Early Education in Italy: Research and Practice

Abstract

This article provides an overview of Italian ECEC services, their development and educational culture. In Italy, out of home day care for children under 3 became a quantitatively significant phenomenon in the last 30 years. Its development was characterized by the close collaboration between research agencies and ECEC services. A rich variety of studies on early education was produced. Some themes appear particularly relevant with regard to their implications for educational practice. The relationship between ECEC personnel and parents was considered a central issue in guaranteeing the quality of the children's experience and ECEC services were found to be an important resource of social support to parents. Since the beginning of ECEC experience in Italy, both educational practices and research have paid a particular attention to peer interaction inside the services, with a specific focus to the effect of contextual variables on their frequency and quality. Another major research theme was the evaluation of ECEC quality. In Italian experiences, evaluating ECEC quality was considered a dynamic and continuous process, involving a plurality of stakeholders (decision-makers, managers, ECEC personnel and parents) and was aimed at analysing, discussing, and improving the educational practice.

Full text

Early Education in Italy: Research and Practice
Tullia Musatti
•
Mariacristina Picchio
Published online: 9 October 2010
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract This article provides an overview of Italian ECEC services, their devel-
opment and educational culture. In Italy, out of home day care for children under 3
became a quantitatively significant phenomenon in the last 30 years. Its development
was characterized by the close collaboration between research agencies and ECEC
services. A rich variety of studies on early education was produced. Some themes
appear particularly relevant with regard to their implications for educational practice.
The relationship between ECEC personnel and parents was considered a central issue
in guaranteeing the quality of the children’s experience and ECEC services were
found to be an important resource of social support to parents. Since the beginning of
ECEC experience in Italy, both educational practices and research have paid a par-
ticular attention to peer interaction inside the services, with a specific focus to the
effect of contextual variables on their frequency and quality. Another major research
theme was the evaluation of ECEC quality. In Italian experiences, evaluating ECEC
quality was considered a dynamic and continuous process, involving a plurality of
stakeholders (decision-makers, managers, ECEC personnel and parents) and was
aimed at analysing, discussing, and improving the educational practice.
Re
´
sume
´
Cet article pre
´
sente un aperc¸u des services a
`
la petite enfance en Italie, leur
de
´
veloppement et leur culture e
´
ducative. En Italie, l’accueil extra-domestique des
enfants de moins de 3 ans est devenu un phe
´
nome
`
ne quantitativement important au
cours des trente dernie
`
res anne
´
es. Son de
´
veloppement a e
´
te
´
caracte
´
rise
´
par l’e
´
troite
T. Musatti (&)  M. Picchio (&)
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council (CNR),
Via Nomentana, 56, 00161 Rome, Italy
e-mail: tullia.musatti@istc.cnr.it
e-mail: mariacristina.picchio@istc.cnr.it
123
IJEC (2010) 42:141–153
DOI 10.1007/s13158-010-0011-9

