A matter of Quality

I spent three days discussing quality in Early Childhood Care and Education in Goteborg, at different levels and with different, interesting colleagues, professionals and moreover students.
It has been amazing and exciting to discuss the quality of learning environment with the students of the Master in Design of the HDK. As usual, when discussing with students, the starting topic exploded in different and generative arguments.
The quality of the learning environment is a pillar of each preschool, and the materials are part of the experience as well. The discussion went through the different components of a good environment.
The open lecture in HDK went through a provoking question like “Will preschools save the world?”. We discussed the general situation of the early childhood, with examples, images, video and data. The analysis has been interactive and for most of the participants an opportunity to express their feelings, their projects, their opinion about care and education of young children, in a sort of comparison between the Swedish scenario of preschools, and a global perspective. The work of UNESCO on the field and for the development of a better future for the children of the world has been discussed and highlighted. Will preschools save the world? Probably. Sure, they will make it better.
More intimate, and interactive, has been the meeting organised by Formazione Citizen. The official topic was Quality, and we discussed over the concept in many ways, taking into account both a philosophical part and a more concrete, practical side of our work.
Quality, in the end, is a puzzle of a lot of pieces, details, issues, interacting to build a puzzle, and each and every child perceive it in coherence with its own experience and sensitivity. What is common to all the groups is that quality is a negotiated process, where the result is a function of the level of expression of each participant, and of the quality of the democracy and participation in it.
All meetings have been organised and introduced by Tarja Haikio, and the last with the collaboration of Ina Linden, Erika Kyrk Sager, Linda Linder. A lot of my Swedish colleagues and friends animated the debates. To all of them my sincere gratitude.