Hester Hulpia

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at VBJK

NESET just released an insightful report on the quality of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) across the 27 EU Member States. Using the European Quality Framework as a guide, the report dives into the latest developments and challenges around accessibility, staffing, curriculum, monitoring, evaluation, governance, and funding in ECEC. 💡 Ke...

Although childcare professionals play a crucial role in creating stimulating environments for multilingual infants and toddlers and in establishing partnerships with multilingual parents, they often feel uncertain and inexperienced about it. This is especially true in multilingual contexts where three or more home languages in a single family are n...

Please cite this publication as: Bergeron-Morin, L., Peleman, B., Hulpia, H. (2023). 'Working with multilingual children and families in early childhood education and care (ECEC): guidelines for continuous professional development of ECEC professionals'. NESET report, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. https://nesetweb.eu/en/res...

Child care quality in general, and caregiver-child interactions in particular, are salient predictors of children’s outcomes. While the importance of process quality is well known, the complex relations between structural quality and process quality are far less researched in family child care, compared to centre based child care. Flanders shows un...

In this Belgian Pilot Report, conducted as part of the VALUE project, we examine how collaborative learning between ECEC core and assisting practitioners can be supported as part of CPD (Continuous Professional Development) in the context of the Flemish community of Belgium. The report describes the professional development initiatives set up in tw...

Policy recommendations on integrated working in ECEC in Flanders (Belgium)

Toolbox on integrated working in ECEC

literature research on integrated working in ECEC

desk research on supporting collaboration between ECEC core and assisting practitioners

While the benefits have been widely evidenced of high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) for young children, especially those from vulnerable groups, it is clear that efforts to improve the holistic development and well-being of children and families must involve a wide range of policies, services and actions. No single intervention,...

This condensed report is based on data derived from the Study on Quality of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Georgia. The study was jointly implemented by UNICEF Georgia and the National Assessment and Examination Centre (NAEC) under the leadership of an international consultant. The European Quality Framework (EQF) for Early Childhood...

This case study is a part of a study commissioned by the European Commission DG E&C: Study on the effective use of ECEC in preventing ESL

N° EAC/17/2012 Study on the effective use of early childhood education and care in preventing early school leaving The Study on the effective use of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in preventing early school leaving (ESL) aimed to collect evidence on how equitable and high-quality early child education and care can influence the performan...

This study examines the relation between principals’ leadership and teachers’ organizational commitment, mediated by distributed leadership. Data were collected from 1,495 teachers in 46 secondary schools. Structural equation modeling indicated that the effect of principals’ leadership on teachers’ organizational commitment is mediated by the leade...

Dit is het eindrapport van het actieonderzoek Ontmoetingsplaatsen voor kinderen en ouders: Een kans voor iedereen, in opdracht van de Koning Boudewijnstichting, uitgevoerd door het Vlaams Netwerk Ontmoetingsplaatsen voor Kinderen en Ouders in samenwerking met VBJK en de vakgroep Sociale Agogiek (UGent). Het actieonderzoek had als doel inzicht te kr...

In this study, we first operationalized distributed leadership. Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses showed that distributed leadership can be defined from different dimensions: quality and distribution of support and supervision performed by the leadership team; cooperation within this team; and participative decision making. Second, the relati...

This study explores the relationship between self-awareness of school leaders and variables related to school culture and change. We used the self-other rating agreement model of Atwater and Yammarino (1997) as an indication of school leader self-awareness. Based on the difference between their own leadership rating and the teachers’ rating, school...

Purpose: In this study the relationship between school leadership and teachers’ organizational commitment is examined by taking into account a distributed leadership perspective. The relation between teachers’ organizational commitment and contextual variables of teachers’ perceptions of the quality and the source of the supportive and supervisory...

The present study explores the relation between distributed leadership and teachers' organizational commitment. Semi-structured interviews with teachers and school leaders of secondary schools were conducted. A comparative analysis of four schools with high and four schools with low committed teachers was carried out. Findings revealed differences...

Systematic quantitative research on measuring distributed leadership is scarce. In this study, the Distributed Leadership Inventory (DLI) was developed and evaluated to investigate leadership team characteristics and distribution of leadership functions between formally designed leadership positions in large secondary schools. The DLI was presented...

In the present study the effects of a cooperative leadership team, distributed leadership, participative decision-making, and context variables on teachers’ organizational commitment are investigated. Multilevel analyses on data from 1522 teachers indicated that 9% of the variance in teachers’ organizational commitment is attributable to difference...

Incl. bibl., abstract The main purpose of this study was to map school leaders' perceptions concerning the cooperation of the leadership team, the distribution of leadership functions and participative decision-making, and to asses their relative weight in terms of predicting school leaders' job satisfaction. Also, the effect of demographical and s...

This study investigates the relation between distributed leadership, the cohesion of the leadership team, participative decision-making, context variables, and the organizational commitment and job satisfaction of teachers and teacher leaders. A questionnaire was administered to teachers and teacher leaders (n = 1770) from 46 large secondary school...

School effectiveness research and school improvement research are central in this article. Based on a study of the literature, the hypothesis is put forward that merging both research traditions might be favourable to fostering the quality of education. A theoretical model is developed for School Improvement in terms of Performance Indicators (SIPI...

In this study we investigate the relation between d istributed leadership and teachers' organizational commitment. Multilevel analyses on data from 1522 teachers in 4 6 schools indicated that 9% of the variance in teachers' organizational comm itment is attributable to differences between schools. Furthermore, the analy ses revealed that a cooperat...