Early Childhood Education and Care

With respect to the call HORIZON-CL2-2026-01-TRANSFO-03: Tackling child poverty and ensuring disadvantaged children's access to Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), our Research Centre Pedagogy in Practice would like to offer expertise in the field of ECEC. Over the past years, Pedagogy in Practice has worked extensively on the inclusion of vulnerable groups in ECEC. Our research projects have explored multiple dimensions of the participation gap, including accessibility and flexibility of ECEC services, professionals’ communication and outreach towards parents, intercultural awareness and participatory decision-making processes.

With regards to the call, we would like to contribute primarily to practice-oriented aspects of the project by:

-      investigating barriers preventing disadvantaged families from accessing ECEC;

-      testing and evaluating innovative methods in real-life settings;

-      developing evidence-based and operational policy advice, including good practices to close the ECEC participation gap;

-      addressing scalability of these practices.