Reflective Practice through Lived Diversity in Cultural Environments: Mobility and Knowledge Production in Early Years Teacher Training Erasmus Project

Project Title

Reflective Practice through Lived Diversity in Cultural Environments: Mobility and Knowledge Production in Early Years Teacher Training

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Early childhood education and care; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Early childhood teacher education in Scandinavia is strictly governed by national goals and directions. It is therefore challenging to meet the increasingly growing demand for student mobility and exchange. The project Reflective Practice through Lived Diversity in Cultural Environments (ReLiveD) will explore pedagogical practices for how students, teachers, and researchers can collaborate within the conditions of the Scandinavian ECEC-teacher training and develop structures for how student mobility can be carried out in this context. It involves ECEC-training programs in four different universities: Södertörn University in Sweden, Nord University in Norway, The Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Norway, and Helsinki university in Finland.

Furthermore, Scandinavian early childhood education and care (ECEC) is characterised by cultural diversity where minority groups, indigenous people, and majority cultures meet. There are also various environmental conditions, both within and in-between nations, places, and institutions, strongly connected to different foundational values. Thus, both values and pedagogical practices in relation to diversity will come to vary from one place to another. The ReLiveD-project will approach diversity, as a way to develop reflective practices concerning fundamental values in pedagogical work in cultural environments. ECEC-students are preparing to work within a context of diversity, where specific cultural environments and values exists, and they are expected to work in such a manner that allow all children to be seen, heard and treated with respect. The ReLiveD-project will help ECEC-students (along with our teachers and institutions) develop the means, tools, and strategies to do this. By having them experience and explore different ‘lived experiences’ in different, specific cultural environments and physical places, they can develop reflective pedagogical practices concerning diversity.

The main aim of this three-year Erasmus+ project is thus to develop practices and structures for student mobility and to develop practices for how to cultivate reflective pedagogical practices concerning diversity (both on an individual level and on an institutional level). This makes ECEC-students, ECEC-teachers, and ECEC-teacher educations, the main target groups.

The project will follow a three-phase methodology, organized after each academic year. There will be a constant monitoring and evaluation of the different phases to ensure that the project objectives are achieved: Phase 1: a) Needs assessment, to produce an overview the courses and course modules in the different ECEC-programs and identify how they can be adjusted in order to create opportunities and activities for teacher and student mobility; b) Create new courses and course modules with space for teacher and student mobility in-between the participating universities, online as well as physical, and piloting these courses and modules. Phase 2: Evaluating the experiences from the pilots in phase 1 and making adjustments in accordance with them. Phase 3: a) Developing institutional structures for minor praxis exchanges where students can develop their professional skills by working with ECEC-centers (Pre-schools and kindergartens) at other (participating) universities; b) Conducting evaluations and analysis where the students work closely with teachers/researchers at the different universities to develop their final thesis; c) Conducting analysis of the outcomes of the ReLiveD-project where the participating teachers and researchers consider the impacts and possible further development of the project. Teaching activities and several intellectual outputs are ongoing throughout these different phases.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 164147 Eur

Project Coordinator

SODERTORNS HOGSKOLA & Country: SE

Project Partners

• NORD UNIVERSITET
• HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO