultures, languages, and abilities (NASEM 2024). Educators must guard against individual biases and structural inequities by using strengths-based teaching approaches that recognize the importance of children’s multifaceted identities and assets (NAEYC 2019). These are vital to the richness of early childhood education and require strong leadership and advocacy on behalf of children and the professionals who care for and educate them (NAEYC 2019, 2020).
Bidirectional relationships between early childhood educators and organizations are key to this work. Practitioners need and benefit from robust professional organizations like NAEYC that represent their interests. Likewise, these organizations need a strong membership base and individuals who are willing to speak up for the collective. These reciprocal relationships transform and shape the work that early childhood educators do with children and their families and how that work is seen in society.
As individuals who worked with or were taught by Drs. Spodek and Katz at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, we had front row seats to observe their impact on early childhood education. In this article, we present biographical sketches of each, then highlight how their work resonates within the field today.
Drs. Spodek and Katz helped lead NAEYC across the years through their service to the association, their contributions to early childhood literature, and their roles as advisors and mentors to numerous students in higher education who are now making their own marks on the early childhood education field. Following, we consider these leaders’ initiation into early childhood education, recognize their influence in one state, and highlight their messages to NAEYC members.
Dr. Spodek, who passed away in 2017, was a national leader in early childhood education beginning in the mid-1960s. He served in many roles throughout his career. He entered the field by chance in 1952: As a psychology student, he completed observations at a preschool and ended up teaching there (Mendoza 2009). Once he began coteaching 4-year-olds, he remarked, “I decided I would take a class in early childhood education to learn what I’m supposed to be doing” (Mendoza 2009). From there, he went on to earn a master’s degree with certification and later a doctorate.
Dr. Spodek joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1965 and remained active into his emeritus years. He was nominated to serve as secretary of the National Association of Nursery Education (NANE) as it became the present-day NAEYC—an effort toward professionalizing the field (Mendoza 2009). He was president of NAEYC beginning in 1976.
At Urbana-Champaign (now one of the largest public universities in the United States), Dr. Spodek spearheaded the development of the early childhood teacher education program. In the 1990s, he was instrumental in revising the program to be more collaborative with the Department of Special Education’s early childhood special education (ECSE) program. This revision included requiring courses such as those that focused on ECSE curricula, methods, and assessment, thereby ensuring that students who earned Department of Curriculum and Instruction certification entered the workforce prepared to teach all children. Besides illustrating his position that children with disabilities deserved access to high-quality early childhood education, this curricular change reflected research that Dr. Spodek conducted throughout his career on teachers’ multifaceted roles. These included “curriculum designer, diagnostician, organizer of instruction, manager of learning, and counselor and advisor” (Lascarides & Hinitz 2011, 346).
As president of NAEYC, Dr. Spodek invited members to participate in discussions about effecting change through collective action. His From the President column in the March 1977 issue of Young Children marked a shift in NAEYC’s role in policy priorities and initiatives. Up to this point, the organization had served as a generator and disseminator of information: Staff were permitted to communicate with policymakers about the potential consequences of policy implementation, but NAEYC did not endorse specific policies.
However, a 1976 legislative change led to a new opportunity and a challenge for NAEYC. As Dr. Spodek wrote:
As an organization we have avoided directly influencing public policy. Such actions would have jeopardized our status as a tax-exempt organization. Recent tax legislation has seemingly changed this, and it might now be possible for us to take more direct action to influence public policy. This is something we will be studying as new guidelines and decisions are handed down regarding changes in the Internal Revenue Code. (3)
He weighed the pros and cons when he stated, “To become an advocate could create divisiveness. Yet to take no action might make us ineffectual” (3). He concluded his column with a call for members “with varied interests and concerns” to provide input as to whether NAEYC should begin to take firmer policy positions (3).
Later in his career, Dr. Spodek made a global impact when he founded the Pacific Early Childhood Education Research Association (PECERA) and served as its president from 2001 to 2008. PECERA is dedicated to the dissemination and support of research into early education in the Pacific. It brings early childhood educators and scholars in this region together for an annual conference and sponsors publication of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education, which began in 2007 under Dr. Spodek’s leadership. Dr. Spodek’s work with PECERA reflected his dedication not only to national issues in the field, but to global collaborations as well.
Dr. Katz was influential on many fronts in early childhood education. Her entry into the field began when, as a mother of three children who attended a cooperative nursery school, she “got the bug for teaching young children” while fulfilling her weekly contact time at the co-op (Daniel Katz, personal communication, 2025). She then sought formal education in early childhood education, eventually earning a doctorate from Stanford University.