collaboration entre centres de recherche et services d’accueil. Cette collaboration a
produit une riche varie
´
te
´
d’e
´
tudes sur l’e
´
ducation des jeunes enfants, dont certains
the
`
mes semblent particulie
`
rement inte
´
ressants pour la pratique e
´
ducative. La relation
entre le personnel et les parents a e
´
te
´
conside
´
re
´
e comme un e
´
le
´
ment essentiel pour
assurer la qualite
´
de l’expe
´
rience des enfants. Les services se sont re
´
ve
´
le
´
se
ˆ
tre une
ressource importante pour le soutien social des parents. De
`
slede
´
but de l’expe
´
rience en
petite enfance en Italie, tant la recherche que les pratiques e
´
ducatives ont accorde
´
une
grande attention aux interactions entre pairs a
`
l’inte
´
rieur des services, avec une cen-
tration particulie
`
re sur les effets des variables contextuelles sur leur fre
´
quence et leur
qualite
´
. L’e
´
valuation de la qualite
´
des services a
`
la petite enfance constitue un autre
the
`
me majeur de recherche. Dans les expe
´
riences italiennes, l’e
´
valuation est consid-
e
´
re
´
e comme un processus dynamique et continue, impliquant une pluralite
´
d’interv-
enants (de
´
cideurs, gestionnaires, personnel de la petite enfance et parents) et ayant
pour but l’analyse, la discussion et l’ame
´
lioration des pratiques e
´
ducatives.
Resumen Este artı
´
culo ofrece una informacio
´
n general de los servicios de infancia
preescolar italiana, su desarrollo y la cultura educativa. En Italia, guarderı
´
a fuera del
hogar durante el dı
´
a para nin
˜
os menores de 3 an
˜
os se he convirtio
´
en un feno
´
meno
cuantitativamente significativo en los u
´
ltimos treinta an
˜
os. Este desarrollo se car-
acterizo
´
por la cercana colaboracio
´
n entre las agencias de investigacio
´
n y los ser-
vicios de la infancia preescolar. Se produjo una gran variedad de estudios sobre la
educacio
´
n temprana. Algunos temas parecen particularmente pertinentes con res-
pecto a sus implicaciones a la pra
´
ctica educativa. La relacio
´
n entre el personal de los
servicios preescolar y los padres se considero
´
un tema central en la garantı
´
adela
calidad de la experiencia de los nin
˜
os, y los servicios preescolares se consideraron
un importante recurso de apoyo social a los padres. Desde el comienzo de la
experiencia preescolar en Italia, tanto en las pra
´
cticas educativas como las de
investigacio
´
n han prestado especial atencio
´
n a la interaccio
´
n entre los nin
˜
os en los
servicios, con especial atencio
´
n al efecto de variables contextuales en su frecuencia
y calidad. Otro tema importante de investigacio
´
n fue la evaluacio
´
n de la calidad
de los servicios preescolares. En la experiencia italiana, la evaluacio
´
n de la calidad
de los servicios preescolar se considero
´
un proceso dina
´
mico y continuo, con la
participacio
´
n de una pluralidad de actores (directivos, gerentes, personal de los
servicios preescolar y los padres) y tuvo como objetivo analizar, discutir y mejorar
la pra
´
ctica educativa.
Keywords Early education quality  Parental involvement  Early education
professionalism  Evaluation  Child socialization
ECEC Services in Italy
Italian early educational system is split into two parts according to children’s age.
Over 96% of children aged from 3 to 6 (the starting age for compulsory education)
attend the scuola dell’infanzia, provided by state, local governments or private
initiatives. The scenario is very different for children under 3. In Italy, out of home
142 T. Musatti, M. Picchio
123

day care for under 3 years became a quantitatively significant phenomenon during
the 1970s. In 1971, as a response to the trade unions’ and women’s movements’
campaigns, a national Act established the nido service in Italy. The municipal and
regional authorities took charge of planning, regulating and running the nido
centres. As a consequence of the different local policies, the nido quantitative
extension was not homogeneous over the country. Although nido covers about 10%
of all Italian under 3-year-old children, this percentage varies considerably across
regions: from 11 to 12% in the Northern and Central areas to 2.3% in the Southern
area (ISTAT 2004). In some cities of Northern and Central Italy nido centres may
cater for up to 30–45% of under 3 years. Most of nido centres are run directly by the
local governments or subsidized by them. Subsidized services have to comply with
the same regulations than municipal services. Parents’ fees, which differ signifi-
cantly from city to city, cover for 21% of nido expenditure, averagely. Forms of
family day care are rare.
In order to answer to the increasing demand of families and to reach the coverage
targets determined by EU in Barcelona, in 2007 a national program for nido
expansion and a new equilibrium among regional areas was launched. In the last
years, both an earlier entry to scuola dell’infanzia for 2-year-old children and
classes (sezioni primavera) for children from 2 to 3 years, with specific educational
and organisational devices, have been proposed.
The increasing parents’ demand for places in nido is certainly due to the
interaction of two factors: the increasing rate of mothers’ employment and the
local provision of ECEC services in its quantitative and qualitative aspects.
However, the rate of mothers’ employment cannot explain by itself this demand
(Musatti 2007a). Parents’ demand emerges also from their awareness of children’s
need for out-of-home social experiences and from their own need as parents for
receiving support in their parental function. In order to respond to this demand, in
many Italian cities, two new types of services were organized: Spazio bambini,
which cater for children from 18 to 36 months, for a maximum of 5 h daily; and
Centri per bambini e genitori, which are addressed both to children and their
parents. The latter services are particularly interesting as they provide social
experiences both to children and their parents. They are aimed at contrasting the
daily solitude shared by the adult and the child at home, as well as at providing
parents with opportunities for discussing their parental experience. Although these
services do not take in charge the families’ needs for childcare, the parents’
response was very positive everywhere these services were provided (Mantovani
and Musatti 1996).
ECEC services employ educatori, mostly women (educatrici) with a qualifica-
tion in education, though at a high-school level. Recently, some regional laws have
prescribed a university degree for educatrici, and many universities have organized
a specific BA program (3 years) within their faculties in Educational Sciences.
Almost all the municipalities that run ECEC services employ also one or more
coordinatori pedagogici, which are qualified professionals with management
responsibilities and a 5-year university degree. ECEC services organization and
personnel are described in Box 1.
Early Education in Italy: Research and Practice 143
123

