Author
Dr. Jan Peeters, Ghent University
Abstract
"Since I started working in ECEC, first as an educational psychologist, and later as a researcher, I have been fascinated by the following two questions: what makes people change their practice in order to meet the needs of children and families?
And what makes others not able to change and often reproduce the same practice of mediocre quality during their whole career? (Peeters, 1993; Peeters, 2008a; Peeters, Vandenbroeck, 2011; Peeters, Sharmahd, 2014)
For the last few years I have been working as a consultant/researcher in coun- tries in Eastern-Europe, the Caucasus, South Africa and Vietnam (Peeters, Hulpia, 2018, Peeters, 2019, Declercq, Peeters, 2020) . In the different countries where I worked and conducted field visits, I saw the same phenomenon . For every ECEC centre that gives answers to the challenges of today’s society, another ECEC centre reproduces the same low-quality practice as years ago . Nevertheless, both services receive similar financial support from the government .
To get an answer to this question of what makes individuals and services open to change, I propose a journey that will lead us from narratives of practitioners that work in innovative services, to inspiring continuous professional development (CPD) paths, and to coherent policy on a local, national, and international level."
