PPT nr. 4-2020: Jan Peeters: In search of Pedagogical Heroes: What makes practitioners improve their pedagogical practice?

Since I started working in ECEC first as an educational psychologist and later as a researcher, I have been fascinated by the following two questions: what makes people change their practice in order to meet the needs of chil- dren and families? And what makes that others are not able to change and are often reproducing the same practice of mediocre quality during their whole career? (Peeters, 1993; Peeters, 2008a; Peeters, Vandenbroeck, 2011; Peeters, Sharmahd, 2014)
The last years I am working as a consultant/researcher in countries in Eastern-Europe, the Caucasus, South-Africa and Vietnam (Peeters, Hulpia, 2018, Peeters, 2019, Declercq, Peeters, 2020). In the different countries where I worked and did field visits, I saw the same phenomenon: for every ECEC centre that gives answers to the challenges of today’s society, another ECEC centre reproduces the same low quality practice as years ago. Nevertheless, both services receive a similar financial support from the government.
To get an answer to this question related to what makes that individu- als and services are open for change, I propose a journey that will lead us from narratives of practitioners that work in innovative services, to inspiring continuous professional development (CPD) paths, and to coherent policy on local, national, and international level.