Her national and international research focuses on aspects of the curriculum and quality of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) provisions. Particularly, she is interested in the relations between structural quality characteristics, for instance the role of continuous professional development, and process quality. She also looks into the effects of ECEC curriculum and quality on children's developmental outcomes, specifically language, self-regulation, and executive functioning skills. She is especially interested in the nature, causes and impact of early emerging social and educational inequalities in the context of socioeconomic, cultural and diversity. She studies issues of cultural and linguistic diversity and inclusiveness in the (pre)school classroom and the role of professionals. Her international work includes the development of curriculum and professional development interventions aimed to improve ECEC quality and inclusive practices. She collaborates with colleagues from Denmark (prof. Dorthe Bleses), Germany (prof. Yvonne Anders and prof. Ulla Licandro), Greece (prof. Konstantinos Petrogiannis and Effie Penderi), Norway (Helga Norheim), Poland (Olga Wyslowska and Krzystof Bulkowski), Portugal (Cecilia Aguiar, Joana Cadima and Gil Nata), United States (prof. Laura Justice and Kelly Purtell) and United Arabic Emirates (Antje von Suchodoletz).
She acts as consultant or advisor at the local level (several municipalities), national level (Ministries of Education and of Social Affairs, The Advisory Council of Education) and the international level (EU DG for Education and Culture, EU ECEC working group, OECD, Irish Ministry of Children, Equality, Diversity, Integration and Youth, and Oregon State Department of Education).
Currently, she is project leader of the Dutch study into quality of child care () funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. She is also involved in the ongoing national . She was involved in the European H2020 and the European FP7 . She is Early Childhood Domain Chair of Dynamics of Youth
Blogs voor EarlyYearsBlog.nl:
15-09-2023
01-10-2021
20-08-2021
21-01-2021
21-8-2020
8-6-2020
22-5-2020
10-4-2020
16-3-2020
28-02-2020
8-11-2019
5-7-2019
24-5-2019
10-5-2019
26-10-2018
8-10-2018
29-09-2018
Webinars:
12-04-2021
24-06-2020