Childhood Association

The Childhood Association is an association of professionals of human development

 

Childhood Association has been created, in 1997, as an association of professionals of human development – university teachers, pre-school teachers, primary school teachers, psychologists; trainers, consultants and researchers. It promotes programs and projects for the improvement of education of the young children.

Childhood Association work is based in the cooperative team work of university teachers, specialised pre-school and primary school teachers, psychologists, pedagogues.

Childhood Association is a non profit private association with public aims that supports different types of early childhood education contexts. This support envisages the professional development of pre-school teachers and other educators and the improvement of their organisational contexts in order to build up an education which integrates ecologically the needs of children with the needs of parents and their communities.

Childhood Association is a voluntary organisation whose members work is part of their civic contribution to the community. This civic contribution is based on the belief of the importance of education, namely pre-school education, for personal and community development.

 

This professional and organisational development is instrumental to the development and learning of young children, which is naturally the aim of Childhood Association work. The core of its mission is the building up of an ecological model of professional work with children. This implies a strong emphasis on the interlinking of the various life contexts of children, professionals, and Childhood Association team Team trainers.

The building up of an ecological model of professional work with children and their families is promoted through an ecological model of intervention of Childhood Association team members. Its aim is to establish a sustainable ecological framework for the daily work with children and their families.

The mission of Childhood Association is centred in the ecological development of children and their families, being the ecological development of professionals and their organisational contexts the main strategy to achieve that aim.

 

The Childhood Association developed a socio-constructivist pedagogical approach under the designation of Pedagogy-in-Participation (Formosinho & Oliveira-Formosinho, 2008, Oliveira-Formosinho, 2008). Its vision aims at developing childhood institutions as democratic spaces which empower all actors and promote democracy throughout all organizational levels and activities including research with children. It encompasses classroom pedagogy, context based teacher education, parent involvement, professional and organisational development, and research.

At the centre of Pedagogy-in-Participation is a practice of listening as an active process where actors – children and adults – are involved in the discussion of everyday events and in the development of decisions and meaning make processes. Children and adults alike are involved in daily decision making about all the matters that affect their lives in the centre, including research. As participation implies sharing power, this practice is a process of empowerment.

 

The central pillars of the Pedagogy-in-Participation approach are:

• First pedagogical axis - to be and to feel – towards pedagogy of being
• Second pedagogical axis - to belong and to participate - towards a pedagogy of linkedness
• Third pedagogical axis - to experience and to communicate - towards a pedagogy of experiential learning
• Fourth pedagogical axis - to narrate and to create - towards a pedagogy of meaning

Early childhood education is seen as the development of pedagogical spaces and times where the ethics of relationships and interactions facilitates the development of activities and projects which value experiencial learning, diversity and play. The encounters of children and adults allow the learners to live, to experiment, to reflect, to develop meaning, to create.