With the implementation of the project, we wanted to achieve an exchange between the responsible bodies in the field of early childhood education (universities at different levels, work areas) with the aim of developing a common set of tools to promote the cultural competences of students that can be offered to the respective study programmes. Our initial aim was to critically reflect on our own ethnocentric, Western European, industrial society perspective. In a further step, to enter an exchange with European partner universities with childhood education degree programmes on concepts and methods for the further development of these perspectives on education in order to subsequently develop common democratic values and educational concepts for a future global and diversified society with its local characteristics.
The aim of the project ‘Reflecting Cultures of Education - Transnationality and Cultural Awareness in Early Childhood Education Programmes (RECOdE)’ was to address the shift towards a migration society and its consequences for the training of early childhood education specialists at university level through the (further) development of an ECE curriculum. On the one hand, universities are increasingly faced with a culturally diverse student body and, on the other, graduates of ECE degree programmes are faced with growing challenges in dealing with a diversity of family cultures in practice. The great challenge for societies is not only to accept this diversity of local educational cultures, but to incorporate these different cultural perspectives into education to create a new common ground for co-operation in education under the priority of inclusion and diversity. For this reason, higher education in the field of early childhood education needs a consistent study programme for basic and advanced cultural competences that includes different cultural perspectives on education along globalisation and cultural heritage.