Funded by

Erasmus+, KA2

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Nicola Catellani
Network Coordinator - SERN

SIA-ProD

An Innovative Self-Improvement Approach for the Professional Development of Early Educators

About the project

Quality in ECEC is gaining an increasingly prominent position on European and national policy agendas. One of the most important characteristics that has been associated with high quality of ECEC provision, is the strengthening of the skills (professional development) of ECEC staff. The problem that the partnership has identified stands in the fact that the training procedures of in-service educators are not always accurate regarding the needs of educators or easy to organize and implement without taking educators out of their classrooms.The SIA-ProD project aspires to develop an innovative approach for the professional development of early educators. This partnership supports the notion of self-assessment and self-improvement, upon which the whole project will be based.

The partnership consists of 6 partners from 4 EU countries. The organizations involved in the partnership are: 3 universities, 1 research institute, 1 local authority managing pre-schools, and 1 teacher training organization that is also a transnational network of local and regional authorities.

Objectives

The project aims to provide to early childhood educators the methodology and the instruments for self-evaluation and self-improvement with an effective, personalized, easy and low cost way. To achieve this goal, the project has 4 objectives:

  1. To transfer, adapt and implement an innovative technique named Discrete Choice Modeling (DCM) that gave to Dan McFadden who introduced DMC, a Nobel prize in 2000 in Economic Sciences in the field of early childhood education, and more specifically for the professional development of early childhood educators. DCM is widely used in marketing, finance, biostatistics and other scientific areas (Ben-Akiva, & Lerman, 1985), while its use in education is sparse.
  2. To promote the utility of self-assessment as a powerful tool and prerequisite for effective in service training procedures. To achieve this objective this project aims to develop the Teacher Self-Assessment Assistant (TSAA), based on the DCM method described earlier. The educators will be able to complete the instrument and receive feedback for their teaching profile.
  3. To support teachers’ self-improvement. To achieve this goal the current project will develop the Self-Improvement Educational Package (SIEP). The early childhood educators that will participate in the project and complete the TSAA will receive feedback about their teaching profile. Based on that they will be able to design their own personal training agenda from the available educational material included in the SIEP. This way every practitioner will be easily self-assessed and select the training content he/she needs.
  4. To confirm with research based findings that this new approach for in-service training is beneficial for both the early childhood educators and their students. The partnership consists of 6 partners from 4 EU countries.

Activities

First transnational meeting
Crete, Greece
23/24 November 2016

Second transnational meeting
Athens, Greece
20/21 April 2017

Third transnational meeting
Bologna, Italy
05/06 September 2017

Fourth Transnational meeting
Nicosia, Cyprus
25-26 January 2018

Fifth Transnational meeting
Thessaloniki, Greece
4-5 October 2018

Sixth Transnational meeting
Nicosia, Cyprus
7-8 March 20198

Seventh Transnational meeting
Soest, Germany
20-21 June2018

Multilpier Event Italy
Imola, Italy
28th August 2019

Results

The main educational material developed for the purposes of SIA-ProD are the Teacher Self-Assessment Assistant (TSAA) and the Self-Improvement Educational Package (SIEP).

  • Visit the project website to discover the Teacher Self-Assessment Assistant (TSAA). It is based on the Discrete Choice Modeling (DCM) approach. The TSAA contains the most important attributes for promoting physical activities in ECEC.
  • Click here to download the Self-Improvement Educational Package (SIEP). The SIEP aims to provide knowledge, ideas and supportive materials for specific dimensions of teaching effectively PA in early childhood education.
News from the Project
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