CPD for ECCE providers

The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme offers a range of professional development opportunities, mentoring, and practical support to Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) providers in the Dublin Docklands and East Inner City area.

Through the programme, a core group of ECCE settings work together as part of a Learning Network, building capacity through sharing experience and expertise. The primary focus is developing quality practice in ECCE settings. The ECCE settings are committed to engaging in on-going, intensive, reflective practice, through a cycle of continuous review, action planning and implementation. Programme delivery is based on a community development approach and is learner focused.

All of the training offered by ELI is underpinned by the principles and standards of Síolta, the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Aistear, the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework.

Objectives

  • To improve the educational outcomes for children in the Docklands, particularly in literacy and numeracy
  • To increase parental involvement in their children’s development and education
  • To support the early childhood care and education workforce in implementing Aistear, the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework (Aistear) and Síolta, the Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education (Síolta)
  • To ensure continuity and progression in learning for children moving from home to early years settings to the local schools.

Erasmus+ EU Literacy Project: Making Literacy Meaningful

Teaching staff in a multi-faceted Europe are continually confronted with questions around facilitation of children from a multitude of backgrounds. The Making Literacy Meaningful project, funded by the European Union under the ERASMUS+ Programme, has developed practically-oriented knowledge in the area of language and literacy development, with a specific focus on addressing the needs, challenges and opportunities resulting from multilingual and multicultural classrooms. The project participants span universities, as well as a college and a school, from five different countries (Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, England and Spain). 

You can find out more information on the Making Literacy Meaningful website, which hosts papers and materials specifically developed for the project as well as providing links to the two custom-designed MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) around Language Facilitation and Literacy Facilitation. Reflective tasks and practical implementation tips are designed to help practitioners to link theory to practice.

The first MOOC Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms focused on supporting the teaching of children who do not have the national instructional language as their primary language (in the Irish context this will be children who have English as an additional language).

The second MOOC Teaching Literacy focused on the teaching of literacy for all children.