About the project

ABOUT THE PROJECT

As highlighted by the European Commission, it is of crucial importance to foster initiatives that support and reinforce the development of key competences for all individuals from early childhood.

Many newly qualified or inexperienced teachers tend to base their lesson planning on the traditional PPP approach (Presentation, Practice, Production). The problem is that PPP serves the teacher’s needs, but it is debatable whether or not it fulfils the needs of the learner. For this reason, more and more teachers in ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) turn to more learner-centred approaches where the needs of the children are central to the lesson content. Two such approaches are TBL (Task-Based Learning) and PBL (Project-Based Learning).

Since the 1st of November 2020, the publishing house Nakladatelství Dr. Josef Raabe, s. r. o, has started to implement the transnational project „Learning by Doing – Attainment of Basic Competences in ECEC (ABC for kindergartens)“. The project will combine the efforts of 8 relevant organisations from 3 European countries (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia) and the aim of this project is to improve the quality of ECEC education through introducing innovative approaches and practices and to ensure comprehensive development of children’s competences at ECEC level. This will be achieved by supporting kindergarten teachers to gain knowledge on how to efficiently apply project based learning (PBL) and task based learning (TBL) at ECEC level.

TARGET GROUP

The target groups of the ABC for kindergartens project are mainly ECEC teachers, children in pre-primary education and teacher training providers such as universities, continuous training providers,and associations. It foresees project activities to involve more than 2324 pre-primary teachers, children in ECEC, training providers, education stakeholders, academics and professionals.

Project is innovative, as it aims to encourage teachers to transform from ”leaders” to “facilitators” of the learning process by equipping them with bespoke methodology on how to enhance their teaching practice thus supporting their professional development. This includes fostering learner-centred approaches to develop children’s creativity, autonomy, independence, motivation for learning, awareness of own rights and responsibilities, problem solving, self-observance and evaluation of own knowledge and needs.

AIMS

Project aims:

• to develop a toolkit for ECEC teachers, which would not only support educators in enhancing their practices, but would also support the acquisition of various key competences among children at kindergarten level
• to equip ECEC teachers with bespoke methodology, teaching practices and techniques, knowledge, competencies and tools on to how to apply properly the project-based and task-based learning approaches at ECEC level
• to enhance teachers’ initial education and continuous professional development,
• to integrate the aspects from the newly developed methodology and training into own curriculum of University partners
• to equip target groups with open education resources that are of high-quality, free to use and available in their national languages

OUTPUTS

Project intellectual outputs:

• ABC Manual for Teachers (O1)
• ABC Train the Trainer Course (O2)