let's Fathers Come to Preschool (LFCTP) is a Erasmus+ KA2 strategic partnership project on the field of higher education between Baskent University from TR, and Gothenburg University from Sweden, Stricting Drio from NL and Life-Long Learning Association from TR. Today, father involvement (FI) is now accepted as an important factor that lead healthy child developement. Mainly father involvement research focused on FI in children's overal lives. Parent involvement, as mostly focused issue in education, is equated with mother involvement in many European countries since mothering is associated with child care while fathering is associated with breadwinning. This situation becomes more visible when the early childhood education is under the consideration since the target age group of early childhood education is 0-8 years old, a period in which children need more care when compared with further educational steps. Unfortunately, lack of higher level of FI resulted in negative consequences on the part of children, fathers, mothers and ECEC programs. For instance, previous research have indicated that high father involvement resulted in less school-drop outs, higher self-esteem, higher academic achievement among children, better fathering ability among fathers, better feeling of being supported among mothers and completly actualizing their vision regarding involving parents into education for ECEP. When considered these positive impact of FI, it is clear that there is a need to increase FI in ECEC settings.Main objective of this project is increaseing the visibility of father involvement in early childhood education. To reach this aim, this project have the purpose of increasing early childhood educators' awareness of the importance of father involvement encouraging them to involve fathers into their educational process through increasing their feeling of competence for involving fathers, increasing the father-friendliness of early childhood education settings. For this purpose, in this project two main intellectual outputs, Father Involvement Guidebook and Handbook of Father Involvement Activities for Early Childhood Education Programs, will be developed with the shared work of all partners. In addition to these intellectual outputs, a project web-site and learning platform that will be used by ECE teachers, fathers, mothers and scholars interested in father involvement will be developed.. Moreover, by using social media devices such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, project process and results will be disseminated to public, relative stakeholders and informal partner organizations. Target group of the project is 1830 people; 30 teachers, 600 children and 1200 parents. through multiplier events it will be aimed to reach 300 individuals (200 in Turkey, 50 in Sweden and 50 in Netherland) who are project stakeholders, early childhood educators, candidate early childhood educators adn scholar from different universities in the field of early childhood education. In addition to these individuals, through project web-site and learning platform and social media groups it is expected to reach at least 5000 early childhood educators and parents. During the project there will be five transnational meetings, two training activities, one short term learning activity in Sweden and one long-term teaching activity. Through transnational meetings, a continous communication will be established between partner organizations. In addition to these meetings, partner organizations will conduct online meetings once in four months to encure budget, time and quality management. Short term learning activity will be organized for early childhood educators in pilot pre-schools from Netherland and Turkey. Through this learning activity, it is aimed to provide opportunity for early childhood educators to observe good practices in Sweden, trains them through a workshop on father involvement organized by Gothenburg university and enlarge early childhood educators vision of father involement through visiting different early childhood settings and their father involvement activities. Two intellectual outputs developed during the project will be prepared in English but they also be translated into Turkish, Dutch and Swedish to increase the people who can benefit from the outputs. These intellectual outputs will be presented through project web-site for the use of target population (early childhood educators, fathers, mothers and scholars interested in father involvement). Expected impacts of the project includes, increasing early childhood educators competence of including fathers into early childhood education, increasing fathers' awareness the importance of their involvement, increasing mothers' knoaladge on their own impact on fathers' involvement, increasing father-friendliness of early childhood education and overal making the issue of father involvement in ECEP more visible in partner countiries and European Union.
Studies showed that high father involvement supports children’s language and cognitive development, psychological well-being, social and emotional development. It was also indicated that high father involvement in education decreases early school-drop out- one of the main aims of European Union-, increase children's academic achievement, self-esteem, self-confidence and all developmental abilities. Traditional gender role of mothers attitudes leads pre-schools to overemphasize the involvement of mothers while spending insufficient effort to involve fathers. Although there are some efforts and studies, father involvement in early childhood programs is not widespread. Main objective of this project was to increase the visibility of father involvement in early childhood education. Therefore it was aimed to increase father involvement through increasing early childhood educators' awareness of the importance of father involvement and supporting all adults in early childhood education settings. Within this context, the purpose of the project was to provide resources for teachers to use while organizing father/parent involvement activities which supports high involvement of fathers. Başkent University from Turkey, Sticting Drio from Netherlands, University of Gothenburg from Sweden and Life Long Education Association from Turkey were the partners of the project.The aim of the project was reached through three main intellectual outputs: Father Involvement Guidebook , Father Involvement Activities Handbook and project web site/learning platform. The Father Involvement Guidebook was prepared to inform early childhood educators about the importance of father involvement and the ways to create a father-friendly early childhood settings and to help teachers provide parent education classes related to father involvement. Father Involvement Activities Handbook was prepared for teachers to include father-centered parent involvement activities in their educational programs. The web page/learning platform of the project was opened to share all information and the outputs of the project. The forum was opened in the project web site in order to initiate and increase the connection of teachers to share their information and activity suggestions or father involvement. By using social media devices such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, project process and results were disseminated to public and relative stakeholders. All intellectual outputs were prepared in English and translated to Swedish, Dutch and Turkish. The main target group of the project was teachers, fathers, mothers and children. The effectiveness of the project activities on teachers, fathers and mothers were measured with pre and post analysis. The interviews were semi-structured with the pre-test questions focusing on the views and perceptions of father engagement in Turkish, Dutch and Swedish preschools, and the post-test questions focusing on change or improvement in parental and father engagement. The children were asked to talk about and draw the activities that they enjoy doing with their fathers/parents before and after project activities. The results showed an increase in father/parent engagement in the short term and positive perspective towards activities and implementation of some activities in future. Transnational meetings and online meetings were effective to increase collaboration and then quality of project. Long and short term learning activities provided opportunity for early childhood educators to observe good practices and enlarged their vision and knowledge of father involvement . Multiplier events provided the dissemination of the project outputs and possibilities to work with other stakeholders in this area. Public institutions, visual and written media, academicians and organizations are activated to get involved in the project. The teachers of preschools were informed about the project web site, social media and fliers. The media were informed about our work. With the project, an increase in early childhood educators competence of including fathers into early childhood education, increase in fathers' awareness the importance of their involvement, increase in mothers' knowledge on their own impact on fathers' involvement, increase in father-friendliness of early childhood education was obtained and this created an impact with father involvement in Early Childhood Education more visible in partner countries .The dissemination activities will continue in future in earlychildhood education programs in universities, in different preschools, NGOs and govermental organisations using project outputs. It is believed that produced intellectual outputs of this project will be used effectively in all European countries to increase fathers' involvement in early childhood education settings that will highly support the children’s development.