REC | Reflection - Education - Care
Group reflection on practice is recognized as crucial when wanting quality ECEC centres. However, reflection is not always implemented in the services. When reflection with staff is done with meaningful, motivating and collaborative methods, it facilitates deep learning and a shift towards an educare holistic approach in ECEC.
The REC project focuses on these themes and aims at bringing reflection into practice by exploring how to create effective and sustainable reflective processes with ECEC teams. This also helps raising awareness about the importance of reflection in ECEC.
REC is an Erasmus+ KA2 project, implemented within an international partnership composed by the following organizations: Hungary Foundation (Hungary) who coordinates the project, Artevelde University of Applied Sciences (Belgium) with whom VBJK collaborates concerning the Belgian pilot, Open Academy Step by Step (Croatia) and Pedagoski Institut (Slovenia).
After sharing different reflective methods within the international partnership (WANDA, video-coaching, peer observations …) specific pilots have been implemented in each country, by creating CPD (continuous professional development) paths with ECEC centres within the framework of Professional Learning Communities (PLC). In Belgium (Flandres) five ECEC centres have been involved in a group reflection path lasting 20 months. The ECEC centres involved are in Ghent and in Zeebrugge. The Belgian team decided to work specifically on reflection on practice within multiprofessional teams, by involving the professionals of the preschool (kleuterschool) together with the ones of the out of school care (opvang). This is crucial when wanting to support the implementation of an educare approach (intertwin amongst education, playing, caring) in practice.
Throughout the project, the international partners met several times, to exchange about the paths in each context and to train each other on the different reflective methods used. One of the trainings was focused on the Most Significant Change Method, which is used in REC to evaluate the experiences of the professionals taking part to the reflection path.
In May 2023 the international partners and ECEC professionals involved will come to Belgium for a transnational training event.
At the end of the project:
A practical guidebook will be written and made widely available on how to create effective and sustainable reflective paths in ECEC by using specific methods.
Policy recommendations will be elaborated for ECEC leaders and policy makers at the EU and local level.