Abstract:

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) has been these past few years a central topic of the educational policies all around the globe. The most recent international debates place a considerable emphasis on children’s learning and sustainable development, quality of early years services and settings, and preschool curriculum issues, all viewed as an important window of opportunity to build a strong foundation for future human development.

The Comenius project Early Change: Promoting the Professional Development of Early Childhood Educators (“Early-C’) focuses entirely on this highly sensitive period for physical, cognitive, social, emotional and behavioural development, which influences our trajectories across the life course. The purpose of the project is guided towards the evaluation of the quality of early childhood education environments across six different European educational systems and the identification of good practices in the child’s early education within the partner countries involved (Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Romania, Denmark and Finland).

The present paper highlights one of the project's final objectives, which was the recording of a wide range of ‘best practices’ implemented in early childhood classrooms in Romania. The empirical data were collected from the 16 participating Romanian early educators during the training phase II, with the usage of a standardized instrument, the ECERS-R Evaluation Scale.These findings support an analysis of the immediate and short-term positive effects of early childhood education in maximizing children's physical, cognitive, and social/emotional development while respecting the diversity of learning environments and communities.

Keywords:

Early childhood care and education, professional development, best practices.