Exchange visits lead to major research contribution in the field of early childhood

​Two exchange projects undertaken by the University of Northampton’s Early Years team have been the springboard for developing a comparative research project in the field of early childhood.

In 2014, Dr Jane Murray and Eleonora Teszenyi received Erasmus+ funding to visit the Faculty of Child and Adult Education at Debrecen University in Hungary. Prior to the trip, Jane had been working on a small-scale comparative study about parent partnerships in the early years with Marzhan Tajiyeva, a scholar from Abay Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Kazakhstan.

Following Eleonora and Jane’s visit to Hungary, colleagues from the University of Debrecen joined the project and the three country teams currently comprise Marzhan Tajiyeva and Dr Aigul Iskakova (Kazakhstan), Vargáné Dr Nagy Anikό and Dr Sándor Pálfi (Hungary) and Dr Jane Murray (PI) and Eleonora Teszenyi (England). The team will present its findings to date at the ECER Conference in Budapest in September and the study is now set for further development.

During a visit to Northampton from Debrecen colleagues in May 2015 and an Erasmus+ visit to University College Sjaelland by Peter Goy (Lecturer in Education Early Years), it was agreed to seek funding to extend the project to include academics from Erasmus+ partners HAN (Netherlands) and University College Sjaelland (Denmark) as well as an Italian team, introduced by our Debrecen University colleagues. Dr Jane Murray will now lead this international team in applying for new funding to develop a larger scale project concerning parent partnerships in the early years.