National Pyjama Day 2023

Erasmus+

European Projects

Early Childhood Ireland have been involved in several Erasmus+ KA2 programmes over the past number of years.  This involvement allowed Early Childhood Ireland the opportunity to be involved in a range of strategic partnerships at a European level.

The actions under KA2 make it possible for organisations from different participating countries to work together, to develop, share and transfer best practices and innovative approaches in the fields of education, training, and youth.

The following is a list of projects that Early Childhood Ireland have been involved in since 2016:

New Horizons: Léargas Forum 2021

Valchild – ongoing 2018 – 2021

TRAP – completed 2018 – 2021

Child Centred Competences for ECEC – ongoing 2019 – 2022

Interpreting Child-Centredness to support Quality & Diversity in ECEC – Completed 2017 – 2019

Child in Mind – completed 2016- 2019

Sequences – completed 2016 – 2019

Enhancing Quality in Family Day Care (Childminding) 2022-2024

VALCHILD – Validation of Non-Formal and Informal Learning for Childminders

VALCHILD is a KA2 European funded project which is currently running from October 2018 and is due to be completed by March 2021.  Our partners are from, France, Greece, Portugal and The Netherlands.  Early Childhood Ireland is the lead agency on this project.

The VALCHILD project aims to increase the quality, supply and accessibility of vocational education and training for childminders by providing guidance and resources for personalised learning pathways.

For further information www.valchild.eu

TRAP – Enhancing Transition Practices in Early Childhood Education

TRAP was a KA2 European funded project which ran from October 2018 to March 2021.  Our partners were from Croatia, Iceland and Sweden.

The project aims to enhance and extend understandings of the practice required for transitions from ECEC contexts to primary schools and develop online modules to support learners’ continuous professional development. The project focuses on transitional practices in four European countries.

The online modules are available here:

For further information http://omep.hr/trap/

Child Centred Competences for Early Childhood Education & Care

This is a KA2 Erasmus + Project which runs from November 2019 to October 2021

This project is an extension to a strategic partnership between the University of Plymouth; Via University College, Denmark; University of Zagreb, Croatia; University Da Coruna, Spain; University de Trieste, Italy; the British Association for ECE, United Kingdom; University of Babes Bolyai, Romania and Early Childhood Ireland that has enhanced understandings of child-centredness.

This project will establish a child-centred competences framework to support students in the self-evaluation of competences whilst on placement during higher education ECEC initial training. Open access, online training will tackle the mismatch between identifying the importance of child-centeredness and how this is realised in initial ECEC training.

To facilitate the future employability of students, the training will be developed with the ECEC sector, whilst developing resources for ECEC mentors to facilitate them in supporting students and newly qualified staff in developing their child-centred competences.

Child-centred diversity in quality early childhood education and care

Project Partners – Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK.  Project timeline December 2017 to December 2019. 

Target Group – those who work in ECEC, it will incorporate those with minimal training to those with Masters’ level qualifications.

Aim – 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 improve understandings of what it means to be a skilled and competent child centred ECEC practitioner working with increasingly diverse groups of children.

You can read about this project here https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/child-centred-diversity-in-quality-early-childhood-education-and-care

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/ChildCentredDiversity/

Child in Mind

Child in Mind was a KA2 Erasmus + project which ran from October 2016 to May 2019.  Our partners were from PROMEA, Greece; University of Macerata, Italy;  Narodne centrum pre rovnost prilezitosti, Slovakia, and Florida University, Spain.

The objectives of the project were to implement a system of professionalisation for childminders, across the social spectrum. In particular, the partners sought both to improve the access of informal childminders to training, developing open educational resources tailored to their needs, and to introduce a modern training delivery method, enabling learners to follow flexible learning pathways to acquire  the skills relevant to early childhood care in the home.

The Child in Mind course is freely available to childminders or anyone who would like to develop their knowledge, skills and competencies in areas related to delivering home-based education and care for children under 6 years of age

Child in Mind can be accessed through open learning via this link  https://www.openlearning.com

Sequences

Sequences is a KA2 European funded project which ran from November 2016 to April 2019.  Our partners were from, Italy, Lithuania, Romina, Malta, Hungry and the European Parents Assoc.

The aim of the Sequences project was to improve quality in European ECEC settings by developing a toolkit for self and external evaluation of quality. The direct involvement of ECEC providers and relevant stakeholders as quality development partners ensured an effective bottom-up approach to this work.  An accompanying Training Curriculum for managers or trainers and Multi-Stakeholders Guidelines for the implementation of the toolkit, were also developed as part of this toolkit.

For further information https://sequences-project.eu