Let’s Fathers, Come Preschools! Erasmus Project
General information for the Let’s Fathers, Come Preschools! Erasmus Project
Project Title
Let’s Fathers, Come Preschools!
Project Key Action
This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices
Project Action Type
This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education
Project Call Year
This project’s Call Year is 2016
Project Topics
This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)
Project Summary
Studies showed that high father involvement supports children’s language and cognitive development, psychological well-being, social and emotional development. It was also indicated that high father involvement in education decreases early school-drop out- one of the main aims of European Union-, increase children’s academic achievement, self-esteem, self-confidence and all developmental abilities. Traditional gender role of mothers attitudes leads pre-schools to overemphasize the involvement of mothers while spending insufficient effort to involve fathers. Although there are some efforts and studies, father involvement in early childhood programs is not widespread.
Main objective of this project was to increase the visibility of father involvement in early childhood education. Therefore it was aimed to increase father involvement through increasing early childhood educators’ awareness of the importance of father involvement and supporting all adults in early childhood education settings. Within this context, the purpose of the project was to provide resources for teachers to use while organizing father/parent involvement activities which supports high involvement of fathers. Başkent University from Turkey, Sticting Drio from Netherlands, University of Gothenburg from Sweden and Life Long Education Association from Turkey were the partners of the project.The aim of the project was reached through three main intellectual outputs: Father Involvement Guidebook , Father Involvement Activities Handbook and project web site/learning platform. The Father Involvement Guidebook was prepared to inform early childhood educators about the importance of father involvement and the ways to create a father-friendly early childhood settings and to help teachers provide parent education classes related to father involvement. Father Involvement Activities Handbook was prepared for teachers to include father-centered parent involvement activities in their educational programs. The web page/learning platform of the project was opened to share all information and the outputs of the project. The forum was opened in the project web site in order to initiate and increase the connection of teachers to share their information and activity suggestions or father involvement. By using social media devices such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, project process and results were disseminated to public and relative stakeholders. All intellectual outputs were prepared in English and translated to Swedish, Dutch and Turkish. The main target group of the project was teachers, fathers, mothers and children. The effectiveness of the project activities on teachers, fathers and mothers were measured with pre and post analysis. The interviews were semi-structured with the pre-test questions focusing on the views and perceptions of father engagement in Turkish, Dutch and Swedish preschools, and the post-test questions focusing on change or improvement in parental and father engagement. The children were asked to talk about and draw the activities that they enjoy doing with their fathers/parents before and after project activities. The results showed an increase in father/parent engagement in the short term and positive perspective towards activities and implementation of some activities in future. Transnational meetings and online meetings were effective to increase collaboration and then quality of project. Long and short term learning activities provided opportunity for early childhood educators to observe good practices and enlarged their vision and knowledge of father involvement . Multiplier events provided the dissemination of the project outputs and possibilities to work with other stakeholders in this area. Public institutions, visual and written media, academicians and organizations are activated to get involved in the project. The teachers of preschools were informed about the project web site, social media and fliers. The media were informed about our work. With the project, an increase in early childhood educators competence of including fathers into early childhood education, increase in fathers’ awareness the importance of their involvement, increase in mothers’ knowledge on their own impact on fathers’ involvement, increase in father-friendliness of early childhood education was obtained and this created an impact with father involvement in Early Childhood Education more visible in partner countries .The dissemination activities will continue in future in earlychildhood education programs in universities, in different preschools, NGOs and govermental organisations using project outputs. It is believed that produced intellectual outputs of this project will be used effectively in all European countries to increase fathers’ involvement in early childhood education settings that will highly support the children’s development.
EU Grant (Eur)
Funding of the project from EU: 167469,86 Eur
Project Coordinator
Baskent University & Country: TR
Project Partners
- Yasam Boyu Egitim Dernegi
- GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET
- Stichting Drio