ISSA Board Member

Jan Peeters

Photogrtaph of Jan Peeters Dr. Jan Peeters is the director of the Research and Resource Centre for Early Childhood Education and Care of the Department of Social Welfare Studies at the Ghent University (Belgium). He acquired a PhD on An international perspective on professionalism in ECE in Flanders in 2008. Since 1992 he has been promoting several innovative transnational Early Childhood Education and Care action-research projects and has written numerous articles and has given presentations on international conferences on professionalism, gender, and diversity in the early years. Together with other international colleagues, he founded in 1998 the European DECET network on Diversity and professional development in ECE, and for the moment he is leading a workpack on professionalism and diversity. He is the author of two books on professionalism one in English on ECE in New Zealand, France, England and Denmark: 'The Construction of a New Profession' (2008) and one in Dutch on professionalism in Flanders in an international perspective: De Warme professional (2008). He is co-founder (2001) of the European magazine Children in Europe, a joint publication in 17 languages, that is distributed in 17 countries and he is since 10 years member of the editorial board (editor Prof. Peter Moss). He was the guest editor of an issue on professionalism: Aiming high: a professional workforce for the early years with contributions from renowned experts of 10 different countries. He worked as advisor for the OECD Network Starting Strong from 2006 till 2008. He was involved in several international research projects: the UNESCO-project Learning and Caring together, the Seepro project on professionalism in Europe and together with Prof. Vandenbroeck and dr. Mathias Urban (East London University) he is the promoter of the European Commission study on Competencies in Early Childhood Education,(CoRe research project) that started early 2010 and will publish the results in spring 2011.