Step by Step Program | About the Authors

In late 2019, Jan Peeters was stirred by news of the decision by the Open Society Foundations to wind down its work in early childhood.  Seeking to preserve the legacy of the Step by Step Program, he joined forces with Sarah Klaus, the then director of Open Society’s Early Childhood Program. Together, they enlisted Tatjana Vonta, a seasoned Step by Step expert and former director of Step by Step in Slovenia. Bound by a shared commitment to promoting democratic early childhood education, they embarked on a collaborative journey to listen to the stories of innovative Step by Step leaders and pedagogues and to distill what motivates meaningful, lasting systemic reforms in early education systems.

Sarah Klaus, EdD

As a member of the program team at Open Society, when Step by Step launched in 1994, and later as director of the Early Childhood Program, and executive director of the International Step by Step Association, Sarah Klaus worked with and later led teams in the center of the whirlwind of activity, creativity, strategy, and decision-making that brought Step by Step and the International Step by Step Association to life. The journey took her from living in New York to Budapest and finally to London, where she and a team of early childhood experts expanded Open Society’s work to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean until the program closed at the end of 2020. Since then, she has joined Georgetown University as an adjunct assistant professor and consults internationally with foundations and non-profit organizations. One of her core motivations is to highlight the depth of early childhood scholarship, knowledge, and capacity in Eastern Europe and their leadership in building the International Step by Step Association (ISSA), which has evolved into the leading professional early childhood network uniting professionals across Europe and Eurasia.

Jan Peeters, PhD

As director of a research center at Ghent University (VBJK - Innovations in the Early Years), Jan Peeters experimented with introducing democratic approaches in early education and care centers, first in the city of Ghent and later in the Flemish community of Belgium. With colleagues from Western Europe, he launched the Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Training Network and Children in Europe, a European magazine published in nineteen European languages. Inspired by the ISSA conference in 2004 and visits to Step by Step programs in the following years, he was impressed by its high pedagogical quality and intensive parent involvement and observed that so many of the engaged and competent people that he encountered working in government, universities, and training institutions had links to Open Society’s Early Childhood Program. He became convinced of Step by Step’s effectiveness at introducing democratic approaches across different levels of early childhood systems. For Jan, it is extremely important to document this large early childhood education project through interviews that capture the experiences of the main actors and to inspire new generations of innovators.

Tatjana Vonta, PhD

Tatjana Vonta's career in early childhood education reflects a journey marked by exploration and innovation. Beginning as an educational researcher and later professor at the Education Research Institute, in the 1980s, Tatjana's curiosity led her to Georgia, where she studied how childhood transition to primary school.  Tatjana launched and led Slovenia's Step by Step program for two decades, establishing both a national child development center at the institute and as well as a national network of educators and preschools.  Tatjana served as a Board Member of the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) and was a leading expert in the development of ISSA’s quality resources.  She has consulted with the Open Society Foundations and provided expertise to a number of European Commission-funded projects.  She hopes that the book will illustrate for future educators the interdependence of the various components of early childhood systems, as well as the relationship of these systems with socio-political environments.