Practices

Thematic Field: ECEC
Early Years and Equality – Observing and living each other's practice
in Early Years to inform quality development
Comenius Regio Partnership
Institutions involved:
Partner Regio 1
Coordinator organisation: Staffordshire County Council
Partner organisations: Stafford Children's Centre
UK – United Kingdom Centre for Research in Early Childhood
Partner Regio 2
Coordinator organisation: City of Antwerp
Partner organisations: Stedelijk kinderdagverblijf (Children's Day Care Centre De
BE - Belgium Duveltjes)
Kinderdagverblijf Kadee (Childre's Day Care Centre Kadee)
KDV 't Folieke
Basisschool Unescoschool
GO! Onderwijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap
Key words: Quality, Diversity
Description:
The overall purpose of the project was to improve quality in early year's provisions
and settings and aimed to examine what quality overall means and in particular in
relation to equality and diversity within provisions, early language acquisition,
transition points in a child's learning and development.
The exchanges of staff (job shadowing weeks in both regions) offered early years
practitioners in Flanders, Belgium and in England a unique opportunity to have firsthand
experiences of early years practice in the other country, and to explore with
colleagues in the other country aspects of practice and the reasoning behind it.
Proactive and mutual reflection help practitioners and their counterparts in the
other country, as well as their colleagues ‘at home’ to attain maximum benefit from
collaborative reflection. The learning and the improvements in practice thus acquired
benefit all the children of the schools involved.
At the start of the project a toolkit was produced to give information to practitioners
about observation and reflection and it provided a coherent framework and common
language to collect practitioners’ ideas, thoughts and questions. The revised toolkit is
and free for use by others although practitioners should be given instructions and
supported by their managers before, during and after the whole process of using the
toolkit.
Duration:
2010-2012
Webpage:
http://eyeproject.eu
http://www.europeansharedtreasure.eu/detail.php?id_project_base=2010-1-GB1-
COM13-06198
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