Science education is a key factor for European economy and society’s future competitiveness.

The Europe 2020 strategy has identified within its educational benchmarks that 2020 at least 95% of pre-school children of 4 years or older should participate in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Evidence shows that quality early childhood education and care can bring the highest rates of return over the whole lifelong learning process, especially for the most disadvantaged groups.

The project identifies and addresses three needs that play a crucial role in order to enhance the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC):

• Need to reinforce the capacity of pre - school teachers to involve their pupils in activities that according to appropriate didactical and communication methods can provide an early start of the development of basic and transversal competences.
• Need to raise children's families awareness of the importance that pre-school can have for the preparation and the passage of their children to primary school and in particular for disadvantaged groups (migrants, ethnic minorities, those at risk of social and economic exclusion) for the integration in the social life.
• Need to develop pre-school children cognitive and non-cognitive skills through the implementation of cooperative learning experiences, aimed at integrating the normal activities with relational and richer verbal interactions between pupils with a special focus on those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The project aims to:

• Impact on pre-school pupils basic and transversal competences through the transnational comparison of traditional tales linked to the local territory in which they live with the ones linked to the cultural backgrounds of pupils coming from other countries/ethnic minorities.
• Enhance pre-school comprehension and communication through innovative audio-visual based approaches and tools.
• Implement a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to pre-primary education supported by innovative pedagogic materials for the purpose and ad hoc references methodological concepts in order to develop children’s cognitive and pre-cognitive social skills.
• Strengthen the capacity of pre-school teachers and of pupils’ families to build cooperation patterns.

The TIK project expects to achieve the following results

• Through the creation of ad hoc guides, the TIK project will provide pre-school teachers with the needed skills and competences to reinforce their capacity to adopt appropriate didactical and communication methods in order to involve pupils in learning activities that can provide them with an early start of the development of basic and transversal competences.
• Will provide pre-school teachers with practical experiences and reference materials to use traditional tales as a mean to promote the interaction and the mutual knowledge and respect among pupils of different nationalities, ethnic and religious groups and social and economic situation.
• Will provide families with ad hoc learning materials to raise their awareness of the importance that pre-school can have for the preparation and the passage of their children to compulsory school and in particular for disadvantaged groups (migrants, ethnic minorities, those at risk of social and economic exclusion) for the integration in the social life.
• Will propose to policy makers involved in the definition of ECEC strategies with an innovative paradigm for the cooperation between pre-school services and children families, that main literature on the matter, has identified as a crucial point for enhancing the quality of ECEC services

In order to achieve the above mentioned results the project will develop 3 Intellectual Outputs:

IO 1 – Guides for the innovation of pedagogical approaches in ECEC

• Teachers’ Guide providing pre-school teachers with a consistent set of learning materials to develop the necessary skills for improving achievement in basic cognitive and transversal pre-cognitive skills of their pupils in early childhood education, through a fruitful cooperation with the pupils families.
• Family caregivers of pre-school pupils Guide in order to raise their awareness on the importance that pre-school has in developing cognitive and pre-cognitive skills that are fundamental in the transition to compulsory school.

IO 2 – Didactical ToolKit for Kindergartens
The Toolkit provides didactical materials presenting traditional tales both of the local area in which the children live in and of the countries/traditions of the children from other countries and/or ethnic groups who are present in the participating schools.
The Toolkit will provide preschool teachers and pupils families with innovative, media based tools to be used with children to make them autonomously learn about different traditional tales, start to face diversity of cultures, and interpret the story and describe them through creativity i.e. drawings, collages etc. and promote cognitive and non-cognitive social skills among the children through the discovery and presentation of traditional tales through images, pictures, photos and videos.