TRACKS - TRAnsitions Children and Kindergarten

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

The aim of TRACKs is to provide high quality learning opportunities for several target groups, namely:

  1. ECEC professionals currently working with children aged 2,5 to 6 years,
  2. future ECEC professionals such as pre-school teachers and Kindergarten personnel still in teacher training.

 

Our approach envisions dynamic knowledge and practice exchange between the two target groups in the three countries involved in the project, Poland, Belgium and Italy. Furthermore, the project will benefit from the cross-sectional and cross-country exchange between the ECEC professionals across three European states. This transnational approach fosters an improved quality of learning, assuming that the international contexts can feed into each other, exchange solutions and compare the 'best practice' responses to particular ECEC challenges. To achieve this goal, each key country-partner cooperates with one teacher training institution as a partner and – in a later phase - two ECEC institutions to cooperate within the realm of the project.

We distinguish three phases in our project: working with ECEC professionals (first phase), working with students in teacher training institutes (second phase), ECEC institutions and their trainers/educators in general (third phase). During the first phase we will work intensively with ECEC professionals in their own contexts and daily interactions with children, by means of the video coaching technique, in different sessions. During this phase we will develop an experimental toolbox to be used by the students in the second phase (guided by their lecturers). In this phase the development of the final toolbox will be started. In the last phase we will organize 'train the trainer' sessions, to promote and disseminate the final toolbox. Each country makes his own toolbox based on common starting points, objectives and pedagogical principles, which will be translated into English to get a wider audience in Europe (and outside).

It is also worth noting that the project has a broader impact and outreach to the larger community of ECEC professionals and students in teacher training. The tangible results of the project focus on usability and practical assistance in the daily practice, especially in the sense of handling inequalities, non-take up and heterogeneity.