Europe is facing important challenges such as cultural complex diversity in classrooms, early school leaving and disadvantaged backgrounds for some children. Quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) can be a bridge to tackle these challenges. Not only children’s presence in ECEC is important but also their level and quality of active participation and engagement in the social and learning activities of early childhood provision.HangingOUT! is an ambitious project that investigates the possibilities to use 'every' outdoor environment as a way to deal with the mentioned challenges. Eleven complementary strategic partners and different associated partners from five different countries (BE, LT, PT, UK, DK) want to give students, ECEC professionals and parents the confidence, tools and support to explore and create possibilities and experiments with different outdoor educational practices.Our HangingOUT! project has 4 objectives:(1) To further develop the professionalisation of educators in ECEC within our transnational network by strengthening the confidence of teachers and responsible adults in going outdoors.(2) To enhance the quality of ECEC through implementing and recognizing innovative pedagogies in outdoor education.(3) To discover the opportunities of different outdoor environments (from city streets to mindscapes and from forests over factories to school grounds) while recognizing the wide variety in local, cultural and ecological contexts by experimenting with concrete educational practices.(4) To install a culture of cooperation and co-creation between the different partners and stakeholders in early childhood education and care; deepening on the educational context of each country (care and education, formal and informal education, different stages in education,…).To reach our goals we will establish 6 associated local networks between a HEI and 2 field partners (pre-schools, kindergartens, organisations, ...). Each local network has its own focus depending on the interest, needs and expertise of the partnership: children's participation, diversity, 0-3 year old and ICT. Via this way of working we bring together a lot of expertise, co-create with the different stakeholders and have an impact that is really sustainable.The associated networks meet semi-annual F2F and online to share expertise, ways of seeing and knowing and experiment with each other's outdoor practices. Connected to the F2F meetings are international weeks where we can share and discuss our outputs and expertise with students and other lecturers from the different strategic partners and more broadly with all interested members of the Comenius Association, a European network of teacher training institutes of which all HEI's are longtime partners.The strength of working within the local networks in Belgium, Portugal, United Kingdom, Denmark and Lithuania is the diversity and quality of the intellectual outputs it will generate; 7 intellectual outputs in total. Ranging from an innovative GoPro-video database where we will gain insights in interactions between children and the material environment that can be used by teachers, parents but also policy makers, architects, etc. Over the development of inspirational flash cards showing children’s autonomy and that foster inclusion through outdoor activities. To an App that searches for (learning) opportunities in the outdoor environment (urban and rural), bridging the gap between the digital and natural environment. Or collecting outdoor inspiration for children aged 0-3 years old, overcoming the 0-3 yo & 3-6 yo divide in ECEC in many European countries.HangingOUT! has been conceived and designed with long term sustainability in mind. The consortium has the strong intention to integrate the outdoor topic in HEI curricula. This will ensure that what is implemented during the Hangout! project lifetime will endure and strengthen the profile of future ECEC professionals who will critically adopt an outdoor approach as the new normal.The dissemination and exploitation will be extended beyond the duration of the project. The transnational knowledge exchange between HEIs will be promoted and maintained beyond the completion of the project through the online platform including links to the local websites of the different partners. The project outputs will be further developed beyond the lifetime of the project and will be made available using Creative Commons licence.

