An early childhood educator, former schoolteacher and principal, and is the first author of The Creative Curriculum LearningGames, Partners for Learning, and Conversation Books, educational resources that have been used widely in the United States. He is a Fellow of the Frank Porter Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a research professor at Georgetown University, and senior adviser for Curriculum and Research at Teaching Strategies. In addition to his work in the US, Dr. Sparling has done curriculum development, training, and intervention in orphanages in Romania.