Impact (the expected long-term effect) The quality of early childhood education and care for children aged 0-6 years in Portugal and Bulgaria is improved through the strengthened governance and implementation of a comprehensive monitoring & evaluation system in support of high-quality services in each country. Outcome (the expected short-term effect) The Portuguese authorities adopt a tested and piloted quality framework for early childhood education and care.

The project focuses, first of all, on the priority of “tackling learning disadvantages in education”. The project will address the first signs of learning disadvantages in the first two years of primary education with the aim to prevent the further development of learning disorders. In order to tackle learning disadvantages, the project will provide: - primary school teachers with a) the knowledge to identify the socio-cognitive risk factors and first signs of reading-writing difficulties and the skills to address them by using effective digital solutions; b) a platform to assess determinants of reading and writing difficulties at an early stage; c) game-based activities to empower children’s fundamental cognitive processes of reading and writing. -1st and 2nd grade pupils with a game-based training on fundamental cognitive processes of reading-writing skills, personalising it to different environmental and individual profiles.

The project aims to develop and support the implementation of a Family Support Component (CAF) monitoring and evaluation system in the 2nd stage of basic education under the Cascais Municipality's Growing Up Full-Time program, during the 2024/2025 school year. 10 CAFs are expected to take part, covering around 500 students.  

The KiDLE project aims to support the inclusion of migrant children/pupils in new school environments by co-creating 5 intercultural board games and integrating them into a digital gaming pack. The project seeks to build educators' and parents' capacity to use games for children's learning and development, implement the gaming pack through gaming events, and raise awareness about the role of cross-cultural games in early childhood education towards supporting inclusion.

Several studies have shown evidences of psychological suffering among the younger generations and in particular in university students. The context of the pandemia COVID-19 has generated many more challenges, with increased impacts on this group. The resilient@uni project brings together a group of psychologists from different specialty fields (e.g., social, educational and clinical psychology) to explore the mental and physical health of this population, identifying potential risk and protective factors, at different levels, from intra-individual variables to social contexts. These results are aimed to inform appropriate intervention programs and policies to tackle this issue. This project was conducted in collaboration with students: Catarina Caseiro Guilherme Manica Joana Maciel Ricardo Marques Joana de Moraes

Children have the right to participate in all matters affecting them, freely expressing their opinion and having it respected and considered. Young children’s participation is key to developing a culture of human rights, democracy, and rule of law. Therefore, young people’s active participation and decision-making in society must be protected and encouraged from an early age. Even though children’s right to participate is key to education quality, its implementation in early childhood education (ECE) remains a challenge. To support high-quality ECE through the implementation of children’s right to participate, we propose a multilevel professional development approach.

The first years in life are of critical importance to develop cognitive and non-cognitive skills, but also to develop civic attitudes towards others, so to invest in this stage of development is crucial to ensure an inclusive society. For a real social inclusion of children with SEN we need to promote more social contact between pupils with SEN and pupils without impairments. This project is focused on bringing together children with SEN and children without impairment, in a context of formal and non-formal education, offering innovative methodologies to enable the success for all learners as well as a sense of belonging. The main goal of the project is to invest on the qualification of teaching & learning, setting up a network of inclusive schools and inclusive community organisations. This will be set up and tested by a consortium of 3 schools, 2 universities, 3 NGOs, 1 foundation and 1 enterprise.   The project foresees the below objectives: 1) to improve the learning quality of children, using non-formal learning and teaching environments to: promote more social contact between pupils with SEN and pupils without impairments; develop innovative learning processes guided by flexible curricula 2) to strengthen professionals’ attitudes, skills and abilities, providing them training opportunities aligned with national- and local-level policy goals for and understandings of inclusive education 3) to use an alternative learning environment - school yards - to create an innovative methodology to develop ALL CHILDREN mathematics, science and other competences (e.g. entrepreneurship and creativity) 4) to build on the existing resources following the principles of permaculture in the economy of hydric resources, soil conservation, activation of the microbiological fauna and plague protection. 5) to increase the parents’ and community’s participation by organizing local fairs of agro products in order to raise financial resources for the sustainability of the pro...

