TRIANGLE Erasmus Project

Project Title

TRIANGLE

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

Our project, called “Triangle”, is part of a European context considering that basic trainings organized in many countries do not meet the new requirements of the childcare profession, whether in terms of level or in terms of direction. A particular reference is made to the lack of coherence between taught educational/care practices, the field practices exected by the child-caring structures and those advocated by the reference organizations.
The aim of the project is to generate, through participation in high-level transnational mobility or “staff joint training events”, the joint transformation of professionals from:
• reference, support and/or advisory bodies.
• educational / training institutions in the field of childcare
• services, environments and childcaring operators.

The transformation targets a better acknowledgment of the challenges to be met for upper-quality care within the respective areas of competences for the accompaniment, the training/teaching and daily caring of children and families as defined in the “European Code of Quality of Childcare”.

At each mobility, we will gather 40 volunteering professionals from Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland who will undertake the following activities together: 1) visit services, environments, and childcaring operators, 2) exchange on a. project’s concerns and discuss what transcends national contexts and professional identities, i.e. what makes sense for the relevant stakeholders, b. overcoming the lack of coherence between the practices taught, practices implemented in the field and expected practices (in each national and transnational context) and c. how can each one in its own role, contribute to strengthen the required coherence for a quality childcaring; and 3) collect data/document the process of joint transformation at work.

The challenge of our project is the reinforcement of the adequacy between the educational and care practices implemented by the childcaring professionals and the needs of the children and families, acknowledged in their diversity and their complexity.
Indeed, the professions related to childcare call for multiple knowledge and skills, induced by the orientations given in terms of childcaring in Europe and influenced by societal issues that must be addressed (inclusion, diversity of family models, poverty, …). The inclusion of all families, teamwork, registration into the network, childcare trainees, … complexify these professions which must lay on solid formative ground.
The challenge of initial training is first to make the daily care of each child the core preoccupation.

Our strategy relies on the well-known benefits of the study tours to generate a joint transformation of mobility participants or “joint training staff events (ECFP)” as each stakeholder will have the double experience of welcoming and being welcomed.
We also base our strategy on the composition of the delegations taking part in the ECFPs as volunteering professionals will travel together from and to each partner country. The delegations gathered by a Mobility Coordination Body, or ECFP, and supervised by an experienced coach will, therefore, be composed of representatives of:
• A reference/support/advisory body
• Educational/training institutions
• Services/environments/care operators

They will be invited to experience, at an international level, exchanges with their foreign counterparts along with other types of foreign professionals also involved in the childcare professional sector, focusing on upstream negotiated work objectives aiming to co-construct a common identity of “child-care professionals” including all ECFP participants, or, in other words, to co-build a shared vision of the expected skills by childcare professionals.

Our hypothesis is that, driven by the force of the group and the decentralisation, they will become ambassadors in their local national context of the results obtained at the international level and will have the necessary know-how for the creation / maintenance of PLC / CAP, in the shape of Territorial Platforms which will meet on a regular basis in each concerned area, thus constituting rooms for the transfer / dissemination of the lessons learned during ECFPs. These platforms shall become the place for the follow-up of the local level construction, of the above-described coherence. The process of joint transformation will thus be able to continue or even spread in a contamination effect towards a rarely/ not at all mobile public.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 155327 Eur

Project Coordinator

PROMEMPLOI ASBL & Country: BE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
• Haute ecole de travail social et de la sante – EESP – Lausanne HES-SO // Haute Ecole Specialisee de Suisse occidentale
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE
• Centre Régional de Formation des Professionnels de l’Enfance
• Partenaire Enfance & Pédagogie (PEP)