Notícias

CALL 2026

2026-03-13

Teacher education in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) has increasingly emerged as a central lever for improving educational quality, yet it remains a fragmented and theoretically contested field. While a large body of research highlights the importance of qualified and well-prepared educators, there is still limited consensus on what constitutes essential professional knowledge for ECEC teachers, how it should be developed, and which forms of professional development produce meaningful and sustainable changes in practice.

The field is marked by persistent tensions: between formal qualification and situated competence; between general pedagogical knowledge and context-specific expertise; between transmissive and reflective models of training; and between short-term interventions and long-term professional learning processes. Moreover, the growing diversification of ECEC systems across countries—alongside increasing cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic complexity—raises new questions about the adequacy of existing teacher education models.

Recent research has also highlighted the limitations of decontextualized training approaches and the importance of professional development embedded in real educational settings, grounded in collaboration, observation, and reflection. At the same time, the expansion of digital tools and AI-based resources introduces new opportunities and risks, calling for critical examination rather than uncritical adoption.

This special issue aims to advance the theoretical and empirical debate on teacher education in ECEC by bringing together contributions that explore how educators are trained, how professional knowledge is constructed, and how training impacts educational practices and children’s development.