 The Residential Care (RC) system is under pressure to address increasingly demanding needs of youths in care. Wide variation in the success of child welfare systems has led to the search for system-level explanations of differential outcomes for youth.        The CIRC project aims to investigate the association between social variables (such as organizational climate, the social images held by the staff and the relationships between educators and youths) and youth outcomes (such as self-representations, behavior, and academic achievement) through a correlational study. The project will evaluate the needs, dilemmas, practices and possible solutions through a qualitative study. Based on an experimental study, it will implement and evaluate an intervention program centered on the organizational climate with staff, the social images, and the quality of the relationships between educators and youths.        The project helps understanding the processes underlying the construction of self-representations, behavior, and academic achievement of youth in RC. This also offers significant implications for practice since it allows for empirically testing process models that provide inputs for designing a needs-led and theory-based program.

 The GRIT project focuses on fostering educational equity in urban educational settings. It addresses two main target groups: (1) indirectly: urban students threatened by early school leaving, and (2) directly: in-service educational professionals which are involved in teaching in urban settings. This project chooses to focus on the matter of early school leaving since urban educational systems are particularly vulnerable to problems associated with early school leaving. This project aims at developing a growth mindset for teachers' and teams of educational professionals in urban settings, and at enabling teachers to develop their students' growth mindset. The GRIT-project will design (a) a toolkit for teachers to practice growth mindset in order to develop their students' growth, (b) a guideline (protocol) for teachers to increase students’ resilience, (c) a hand-on training for teams of educators to learn this pedagogical & innovative approach, (d) a guideline (protocol) to train teams of educational professionals how to implement the 'growth mindset approach', and (e) an e-book for different stakeholders involved in the struggle against ESL. Through concrete experimentations in 5 European countries gathering different background and with partners addressing different kind of educators, the GRIT project will allow to enhance this innovative and  "bottom-up approach" among these key actors to struggle against Early School Leaving. Joana Alexandre (an assistant professor at ISCTE-IUL and a full member at CIS-IUL), Cecília Aguiar (an assistant professor at ISCTE-IUL and a senior researcher at CIS-IUL), Lígia Monteiro (an assistant professor at ISCTE-IUL), Teresa Seabra (a senior lecturer in Sociology of Education), and Inês Alves (a research assistant) are part of the GRIT project 

 Building upon an earlier successful Flemish project (Kleuterblog, KULeuven, Sept. 2014-Aug. 2016) that resulted in a popular blog platform about research and innovation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), BECERID (Erasmus + KA2) aims to support both teachers and teacher educators to adopt innovative practices to deal with the topic of diversity in the classroom. The project will launch a blog in each partner country (the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland) on a diversity and social inclusion in ECEC for teacher educators of ECEC teachers and ECEC teachers to increase their knowledge of research-based insights, awareness of social inclusion, and positive attitude towards research and innovation. A European blog platform will be set up in English which serves as an exchange platform between the national blogs.      The messages on the blogs will be translated to social media platforms that ECEC teachers already use for their own professionalization (e.g. Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter) to interact with them and share insights and reflections about research and innovation. The project contributes to high quality ECEC by strengthening the learning community of teachers, teacher educators, and other stakeholders who will gain a better insight into research-based practices and innovations to support disadvantaged and diverse children.      The key person involved in the project from ISCTE-IUL is Cecília Aguiar, a full member researcher at CIS and assistant professor at Department of Social and Organizational Psychology. Tânia Boavida, a full member at CIS, and two doctoral students, Nadine Correia and Margarida Fialho, are also the part of the BECERID team.  

