Men in Early Childhood Education

This project was set up as a European and Flemish network of male childcare workers, trainers and academics who would together look for solutions to make day and evening school courses more accessible to men.

At first an analysis was made of male students’ needs and of the obstacles they encounter during their training. This happened by means of interviews, focus groups and surveys with students in training, students who didn’t finish their studies and potential students. The results were recorded on video to get further discussion going amongst partners and with a broad range of stakeholders, and to support promotion and dissemination.

The objective was pursuing an effective promotion to increase awareness for this subject, to change public opinion and to influence policy (training male students and childcare workers to speak for an audience, making them receive assertiveness and media training courses, producing testimonials on video, print, electronic or other audio-visual materials, producing a guide for other projects about media communication and cultural differences between media and public opinions in the partner countries).

Project results were distributed pro-actively: by implementing a creative and pro-active communication strategy; making connections with other groups, organisations and networks; looking for public figures willing to promote the subject; designing, preparing and maintaining an integrated website; inciting others to undertake complementary actions.

Belgian Research

Flemish version