Dr. Katz joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1968, where she also directed the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. This repository, part of the federally funded Educational Resources Information Center, closed in 2003. During her career, Dr. Katz was instrumental in creating Early Childhood Research Quarterly, which NAEYC jointly published with ERIC and Ablex Publishing Corporation. It became one of the leading research journals in early childhood education. Dr. Katz was the journal’s founding editor in 1986 and served as its first editor in chief for six years (Illinois Early Learning Project 2024).
Internationally, Dr. Katz is known for her work recontextualizing Deweyan progressivism and the educational project in Reggio Emilia, Italy, into a clear framework for project-based learning in early childhood.
Dr. Katz became NAEYC’s president in 1992, which was another period of political change that impacted early childhood education. In “A National Goals Wish List,” her March 1993 column in Young Children, she outlined five goals for consideration at the start of the Clinton administration. Though written as a personal letter to membership and not as a formal position of NAEYC, Dr. Katz asserted what she saw as steps forward for the early childhood education community. Her wish list included:
A national commitment to meeting the full cost of quality early childhood programs so that fair and decent compensation would be available to all who work with young children.
Resisting the temptation to justify national expenditures, priorities, goals, and other reforms on the grounds of being better able to compete with other countries.
Resisting the urge to justify social and educational programs in terms of cost effectiveness.
Adopting a national goal that all children become bilingual in English and Spanish.
Ensuring that children’s outcomes and futures are not predetermined at birth by their socioeconomic circumstances, gender, race, ethnicity, first language, nationality, or other factors out of their control.
These advocacy stances are as salient today as they were over 30 years ago, particularly the emphasis that all children receive high-quality education.
Dr. Katz continues to be recognized for her work on project-based learning, which emphasizes child inquiry, teacher facilitation, the importance of curiosity, and integrating content areas while fostering children’s knowledge and skills. She was a strong proponent—both in her scholarship and when working with educators—that teachers should build upon or cultivate children’s interest in a topic, decide if that topic was consistent with a learning curriculum’s larger goals, then encourage children to investigate phenomena, ask questions, seek answers, and share what they learned with others (Helm & Katz 2016; NASEM 2024).
Dr. Katz’s interest in and emphasis on fostering social competence is reflected in the numerous articles, book chapters, and books she authored. Social competence was a frequent topic addressed in her countless international presentations as well. Examples of this work include Fostering Children’s Social Competence: The Teacher’s Role (Katz & McClellan 1997) and Assessing Young Children’s Social Competence (McClellan & Katz 2001).
As NAEYC presidents, Drs. Spodek and Katz had a platform from which they could directly correspond with association members about pressing issues during their time in office. Their Young Children columns provide us with glimpses of how they navigated public policy, crafted positions, and took stances in service of the early childhood education field. At the same time, they had tremendous impacts on the profession more broadly.
We began writing this article at the start of 2025, with a new US president and new priorities for education. As was the case for Dr. Spodek in the early days of President Jimmy Carter’s administration and Dr. Katz as President Bill Clinton took office, we know that changes in educational policy and approaches will be made. During their time as NAEYC presidents and throughout their careers, these pioneers called upon educators and scholars to remember and prioritize our roles in relation to the lives of children and their families and in the continued and evolving development of the profession. Like Drs. Spodek and Katz, we carry our own hopes for the future of the field but also know that we must continue to advocate for children and those who educate and care for them within the contexts of federal, state, and local policies and daily life in early childhood settings.
The early childhood teacher education program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign continues to reflect the legacy of these two major figures. Our work in preparing future generations of educators continues to hold children at the center. Like Dr. Katz, we recognize that early childhood programs must design and implement quality curricula and practices and be staffed by educators who are well prepared to work alongside children in ways that build upon their assets and capabilities. Like Dr. Spodek, we recognize that we are working within larger systems and must understand and provide input into the policymaking decisions that impact our work and the lives of children and their families. We also affirm that children and families are directly impacted by systemic inequities (NAEYC 2019, 2020). To work with children and not recognize this fact is naïve and causes harm to those same children and their families. As stated in NAEYC’s position statement on developmentally appropriate practice, “Educators must be aware of, and counter, their own and larger societal biases that may undermine a child’s positive development and well-being” (2020, 7).
It is from this perspective and at this point in history that we urge others to look to the lessons of the past, recognize the importance of civic engagement (see, for example, Gartrell 2023), and remember the significance of our work with children and their families. As early childhood educators, we know the power of partnering with children to find answers and seeing children learn and grow in our care (Gandini 1993). We also know how policies and curricula directly impact this work (Brown 2008; Mitchell & Hogan 2023). While most of us will not become NAEYC presidents, each of us can help enhance the field as we work with children in our own ways and at local, state, and/or national levels.
