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Quality - 3C Child (cheerful, courageous, creative child)?

2016-1-EE01-KA201-0173052016Strategic Partnerships for school educationfinalized
Countries: EE|LV|PT|HR|EL · Grant: €138,846
Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project summary

Summary of the ProjectThe project of the European partnership are related to the various national early childhood educational authorities. Estonia is the coordinating country. The partner countries are Croatia, Greece, Latvia and Portugal with whom are also considered negotiations with. The complier of the project is the NGO AEECEL. The project team has 17 leaders in early childhood education from various regions of the Estonia.We value the inclusive quality management trough lifelong learning. This will ensure children’s well-being and the professionalism of the workers. The most important areas of the early childhood education are learning and upbringing processes, which lays the foundation for the establishment of the child in a positive picture of myself and the child development in various fields. For the reason in that area will prioritize the evaluation and feedback, which can be improved trough self-analysis of their activities.The aim of the project is to increase the professionalism of the leaders in early childhood education in the learning and upbringing process for internal evaluation, and to develop quality standards and evaluation criteria of the learning and upbringing process, which will align the quality of the evaluation.In the course of the project we share the Estonian authorities and external partners good practice. We create together quality standards and evaluation criteria of the learning and upbringing process, paying attention to the process of evaluation.Objectives The objective of the partnership is the development of internal valuation of innovative learning and upbringing process in the form of quality standard and valuation criteria and the exchange of experience according to needs and objectives: • improvement of professionalism of pre-school managers for the management and evaluation of the learning and upbringing process;
• creation and implementation of the innovative quality standard and evaluation criterias of the learning and upbringing process;
• introduction of the skills of external partners to enable better management of children with different cultural backgrounds and language;
• consolidation of the cooperation network in early childhood authorities via sharing best practices;
Activities 1. The logo of the project is created within the organisation by arranging a children’s drawing contest. • development of questionnaires for different target groups (leaders, employees, parents), which help to establish the understanding of high quality learning and upbringing process (forming the basis of the created quality standard). • observation of the development of 3 children (a girl, a boy, a multi-cultural child) during one year (development portfolio with determined work assignments, the interview with the child, observation of playing games, etc). 2. Creation of the web page for the project ( e-Twinning).3. Each institution carries out a questionnaire (leaders, employees and parents) and the consolidation of data obtained from the questionnaire. The results are distributed among all partners by the means of IT. 4. Comparison of different quality standards and bringing out differences and similarities. Creation of common quality standard.5. Creation of valuation criteria on the level of the authority based on the quality standard. Recording of the creation process. Sharing the common valuation criteria with all partners by the means of IT and finding the common part.6. Project training by external partners: presentation, analysis and finding the common part by watching videos and PowerPoint presentations of the different parts of learning and upbringing process. 7. International meeting to provide valuation to the first project year and the adjustment of objectives and assignments if necessary. Conference in Estonia. Presentation of the project collection.8. Project training by external partners: creation of the quality standard and the valuation criteria of the learning and upbringing process. 9. Implementation of the created quality standard and the valuation criteria of the learning and upbringing process in different countries and recording of the process by the means of IT. 10.Sharing of different documents of the learning and upbringing process. 11. International meeting to give the final valuation to the project. Bring out sustainable elements (update of the blog, report ...) etc. Results• Has been carried out the learning and upbringing process quality standard study of the various interest groups;• Has been completed an innovative quality standard and evaluation criteria of the learning and upbringing process, what can be use in various European countries;• Early childhood education leaders are in control and more competent reviewers in the learning and upbringing process, and are aware of the various European countries internal evaluation of educational systems.

Final report summary

Project name “Quality - 3C Child (cheerful, courageous, creative child)?” and the initiator of the project is the Association of Estonian Early Childhood Education Leaders. Project started 1th September 2016 and finished at 31th of August 2018. Project partners are early childhood experts. We value the inclusive quality management trough lifelong learning. This will ensure children’s well-being and the professionalism of the workers. The most important areas of the early childhood education are learning and upbringing processes, which lays the foundation for the establishment of the child in a positive picture of myself and the child development in various fields. For the reason in that area will prioritize the evaluation and feedback, which can be improved trough self-analysis of their activities. Our project had two goals: Early childhood leaders’ enhancement of professionalism through leading and assessing the learning process in a multicultural environment. Creating and implementing quality standard and value indicator in innovative learning and growing process. In our project we had 6 partners: The pre-school educational institution “Pienenīte” of Slampe, Latvia, has experience in work with Romany children incorporation in the learning process since 2009. With the support of the Directorate of Education in Chania, as a team, the kindergarten 11th Nipiagogio Chanion collaborated with other European leaders to increase our professionalism, working and be trained with them, involving pupils, teachers and parents. Directorate had microteaching – was relevant in Greek education system. The CREF from Portugal as an association of schools, CREF organize continuous training courses for our teachers, especially in what concerns creativity methodologies, the use of ICT and the kindergarten management, motivation for the creation. Kindergarten JARUN from Zagreb, Croatia are an experienced and big kindergarten, various professions (teachers, psychologists). Multidisciplinary approach in educational work, different specific knowledge of different expert associates in kindergarten (psychologist, pedagogue, special needs expert). UT -the University of Tartu offers the highest level academic studies (PhD) in the field of Education. In 2003-04 in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Local Authorities and Educational Leaders the University of Tartu organized a large scale implementation study of the National Curriculum Framework for early education. During our project we had opportunity to visit and see many very different early childhood facilities and learn more from all project partners’ experiences and find common problems or solutions to work with preschool children. With the help of trainings and study tours, the projects participants’ knowledge of education- and schooling processes raised. During the project work raised English language and IKT usage skills. In cooperation with the University of Tartu and all partners we developed a Wind Rose model to discuss and assess the different aspects of quality of a kindergarten. All our partners carried out the survey of the quality of learning process among different interest groups (leaders, teachers and children) using this model. The Estonian team carried out the second survey when the all interest groups evaluated their own kindergartens; according to survey results we created the model of learning and upbringing process quality standards and evaluation criteria.

Project partners (7)