Table of Contents

Preface Foreword Introduction: Building Democracy Through Early Childhood Education Part I: Why Invest in Early Childhood During a Political Transformation Process Towards Democracy? 1. ‘Everything was Planned’: Early Childhood Education in Former Socialist Countries before and during their Transition 2. ‘It Was Just a Magic Time’: Investing in Early Childhood to Build Democratic Societies Part II: Inventing a Democratic Pedagogy 3. ‘Who Says We Can’t Change the World?’: Implementing the Step by Step Program 4. ‘The Teachers Believed in Us’: How Teachers, Parents and Children Experienced the Programs 5. ‘Slowly We are Getting There’: Creating Opportunities for Children Experiencing Exclusion 6. ‘Don’t Think That it Won’t Happen’: Young Children in Times of War Part III: Extending and Sustaining Democratic Pedagogy Through Civil Society Networks and Expansion to New Regions 7. ‘The Seed Beneath the Snow’: The Growth of National and Regional Professional Early Childhood Networks 8. ‘Surprised and Thrilled’: Rolling Out the Programs Part IV: Transforming Early Childhood Education Systems 9. ‘This is Yours’: Successful Transformations of Early Childhood Education Systems Conclusion 10. ‘Systems Change When People Change’: Lessons Learned from Long-Term Investing in Early Childhood Annexes Annex 1. Biographies of Interviewees and Focus Group Participants Annex 2. Methodology: Oral History Interview and Desk Review of Evaluations, Reports and Documents

Promotional Information

Charts and critiques the successes and challenges of the institutions and individuals who transformed early childhood education and care in Central Eastern Europe/Eurasia post-1990.

About the Author

Sarah Klaus is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Child and Human Development, USA, and an independent Advisor and Consultant to foundations, international agencies and NGOs. Formerly she directed the Early Childhood Program at the Open Society Foundations. Jan Peeters is a Senior Researcher and Consultant, based in Belgium, working with Innovations in the Early Years and Fair Start Stories, the European Commission and UNICEF, including in Eastern European countries. Formerly, he was a Senior Researcher in the Department of Social Pedagogy and Social Work at Ghent University, Belgium. Tatjana Vonta, now retired, was Senior Researcher and Head of the Step by Step Centre at the Educational Research Institute, an Associate Professor at the University of Primorska, Slovenia, and provided independent consultancy services to the International Step by Step Association, Open Society Foundations and UNICEF.