Despite the well-recognized benefits of physical activity (PA), 80% of European children do not meet recommended guidelines of at least 60 minutes of daily PA (Tremblay et al, 2016). A recent report stated that PA promotion among children in 49 countries was a ‘serious worldwide and European concern’ (Aubert et al. 2018). In response to this, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted school-based programs as a ‘best investment’ for PA promotion among children (GAPPA & ISPAH 2011). The PA strategy for the WHO European Region (2016-25) and the Global Action Plan on PA (2018-30) (WHO, 2016; 2018) both highlight the need to strengthen the training of education professionals while creating school environments that encourage children to be physically active. Schools present the only setting where children of all social, cultural and economic backgrounds can be supported to engage in PA for an extended period of time (Naylor et al 2009). Unfortunately, children spend most of the school day being sedentary (Holt et al, 2013); thus, classroom time consistently contributes to sedentary behaviours (Bailey, 2012). Schools are dynamic, complex systems where the core business is learning (McQueen et al, 2007). Therefore, it is exceedingly difficult to develop school-based PA programs that teachers support. Among the many reasons for this are competing demands between time for academic pursuits versus time spent in PA. Physically active learning (PAL) was designed to address this ‘tug-of-war’ between competing priorities. PAL is a pedagogical approach where pupils are physically active while learning academic content (Bartholomew et al, 2011). Although a young science, PAL has received widespread attention as it produces consistent increases in PA levels with a neutral or positive effect on academic performance (Norris et al 2015; Martin and Murtagh 2017; Daly-Smith et al, 2018; Singh et al, 2018). Moreover, unlike other school-based PA interventions (e.g. recess), PAL benefits all demographic subgroups (Bartholomew et al, 2018). The primary challenge for any school-based programme is how to achieve high levels of adherence and compliance from teachers and other school stakeholders. A reason for this could be that programmes are often developed and implemented using researcher-led push approaches that rarely involve teachers (Rutten et al, 2017). As a result, many teachers lack the capability, opportunity and motivation to embrace PAL (COM-B, Michie et al, 2011; Quarmby et al, 2018). To address this issue and ensure sustainable practice, high-quality open access PAL teacher training programmes are required. To achieve this, programmes should be created in cooperation with teachers (Norris et al, 2015). To recognize teachers as pivotal partners at the forefront of realizing this vision, we established a six-nation partnership, ACTivate. The main objective of ACTivate is to co-create, with teachers and other school stakeholders, an innovative European-wide open access PAL education programme, web portal and community of practice (CoP, see concept map, appendix).ACTivate consortium partners; Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL, Lead organisation), Leeds Beckett University (LBU, UK), LIKES (Finland), Amsterdam UMCA (UMCA, Netherlands), University College Denmark (UCD), University of Porto (Porto, Portugal). Partners have substantial skills and experience to design and deliver the six intellectual outputs:1) report: core competencies for PAL teacher training and implementation programmes 2) report: outcome measures of importance to teachers3) an evidence-informed European PAL student and qualified teacher curriculum4) an open-access web portal and CoP to facilitate PAL adoption and implementation practice 5) two e-learning courses (e.g. MOOCs, videos) to enhance i) student, and ii) qualified teachers’ PAL capability, opportunity and motivation6) report: pilot the feasibility of the ACTivate online platform and e-learning coursesThe six intellectual outputs in ACTivate will facilitate the following (long-term) results, Increase the number of teacher training organisations across Europe that incorporate PAL within teacher training curriculumsEnhance the quality of PAL training for student teachers Enhance the quality of PAL qualified teacher training CPD courses Impact on the future development of teacher standards and training curriculumsIncrease primary school teachers’ capability, opportunity and motivation to adopt and implement PALIncrease the proportion of teachers implementing PAL and the frequency of deliveryCreate school environments that facilitate and activate the adoption and implementation of PAIncrease in the size and depth of PAL research networks Furthermore, pupils will be the end beneficiaries of the ACTivate project in the form of increased lesson time and school-based PA, increased enjoyment of academic lessons, and improved classroom behaviour and time on task.

<< Objectives >>This project will explore and develop professional knowledges and practices enhancing inclusion, participation and democratic engagement developed post Covid-19 in the area of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). The project is designed around peer-to-peer exchange where researchers and professionals meet to exchange experiences with post Covid-19 pedagogy in ECEC centres in three participating countries: Ireland, Norway and Denmark. Practice will be documented through video material.<< Implementation >>The project will consist of four main activities, two virtual engagements over a period of time and two mobility meetings in two of the participating countries with substantial preparation work. The main activities consist of professional dialogues on inclusive, democratic ECEC practices during and post-Covid-19. These will be recorded and transcribed. Relevant practices as identified by ECEC professionals will be recorded in ECEC centres and form the basis for the professional dialogues.<< Results >>3 central results of the project are:- Exchanges and systematisations of knowledge about professional practice and knowledges developed during Covid-19 that enhance pedagogical quality and values of equality, inclusion, democratic and civic engagement- Development of educational materials addressing the above mentioned theme- The production of a white paper addressing how to politically support and develop high quality ECEC practice providing equality, inclusion and democracy

Please see summary above in English.