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Quality Assurance Framework to assess how digitalisation can be embedded in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings

Introduction

The purpose of this Quality Assurance Framework is to establish comprehensive criteria and indicators for evaluating the impact of digitalization in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings. Particularly, considering that digitalisation in early years’ education is still underexplored and few practices have been developed throughout Europe, the quality framework is a supportive measure to both monitor quality achievements and produce relevant data and evidence of its efficacy.

As part of the Digital ECEC project, this framework aims to assess how the integration of digital technologies aligns with the five core principles of the EU Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care. These principles, outlined in the Council Recommendation of 22 May 2019, underpin high-quality ECEC systems across Europe.

This clearly shows how access and use of digital resources in ECEC settings and educational practices is still to be further explored and delved into, thus offering the Digital ECEC project a unique opportunity to provide insights and indications, thanks to the experience gained by the partners in the different countries, through both the training of trainers and the piloting.

In addition, further relevant dimensions and related methods and tools can be identified according to the specificities of digitalisation in ECEC. For instance, a key element is referred to the online platforms to create animations and other pedagogical digital resources, that have been taught and shared during the Training of Trainers within Digital ECEC project activities. Indeed, the usability of these resources and their implementation at the educational level, through the preliminary process of piloting, will be assessed against an appropriate set of Quality indicators. In this case, both a process and product quality evaluation should be carried out.