To translate the legacies of Drs. Spodek and Katz, we recommend the following for those within the early childhood profession (and offer suggestions from the Young Children archives for more information):
Be curious. We often know that there is more to know. For instance, Dr. Spodek knew that he needed further education at the start of his career to learn about teaching young children. Dr. Katz became curious about young children by watching her own children and their classmates in a cooperative nursery school. Curiosity helps us to interrogate what we do not yet know and to grow as professionals regarding children’s learning, development, family strengths and needs, and more. Knowledge allows us to take informed advocacy stances. Reflective practice (Edge 2019) and teacher research (Baker 2020) are avenues that support educators in pursuing their curiosities with intentionality.
Be professionally engaged. Drs. Spodek and Katz were mentors to many, including classroom teachers, university students, and faculty colleagues. They were passionate, committed, prolific writers and the recipients of numerous awards, honors, and accolades. There are many entry points to expanding our professional engagement and connecting with colleagues beyond individual programs, schools, or institutions. These include reading and sharing Young Children articles with colleagues and families, joining NAEYC, and getting involved with local Affiliate networks (see naeyc.org/get-involved/membership/affiliates). Goble and Horm (2010) encouraged educators to take charge of their personal and professional development, and Mellott (2021) helps us consider engaging beyond institutional silos.
Be resistant to a one-size-fits-all approach. We must center children within the curriculum. Dr. Katz’s project approach (Katz & Chard 1989) is an example of how to plan and carry out in-depth investigations of a real-world topic that is important for children and their learning. When engaged in curriculum and lesson planning, we encourage educators to find ways to incorporate children’s interests and backgrounds and to provide authentic hands-on experiences. In addition to the project approach, play-based emergent curriculum (Schmidt & Mussman 2023) and anti-bias education (Derman-Sparks & Edwards 2019) offer other ways of conceptualizing multifaceted approaches to child-centered curriculum design.
Be observers of children. We must attend to children’s individual characteristics, families, communities, and cultures. In the 1990s, Dr. Spodek worked to incorporate special education into early childhood education licensure so that inclusion was part of every teacher’s expertise. Meanwhile, in her March 1993 Young Children column, Dr. Katz called for all children in the US to become bilingual in English and Spanish and for children’s outcomes not to be predetermined by their circumstances early in life. Both Drs. Spodek and Katz advocated for educators to see the potential within every child and to be equipped to teach to children’s competencies. Today, it is as essential as ever to see children and their families through an asset-based lens and design curricula that honor diversity, focus on equity, and foster inclusion. Educators’ observations of children’s learning and ways that children’s assets enhance curriculum can be brought to light through documentation, which illustrates stories of classroom life (Shabazian 2016; Escamilla 2021).
Drs. Spodek and Katz remained dedicated to their work and were present on our Illinois campus well into their emeritus years. As we wrote this article, we acknowledged that it did not feel as if these two figures had ever truly retired. During the time they were active, the intensity of their commitment to early childhood education and the importance and respect they held for the work of the profession’s scholars, teacher educators, and practitioners were unwavering.
As we reflect on the past 100 years—from the founding of NANE to its evolution to NAEYC to the present day—one thing we can be sure of is that the early childhood profession will continue to evolve. We urge all of our colleagues to reflect on their own work, to consider how they can advocate for children and their families, to mentor colleagues, and to promote positive forward momentum. We do this to honor the legacy of such luminaries as Dr. Bud Spodek and Dr. Lilian G. Katz, but our greater calling is to continue to serve young children and their families.
Mary E. Lyons, PhD, is an assistant professor and the director of teacher education at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Prior to her work as a teacher educator, she taught for 11 years in early primary grades (K–3). Her scholarship centers around daily life in classrooms. melyons@knox.edu
Tanya Espinosa Cordoba, PhD, is an associate professor of education in the College of Education at Anderson University in South Carolina, where she teaches foundations courses and contemporary issues in children’s literature. She studied under Dr. Lilian Katz and received the inaugural Spodek Dissertation award in early childhood education during her graduate program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Tcordoba@andersonuniversity.edu
Stephanie C. Sanders-Smith, PhD, is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction and the Yew Chung-Bernard Spodek Scholar in Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. ssmit37@illinois.edu
Michaelene M. Ostrosky, PhD, is the Grayce Wicall Gauthier Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Special Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She worked in academia for 30-plus years. Prior to that, she taught individuals with disabilities. Throughout her career, Dr. Ostrosky enjoyed mentoring graduate students and conducting research in inclusive early childhood settings. ostrosky@illinois.edu
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