The Kit@ project is to create the innovative solutions for the development of media pedagogical competences using ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and the acquisition of digital skills of the professionals in child daycare centers and comparable institutions, especially in rural regions. The project responds to the fact that interacting with the Internet has become a part of the children’s everyday life. The project is focusing on rural areas which lack specialized staff, and have poor pedagogical material and consequently information technology conditions. A direct target group are the nursery school teachers in the children’s daycare centers and similar institutions as well as professional actors or institutions active in the field of early childhood education. The teaching of knowledge aims at applying innovative methods and pedagogical approaches to educate children how to use digital media.        The key person involved in the project is Cecília Aguiar, a full member researcher at CIS and assistant professor at Department of Social and Organizational Psychology Other CIS-IUL members, Lígia Monteiro, Tânia Boavida, and Catarina Araújo, are involved in the Kit@ project.

 ISOTIS (Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society), funded by the European Union within the Horizon2020 program, is an international project that involves 17 partners and 11 countries. The project is coordinated in CIS-IUL by the researcher Cecília Aguiar. It aims to contribute to effective policy and practice development at different system levels in order to effectively combat early arising and persisting educational inequalities. In the context of acculturation and integration, and in relation to local and national policies, ISOTIS will examine current resources, experiences, aspirations, needs and well-being of children and parents in those groups associated with persistent educational disadvantages such as significant immigrant, indigenous ethnic-cultural and low income native groups.       Quasi-panels and pooled longitudinal datasets will be used to examine the variation in early educational gaps and developmental trajectories across countries, systems and time. ISOTIS will develop inter-linked programs for parents, classrooms and professionals using Virtual Learning Environments for working in linguistically diverse contexts. This three-year project is expected to support the education practice and policy field in Europe in meeting the challenges of reducing social and educational inequalities.

O presente projeto pretende contribuir para o conhecimento sobre a integração, sucesso escolar e bem-estar dos alunos imigrantes (i.e., nacionais de países terceiros) nas escolas públicas do 1º e 2º Ciclos de Ensino Básico (CEB), em Portugal. Pretende-se concretizar este objetivo testando, especificamente, o papel das dinâmicas de aculturação e dos seus fatores psicossociais antecedentes na integração social e educativa destas crianças e jovens imigrantes. Uma vez que se pretende obter uma visão comparada e das várias perspetivas que informam o fenómeno em estudo, para além dos inquéritos a alunos imigrantes, serão ainda inquiridos alunos descendentes de imigrantes (perspetiva de um grupo comparável) e alunos de origem portuguesa (perspetive de um grupo de acolhimento). Estes dados serão contextualizados com recurso à análise dos documentos estruturantes da escola (e.g., Projeto Educativo) e com entrevistas à Direção, a elementos das coordenações pedagógicas do 1º e 2º Ciclos do CEB e inquéritos aos Diretores de Turma dos alunos imigrantes inquiridos.

In line with the EU strategies for 2020 and the need for a systemic and integrated approach to Early Childhood education and Care (ECEC), the project identifies eight key issues and questions for which effective policy measures and instruments should be developed. They concern assessing the impact of ECEC, optimizing quality and curricula for ECEC to increase effectiveness, raising the professional competencies of staff, monitoring and assuring quality of ECEC, increasing the inclusiveness of ECEC, in particular for socioeconomically disadvantaged children, funding of ECEC, and the need for innovative European indicators of children’s wellbeing. The project will address these issues in an integrative way by combining state-of-the-art knowledge of factors determining personal, social and economic benefits of ECEC with knowledge of the mechanisms determining access to and use of ECEC. In developing a European knowledge base for ECEC, we will add to the existing knowledge in two ways. First, we will include recent and ongoing ECEC research from several European countries. Second, we will include the perspectives of important stakeholders and integrate cultural beliefs and values. The central aim is to develop an evidence-based and culture-sensitive framework of (a) Developmental goals, quality assessment, curriculum approaches and policy measures for improving the quality and effectiveness of ECEC; and (b) Effective strategies of organizing, funding and governing ECEC that increase the impact of ECEC. Our interdisciplinary research team will construct this framework, based on the competencies and skills that young children need to develop in current societies, identify the conditions that have to be fulfilled to promote child development and wellbeing, and identify strategies and policy measures that support access to high quality provisions, and likely to receive broad support of stakeholders, thereby enhancing the impact of ECEC.