The Development of a Culture on Early Education
Over the years, a specific educational culture emerged around and within the Italian
early educational system. The development of this culture and some of its features
have been deeply influenced by the fact that all ECEC services for under 3 years, as
well as a number of scuole dell’infanzia, are governed by local governments. The
local culture and policies have had a direct effect on ECEC educational culture
(Bondioli and Mantovani 1987; Mantovani 2007). The structural and process quality
of ECEC services can be slightly different across regions and cities. Some
differences can be found even in the educational guidelines for nido centres, which
were issued at a local level and influenced by local culture.
Another important consequence of the local governance of ECEC services is
found in the working conditions of ECEC services personnel as local government
employees. In order to equalize the number of working hours due by all local
employees, the ECEC services personnel benefited from a significant number of
paid hours in addition to those spent with children; these hours are to be spent in
planning the educational activities, caring for relationships with the children’s
parents and in-service training. In-service training became both an obligation and a
right for ECEC personnel. This has represented an important factor of qualification
of ECEC services (Mantovani 2001). Although up to recent years, educatrici had
only a high-school degree, they could receive an important cultural support by
in-service training and translate these suggestions into educational practice.
Furthermore, over the years, an increasing number of local governments have
employed one or more coordinatori pedagogici to support the educational practice
Box 1 ECEC services and personnel in Italy
Nido: full-time centre for children from 3 to 36 mo.
Opening hours: 7.30–9.00 a.m. to 4–6.00 p.m.
Ratio adult/children 1:6.
Parents pay fees according to family income and schedule.
Scuola dell’infanzia: preschool provision for children from 3 to 6 yrs.
Opening hours: 8–9.00 a.m. to 4.00–4.30 p.m (10% until noon).
Ratio adult/children 1:25.
Public preschools are free of charge.
Sezione primavera: class within scuola dell’infanzia for children from 2 to 3 yrs.
Ratio adult/children 1:10.
Centro per Bambini e Genitori: centre for parents and children under 3. Children accompanied by a
familiar adult are welcome by qualified personnel for 3–4 h, one or more days per week.
Spazio Bambini: centre for children from 18 to 36 mo.
Opening hours: a maximum of 5 h daily.
No meals or nap.
Educatori: qualified workers in services for children under 3. Usually, they are mentioned as educatrici
as almost all of them are women.
Coordinatori pedagogici: qualified workers with management responsibilities and the role of support
the educational practice in ECEC service.
144 T. Musatti, M. Picchio
123

in the ECEC services in the area and express a coherent educational policy. The
diffusion of these personnel contributed to the development of an early educational
culture in Italy relevantly.
An important role in the development of the educational culture of ECEC
services in our country was played also by the association Gruppo Nazionale Nidi
Infanzia, founded by Loris Malaguzzi in 1980, which gathered researchers,
managers and decision-makers, educatrici and coordinatori pedagogici. The
association is committed to the development of quality in early educational
services and has been constantly engaged both at the scientific level, organizing
conferences and seminars on early childhood and educational issues, and at the
political level, campaigning for ECEC extension and qualification. The association
favoured the exchange of educational experiences—some of which of high quality,
such as in Reggio Emilia (Rinaldi 2005) and Pistoia (Becchi 2010)—and at the same
time built up a network among cities that were expanding the services. In the recent
conferences of the association, special sessions for discussing research experiences
conducted on ECEC services were organized (Manetti 2006; Molina 2008).
Since most of nido centres were opened in the 1970s and a great number of
educatrici and coordinatori who have elaborated the ECEC culture are retiring in
these years, the issue at stake is how to ensure a transmission and further
development of the educational culture that has grown inside the services and rooted
in their practice (Galardini et al. 2008).
The development of this early educational culture results also from a close
collaboration between research agencies and ECEC services. This collaboration
produced educational experiences of good quality as well as it promoted
methodological innovation in research. Since the 1980s researchers identified the
ECEC services as a privileged place for studying children’s learning and
socialization’s processes in natural and normal contexts as well as for investigating
families’ daily life and parents’ needs (Mantovani and Musatti 1983; Musatti and
Mantovani 1983, 1986). On the other side, the local governments turned to research
agencies and universities to guarantee in-service training for their personnel. In the
framework of in-service training initiatives, a relevant number of studies, most of
which have been research-actions, were carried out in collaboration by researchers
and educatrici and coordinatori and were closely related to practice innovation.
In the following, we will present some of the most relevant studies conducted
within or about Italian ECEC services and discuss their implications for educational
practice and quality of services.
The Relationships Between ECEC Services and Parents
The idea that the relationships between ECEC personnel and parents is a central
issue in guaranteeing the quality of the children’s experience in the educational
services is common knowledge in the educational services of good quality in Italy
(Bove 2007; Catarsi 2005). Municipal ECEC services, both nido and scuola
dell’infanzia, were among the first educational institutions to have opened up to
parents. Parental involvement represented a basic dimension of the nido
Early Education in Italy: Research and Practice 145
123

