GOOD START IN EARLY EDUCATION. RELEVANT PRACTICES FROM ROMANIAN INSTITUTIONS

An impressive amount of research literature supports the idea that a good start in education is essential for further development and performance of the child. Moreover, the early education ranks high in economic efficiency by bringing high rates of return of investments. As a priority sector in education, early childhood education is an integrated combination of approaches and activities, having its own dynamic and specificity. In this paper we are investigating the general context and principles for a good start in early education, exemplifying and by analysis of the current regulatory and curricular framework in Romania and bringing examples of relevant practice from a research conducted in an international project, involving six European countries, focused on analysis of educational environments in early education. Targeted development projects could be a useful tool for nurturing innovation and for validating good practices that could afterwards be conceptualized and disseminated in a horizontal way among practitioner-researchers. The examples used here are coming from a project called Early Change, in which a standardized instrument for evaluation and analysis of the educational environment in early education was used: the ECERS-r scale, initially developed at University of North Carolina, US. The scale was translated, adapted and used in a number of early childhood education institutions (mainly kindergartens) in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Denmark, Finland and Romania. We present here just some extracts on how examples of good practice were developed as result of project activities in Romania. Further comparative results of the research will follow, based on key indicators and sub-indicators calculated at national levels.