Educational planning and professional practices in Early childhood services: case studies

Early childhood education is an area that is increasingly interesting the international scientific community (Catarsi, 2010; Nutbrown, 2011; Arthur et al., 2017; Bondioli & Savio, 2018). In recent decades, much research has been developed in this regard, and the definition of guidelines to be shared for the design of services and of the educational paths for children represented an important milestone. An example, at a European level, is the Early Childhood Education and Care quality framework and, in Italy, the recent Pedagogical guidelines for the "Zerosei" integrated system. The shared objective of those who deal with these aspects seems to be to guarantee children access to educational processes and to ensure that these processes favor the development of skills and competences, enhance individual differences and work on personal and interpersonal skills (Borghi & Guerra, 2007; Samuelsson & Fleer, 2008; Penn, 2011). To do this, those who work in contexts as educators or coordinators should be adequately skilled in the field of educational planning, considering that thanks to research evidence it has been possible over time to identify the educational strategies that can be effective in qualifying professional practices in the Early Childhood Services (Sylva, 2010; Restiglian, 2012; Mantovani et al., 2016; Archambault et al., 2019). The paper explores the results of a research that included several studies developed on the Italian territory. The research involved a total of 50 Nurseries and deepened their educational planning and the activities that they proposed to children. The main objectives of the research were to understand the overall quality level of each Nursery and to deepen in detail the strategies used to involve children in formative and growth engaging paths. The analyses developed had the transversal objective of identifying good practices to share with other experts in the sector. A semi-structured logbook and a questionnaire were used to collect data. The main results that emerged make it possible to highlight a good level of quality of the Services involved in the research. In almost all situations, children have had the opportunity to actively participate in what was proposed and to work on the development of both individual and relational skills. Except for some Nursery which showed a more rigid approach, overall, the educational strategies used have flexibly enhanced the abilities of each one and tried to encourage the initiative of the children. In particular, the laboratory activities in which it was asked to work on manipulation and artistic activities emerged as those that most encouraged children to achieve good outcomes.