experience from its beginning (gestione sociale) and the 1971 Law envisaged
parents’ participation. In the following three decades, several strategies were
implemented to establish good relationships between the services and the families.
These strategies were aimed at promoting parental participation in the life of the
service, communicating with parents about the child’s development and behav-
iour, and sharing a project on the children’s education between educatrici and
parents. The themes of parents’ involvement, their relationships with ECEC
personnel, their expectations towards the services have been investigated by
research studies.
The child’s transition between family and nido makes relevant emotional and
cognitive demands on her or him. The child’s first entry into the nido centre
(inserimento) has been the focus of both educational experimentation and research
(Mantovani and Terzi 1987; Varin et al. 1996). A qualitative study conducted in a
nido of the city of Modena (Bove 2001; Mantovani et al. 2000) explored also the
mother–teacher interaction and their emotional involvement during the inserimento.
The study gave a detailed analysis of the inserimento of infants by videotaping the
interaction among the child, the mother and the teacher during different moments
(the child–mother first entrance into the centre, their first separation experience and
their first reunion), and several months later by interviewing the mother and the
teacher on their perceptions and representations of their past experience. The
analysis highlighted that the inserimento process is a complex interpersonal event
that poses a great emotional burden not only on the child but also on the mother and
the teacher and has consequences on the quality of the parent–teacher relationships
in the following years.
A study by New, Mallory and Mantovani (2000) analysed the continuity and
variations in the gestione sociale and inserimento procedures across five Italian
cities. Local and regional differences were found in how these two concepts were
operationalized and valued.
In the world of Italian ECEC services, it is now widely accepted that establishing
good relationships with parents is part of the professional tasks of the educatrice
(Catarsi 2008). Educatrici should continuously adjust their behaviour and commu-
nication to their interlocutors, providing comprehensive and differentiated answers
to parents’ explicit and implicit requests, in their variety and specificity. In the last
years, several research-action studies were conducted to investigate parents’
and educatrici’s representations of early education and of their reciprocal roles and
relations. In a large study conducted by the University of Bologna (Contini and
Manini 2007) on early education in ECEC services across different regions, a large
number of educatrici were interviewed. Establishing a good relationship with
parents was found to be considered a crucial professional challenge and the
educatrici expressed their need for innovating practices to cope with families’ social
and cultural changes.
The issue of parents–educatrici relationships was explored by Sharmahd (2007)
that submitted both educatrici and parents in a large sample of nido centres in
Tuscany with a questionnaire on their reciprocal representations and expectances,
and their evaluation of the quality of their relationships. The findings showed that,
although, most of parents and educatrici assigned a great value to their relationship,
146 T. Musatti, M. Picchio
123

