Teaching for Holistic, Relational and Inclusive Early Childhood Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teaching for Holistic, Relational and Inclusive Early Childhood Education

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The THRIECE (Teaching for Holistic, Relational and Inclusive Early Childhood Education) project was a response to the significant shift in European education towards neoliberal discourses that devalue learning not regarded as having utility in a global economy. The relentless drive for ‘quality’ has resulted in narrowing of curricula, standardisation of achievement through testing and international ranking, and a fixation on quantitative measurement as the arbiter of quality education. The THRIECE partnership believed that this conceptualisation of quality was insufficient and potentially damaging. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has been widely promoted as a means to achieving inclusion for the 508.5 million young people in Europe, and THRIECE aimed to address the worrying focus on bringing settings (structural indicators) and children (outcome indicators) to predetermined fixed points, irrespective of background or culture. The THRIECE project was of the view that such approaches could propagate deficit models, which if treated uncritically, could see measures of ‘quality’ becoming instruments of social exclusion.

Comprising 3 preschools, 3 primary schools and 4 HEIs, THRIECE was a unique Irish-Polish-Portuguese partnership that proposed an alternative view of quality in ECEC that supported inclusion through recognition of the crucial nature of relationships and interactions (process indicators). We provided an alternative voice for European education based on three pillars:
1. Holistic education: Emphasising the interrelatedness of domains of development, drawing on children’s own talents, emotions, cultures and interests.
2. Inclusive education: Supporting sociocultural diversity and inclusion, and opposing exclusive, standardised perspectives and methods.
3. Relational education: Identifying positive interactions and relationships as more important for measuring quality in ECEC than narrow numerical indicators.

We argued that early educators in Europe needed support in legitimising these concepts, but also practical strategies to implement them in their daily work. This culminated in the development of three intellectual outputs – online modules for early educators on inclusive, relational and holistic education. These modules were developed using a Participatory Action Research approach, structured around 9 key international events (5 Transnational Project Management Meetings and 4 Learning, Teaching and Training Activities), with ongoing in-country work continuing in the intervening periods. This methodology allowed our expert early childhood educators and primary school teachers to work in partnership with our academics from a breadth of relevant theoretical and professional backgrounds. In doing this, we created a culture for true innovation, allowing for identification, development and dissemination of what true ‘quality’ ECEC looks like in theory and practice. This has borne fruit in our three online modules, which provide space for educators to conceptualise ‘good’ education, whilst also providing practical resources for use in educational settings. The design of these modules, along with their availability in three languages (Polish, English & Portuguese), promotes transferability and impact at local, national, EU and international level. Our three THRIECE multiplier events were successfully hosted in Porto, Gdansk and Carlow, respectively. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and there was a significant expression of interest in our online modules across Europe and internationally.

In summary, THRIECE proposed an innovative, multi-disciplinary, cross-national approach to addressing issues highly relevant to the priorities of social inclusion and development of quality ECEC. It identified and animated three key pillars of quality ECEC – holistic, inclusive and relational education – to speak as a countervailing riposte against the prevailing neoliberal norm in European education. By involving partners from three EU member states with different skillsets, THRIECE achieved results that could not have been attained by activities in a single country. Our choice of research methodology, along with our warm, richly stimulating and expert partnerships has meant that we finish this project not only with online modules that provide strong support to educators to challenge the dominant neoliberal discourse, but also with a clear and comprehensive new paradigm that dialogues with traditionally polarised perspectives (Nowak-Lojewska, O’Toole, Regan and Fereira, 2019; O’Toole, Regan and Nowak-Lojewska, 2019). There are well-established links between good quality early education and a range of positive social, emotional, behavioural, educational and even physical outcomes. With broad attendance at our multiplier events and significant interest in our online modules, available open-source for five years, the project has the potential to have a considerable impact across Europe for years to come.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 272669,07 Eur

Project Coordinator

MARINO INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION & Country: IE

Project Partners

• UNIWERSYTET GDANSKI
• Carlow Town Educate Together National School
• Agrupamento de Escolas Alexandre Herculano – Porto
• UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO
• Agrupamento de Escolas Soares dos Reis
• Zespol Szkolno-przedszkolny nr 3 w Gdyni
• THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLIN