With services being restricted to ‘emergency childcare’, both families with children at nursery and the childcare professionals themselves are facing a major challenge. By now, at the very least, everyone realises that much more goes on at a nursery than ‘just’ looking after children.
As a result of the increasing professionalisation in recent years – which has included the introduction of the degree programme in Early Years Education – childcare centres have become early years education settings. This involves providing high-quality spaces and materials that facilitate intensive play – including amongst children of the same age – and meet children’s needs for physical activity and sensory experiences. This naturally also includes, and in particular, close relationships, which are reflected, for example, in attentive interactions between childcare professionals and the children, but also between childcare professionals and parents.
All families are currently feeling that these two aspects have been taken away from them. Even if we cannot replace them exactly at the moment, there are still ways in which at least the contact between the nursery and the children and their families can be maintained. These bridges can help to make the transition out of lockdown – in educational terms, we refer to this as a ‘transition’ – a smoother process.
Prof. Dr Alemzadeh explains how this can be achieved in the following interview, which appeared at the kita-online Congress.