its quality varied according to both the emphatic capacity of each educatrice and the
quality of the educational service.
In Italian ECEC services, in the last 10 years, the number of young children
issued from immigrant families has increased greatly. The presence of these
children and their parents claim for an important re-thinking about all procedures
and quality of encounters among families and among parents and personnel. Some
studies have explored immigrant parents’ attitudes and problems in growing their
children in a foreign country and the meaning of ECEC services for them (Contini
and Manini 2007; Favaro et al. 2006).
The attention paid to relationships with parents and their participation in ECEC
led to acknowledge ECEC services as privileged observatories on changes in
families’ daily life and needs. The creation of Centri per bambini e genitori
stimulated further research on these themes (Anolli and Mantovani 1987; Infantino
2004). When parents attending a Centro per bambini e genitori were interviewed,
they confirmed their isolation when they care for their infant and toddler. Parents
expressed their need for socializing and discussing their parental experience with
other parents and professionals explicitly (Mantovani 1996; Musatti and Picchio
2005; Picchio and Musatti 2001; Rullo and Musatti 2005).
Parents’ Demand for Nido and Children’s Social and Cognitive Experience
These changes in family structures and daily life as well as in parents’ attitudes
induced major changes also in their demand for ECEC services.
A survey, which was carried out in collaboration with the Gruppo Nazionale Nidi
Infanzia in Northern-Central Italy, investigated the families’ child care choices and
the daily schedule of 18–32-month-old children (Musatti 1992), which either
attended a nido or were cared for by mothers, grandmothers and minders at home.
The childcare choice as well as the child’s cognitive and social daily experience was
found to vary greatly according to the social and cultural characteristics of her or his
family and the childcare choice. The findings also showed the material and
psychological isolation in which many caregiver-child dyads spent most of their
day. The daily life during working days of most young children that are cared for at
home by their mother, a grandmother or a babysitter is characterized by loneliness
with no other adult or child to interrupt the tension associated with reciprocal
attention (Musatti 1996). However, in this survey the major motive expressed by
parents for their demand of a nido place was mother’s employment.
In the following years, other surveys on toddlers’ daily life (Musatti and Pasquale
2001; Sepe 2000) estimated that more than one-third of Italian families still could
not provide their young children with frequent social contacts with peers, before
their entering scuola dell’infanzia. These daily life conditions clashes with the new
representation of children’s early social competences that has been induced by the
process of normalization of ECEC services. Even in the eyes of parents, the child’s
experience in early educational settings has taken on the value of an important step
in her or his social development as the centres are the first social contexts where
children have a social experience outside the private sphere of family relations. Two
Early Education in Italy: Research and Practice 147
123

major consequences of this cultural change are the parents’ increasing motivation to
request an ECEC place for their children ‘in order to favour their socialization’, as
well as the increasing attention paid to the social dimension of children’s experience
inside the centres (Musatti and Scopelliti 2008).
Since the beginning of nido experience in Italy, both educational practices and
research have paid a particular attention to adult–child and peer interactions inside
the services with a specific focus to the effect of contextual variables on their
frequency and quality (Musatti 2007b). Following suggestions from research, the
organization of small groups of children has become a common practice in nido
centres (Giovannini 2003). Musatti and Mayer (2001) showed how the organization
of a small group setting and the adult’s non-intrusive behaviour support children’s
joint attention to the same set of objects and communication and the sharing of
meanings.
Italian best educational practices particularly cared for the spatial arrangement
and quality of furniture in the children’s rooms (Galardini 2003). Musatti and Mayer
(2008) analysed how spatially organized sets of play materials sustain children’s
attention and their prolonged engagement on an activity and favour their social
encounters.
Some issues appear to be particularly relevant to be further explored. Some of
them originate from the evolution of ECEC services experience, such as the
development of a specific culture in the group of children and educatrici within the
service (Musatti 2005) and, vice versa, a more careful attention to the single child’s
well-being and experience within the group (Ongari et al. 2007; Varin 2007).
Professionalism and the Evaluation of ECEC Quality
The professionalism of ECEC personnel and their changes over the years have been
investigated by several studies. Ongari and Molina (1995) interviewed a sample of
educatrici working in different sites to explore their representation of their
professional role and identity. The findings showed that, although, all the educatrici
acknowledged the educational dimension of their work, its representations varied
according to the different regional contexts more than according to individual
characteristics.
Two more recent studies investigated the professional profile of educatrice in two
regional contexts, Umbria (Falcinelli and Falteri 2004) and Tuscany (Terlizzi 2005).
Both studies highlighted the complex professional competences required to
educatrici and the need for a specific support to the relational dimension of their role.
The professional identity of coordinatore pedagogico was also investigated.
Catarsi (1994) found that educatrici, municipal ECEC managers and coordinatori
expressed different representations of this professional profile. A survey carried out
in 1997–1998, in the framework of an European Leonardo Da Vinci project found
that the number and tasks of coordinatori varied greatly over the regions (Musatti
et al. 2003). A qualitative analysis of coordinatori’s perceptions and representations
of their role highlighted the delicate balance between management activities and
pedagogical support that coordinatori have to pursue (Mayer and Musatti 2003).
148 T. Musatti, M. Picchio
123

