Alongside the quality of the workforce, ‘child-centredness’ is often highlighted as important for the provision of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC). It underpins many national curricula and guidelines but, on closer inspection, has different interpretations - to respond to the children's needs and interests, to support their development, to offer them children choice and agency – which reflect the context and history of ECEC services. There are potential tensions between the different interpretations of 'child-centredness' and what these mean for the support of children with different needs or from diverse backgrounds. Questions arise as to how, in reality, ALL children can be at the centre of pedagogical practice, how ALL children’s developmental needs can be supported and whether democratic approaches can be combined with a focus on tracking individuals' progress against developmental milestones. Furthermore, in supporting the needs of children from communities towards the margins of society, there are strong arguments against adopting an approach centred exclusively on the child’s own interests or cultural background in favour of an approach that offers child and family a bridge between their home community and the mainstream society. This project aims to investigate ‘child-centredness’ as a component of high quality ECEC to support children’s development, particularly those from diverse backgrounds. Through taking part in specially designed training modules, practitioners from a wide range of early childhood contexts will develop awareness of the different facets of child-centredness. The aim for these modules is to enable participants to develop greater confidence in their own capacity to address the individual needs, rights and interests of diverse learners, while working within national curricula and guidelines. The project will start with analysis of existing academic literature and examples of practice of child-centred approaches to supporting diverse learners in six countries: - Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK – with different structures, histories and approaches to ECEC. The analysis will inform an assessment of training needs, which in turn will lead to the development of innovative approaches to extend and develop educators’ child-centred competences. This will include transnational online modules, webinars and video capture of workshops, supported by a toolkit of resources offering advice and guidance on supporting diversity and child-centred practice. Questionnaires and reflective writing tasks will both evaluate the success of the modules while probing practitioners' understandings of child-centred practice and what these might mean in practice. Evaluation of the modules will also explore the effect of the training on both the quality of ECEC and the effectiveness of support for children with diverse needs. It is anticipated that the findings from the module evaluation will be pivotal for informing future European Commission recommendations on the provision of ECEC services, building on the existing ECEC Quality Framework. Finally a Manual of Good Practice will draw on all stages of the project and provide an easily accessible document that offers both interpretations of child-centred practice and examples from practice. The manual will include activities and guides to support the wider ECEC community to consider their own understandings of child-centred practice and how it relates to their views on quality ECEC and supporting diverse groups of children. Project findings will be shared through presentations at academic and professional conferences and publication in journal and professional magazines. The modules will be freely available as open access educational resources with potential longer term benefits. Through taking part in the project, practitioners will have opportunities to engage with learning materials developed in different contexts, prompting them to reflect more deeply on their own practice through making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. This will help them to develop their understanding of the underlying complexity of the familiar term 'child-centred' and to engage with inclusion as systemic, transformative process creating learning environments that can better respond to the needs of all learners.
Alongside the quality of the workforce, ‘child-centredness’ is often highlighted as important for the provision of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC). It underpins many national curricula and guidelines but, on closer inspection, has different interpretations reflecting the context and history of ECEC services: romantic - to respond to the children's needs and interests; developmental - to support their development; democratic - to offer children choice and agency. This project sought to explore potential tensions and synergies between these different interpretations of 'child-centredness' and what these might mean for educators supporting children with different needs or from diverse backgrounds. Questions arise as to how, in reality, ALL children can be at the centre of pedagogical practice, how ALL children’s developmental needs can be supported and whether democratic approaches can be combined with a focus on tracking individuals' progress against milestones. Furthermore, when supporting children from communities towards the margins of society, there are strong arguments against adopting an approach centred exclusively on the child’s own interests or cultural background in favour of an approach that also offers the child and family a bridge between their home community and mainstream society. We carried out a review of the literature which illustrated that diversity in ECEC applies just as much to ECEC services as it does to the children who attend them. ECEC services in Europe differ in structural aspects, such as in age of children, staff ratios and qualifications, as well as in histories, traditions and philosophies. Interpreting child-centredness to support quality and diversity, therefore, means also recognising the diversity of ECEC services and its workforce. Acknowledging the diversity of ECEC context both across and within countries shaped the development of a new observation framework designed to capture examples of child-centred practice in the six project countries (Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK). We recorded structural features about the ECEC settings where the observations took place, and asked educators to reflect on principles of child-centredness derived from our literature review, notably learning through play; respecting children’s needs, interests, strengths and capacities; recognising children’s learning strategies and uniqueness; respecting children as capable learners and decision makers; respecting children's diversity, individuality, family background and culture. The 44 observations from ECEC settings illustrated both the diversity of ECEC contexts in Europe, but also commonalities in educators' support for children's interests. The observations showed how those working in ECEC balance the different concepts of child-centredness as they respond to individual children. Furthermore, observations of group based activities and the design of ECEC environments demonstrated that often educators were being children-centred, responding to the multiple needs and interests of the diverse groups of children. The observations enabled the project team to refine their understanding of child-centredness as encompassing the role of the educator, the pedagogical environment, work with families and educators' image of the child. The refined understanding informed an online questionnaire that explored how ECEC educators understood the concept of child-centredness and how confident they were in enacting child-centredness, as well as identifying associated training needs. The questionnaire was administered in the six participating countries, generating 928 responses. Perhaps not surprisingly, responses showed that more experienced educators were more confident in their child-centred practice than newly qualified educators. This was taken into account when designing three online courses to support educators in child-centred practice; a buddy system was recommended whereby more experienced educators were encouraged to work through the materials with less experienced peers. The three courses reflected the three tenets of child-centreness, offering a range of resources to support educators to reflect on their practice. From the six participating countries, 338 educators participated in the three courses. Evaluations completed by 211 participants demonstrated that the courses were easy to access, with good materials, and were effective in supporting educators to reflect on their practice and learn new strategies for work with children.The different components of the project informed an open access e-book which draws together key findings from the literature review, observations and course content, organised around the three themes of child-centredness. The courses will be refined and updated in response to participants' evaluations as part of a new project, ensuring their continued use by ECEC educators and students and extending their reach to other countries.