Description

This project will contribute to the professional development of early educators (approximately 120) from 6 countries (Greece, Finland, Denmark, Portugal, Romania, Cyprus) who will be trained in using the Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale-R (ECERS-R) that evaluates the quality of early childhood environment. These educators will acquire the skills to work as assessors in using ECERS-R and develop skills for an effective self-evaluation. This proposal will also combine the professional development of educators with the implementation of ICTs with the use of a web-platform with synchronous and asynchronous sessions, thus enhancing their e-literacy skills. The web-platform and the web-site of the project, even after its completion, both in English, will provide opportunities for further communication and cooperation among educators.
 Early educators from 9 educational districts and academics from 9 Universities will participate. The academics will be responsible for the training of educators, based on a well-developed training package, created for the needs of this project. This package will also contain the translated ECERS-R scale and its user’s manual in Greeks, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish & Romanian. This process will enhance trainers’ experience concerning the evaluation of early childhood environments, will widen their expertise in several dimensions of teachers and will enable academics to implement this training to other early educators.
 An innovative output will be an interactive e-book, containing:(a) The comparative study concerning the quality of the 6 early childhood educational systems, and (b) A wide range of “Good Practices” for educators. Both outputs constitute an innovative action towards the improvement of early education across Europe.
 International academic and educational community will benefit from all products of this project (workshops, scientific papers, presentations, etc.), which will be available on the project’s web-site.

Goals

Aim (1): enhancement of the professional development of early educators Aim (2): implementation of ICTs in the training of early educators Aim (3): evaluation of the early childhood education environments of six countries