A comparison between the professional profiles of Italian and French municipal
coordinatori (Baudelot et al. 2003) described the emergence of a similar
professional profile in the two countries.
Since the 1990s, the evaluation of ECEC quality became a crucial issue also in
Italy. Several experiences have been made by regional and local governments in
strict cooperation with research agencies to assess the educational quality of their
services.
The first most relevant experiences were carried out by a research team of the
University of Pavia in collaboration with the Region Emilia-Romagna and the
Region Umbria, which wished to both assess and improve the quality of ECEC
public provision. In these experiences, an Italian version of the ITERS-ECERS scale
(Harms et al. 1992/1990) was proposed. The use of this scale was found to elicit a
thorough discussion on educational quality among ECEC educatrici, coordinatori
pedagogici, managers and researchers. However, the scale was found to neglect
several elements that were considered crucial in the Italian ECEC culture, such as
parents’ participation. Thus, new tools and procedures of evaluation were developed
in different sites, following the local educational culture. A further experience made
in Umbria produced a new tool, ISQUEN, to be used for auto-evaluation by
educatrici and coordinatori pedagogici (Cipollone 1999). In Emilia-Romagna, a
regional team of researchers and coordinatori pedagogici identified a set of
indicators of nido quality (Bondioli and Ghedini 2000). A further tool, SCIN, was
elaborated by a team of coordinatori and educatrici in the Province of Forlı
`
-Cesena
(Zanelli et al. 2004).
In recent years, the extension of ECEC provision by subsidizing private services
made urgent to afford the issue of controlling their accreditation requirements and
evaluating their quality. An approach, in which quality control and quality
improvement are combined, has been developed by a research team of ISTC–CNR
to asses the quality of subsided ECEC services in the City of Rome (Di Giandomenico
et al. 2008). A set of specific procedures for documenting, analysing and expressing
judgments on the service quality was elaborated and implemented with the
participation of all stakeholders (local government personnel, private service
personnel, parents). During the evaluation process, all participants had to consider
the compliance to accreditation rules and discussed how to improve the educational
practice, at the same time.
It should be stressed that all these evaluation experiences share some common
features. First, they were influenced by the 1991 Document of Childcare Network
of European Commission, which considered quality a multidimensional construct
and its definition a dynamic and continuous process, involving a plurality of
stakeholders. Moreover, in all cases, the evaluation was carried out in the
framework of in-service training, the educatrici and coordinatori were the principal
evaluators, and the evaluation activities were considered an important component of
the professional practice of ECEC personnel. Most importantly, the evaluation was
aimed at both monitoring the quality of services and supporting innovative
educational practices. Finally, almost all experiences involved parents in the
evaluation process by requiring them to express their own perspective on the
educational quality of the service.
Early Education in Italy: Research and Practice 149
123

Future Perspectives
We have highlighted the important positive consequences of local governance of
ECEC provision in supporting and shaping the development of an early educational
culture. We have also shown that the demand of local governments to be sustained
by the research world in ensuring an ECEC provision of good quality contributed to
build a particularly strict relation between research and practice innovation.
Some negative implications can be also identified. Although the attunement of
research and educational practice to local culture produced some high-quality
educational experiences, it must be said that, in the absence of national policies
directed to support research and innovation at a national level, the diffusion of these
experiences have met many difficulties, which have been only mitigated by
networking initiatives.
This complex situation emerged also in many of the studies described in this
article, when they reported a substantially common cultural ground as well as great
differences in educational experiences or in professional behaviour across regions
and cities.
The rich experience of Italian ECEC services is now faced with new political and
cultural challenges and a greater contribution is requested to the world of research
as well. Today, a variety of financial and political difficulties place a great pressure
on local governments that wish to keep together the extension of the early
educational provision and their qualification. In the research world, early education
issues receive neither great attention nor funding and they specifically suffer from
the lack of a cultural and financial involvement from the national or regional
governments. However, the links between many local governments and research
agencies are still in progress and develop within in-service training initiatives. In
our view, the contribution of research world to this cooperation has to be further
specified and new methodological approaches, procedures and tools are to be
designed to both acquire a new knowledge and support the ECEC personnel’s
reflections on practices.
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