Pen
Pen Green Research, Development and Training Base is a early years research and higher education organisation located in Corby, Northamptonshire. We believe that developing knowledge and understanding through practitioner reflection and action research is a central feature of successful service provision. We offer practitioners in the early years, health and social sectors, a comprehensive range of professional development opportunities including a full early years degree programme, teacher training, short courses, conferences, seminars and bespoke training.
Pen Green Research, Development and Training Base
“Knowing a child well is an important prerequisite to helping them learn” (Harcus, 2012)
All Pen Green’s professional development programmes have been co-constructed through practitioner research and with that have a proven record of making a difference to children and their families. We promote practitioner research in the early years, our daily practice is informed by our research and our research is generated from our work with children and families. We believe that developing knowledge and understanding through practitioner reflection and action research is a central feature of a successful early years provision.
Practitioner research can also act as excellent examples of active reflection and form evidence based self reflection material for inspection and dissemination of best practice. Parents and practitioners collaborate as co-researchers and have presented their work at national and international early years conferences. Practitioner researchers who engage with Pen Green are encouraged and supported to contribute to our publications.
Our current research and projects can be viewed here in more detail.
Annually, we present our current research to academics and practitioners from across the world at the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) Conference. The European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) is an independent, self-governing, international association for multi-disciplinary research in early childhood, policy and practice.
EECERA’s annual conference is one of the largest early years’ research conference in Europe, attracting over 900 researcher delegates worldwide, conferences have taken place in Greece, Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Portugal, Norway, Spain, Iceland and Ireland to name a few.
Pen Green colleagues have presented on the following research projects:
The ‘Corby Better Start Project’: Developing Collaborative and Innovative Practices to Ensure Smooth Educational Transitions
Angela Prodger
Supporting Disadvantaged and Vulnerable Children through Transitions into New Settings
Emma Holton
Andragogy and Professional Development
Jo Benford and Cath Arnold
Supporting and Facilitating ‘Embarking’, ‘Consolidating’ and ‘Maturing’ Adult Learners: The Importance of the Academic/Professional and Pastoral/Personal Dimensions
Eddie McKinnon
The Emotional Roots of Learning: Esther Bick’s Method of Infant Observation and Integrated Working in a Multi-Disciplinary Team
Felicity Norton
Building on a long tradition of parental involvement, in 1996 we decided to establish a research base at Pen Green. Our initial aim was to understand how parental involvement in early years settings actually benefitted children. Parents were involved with the advisory group for the Research Base.
They worked alongside staff, researchers and academics as equals, sharing their own unique perspectives of children’s learning and development. We could clearly see that issues around teaching, learning and curriculum, which had previously been the domain of professional staff, needed to be opened up for a wider discussion with parents and families. What we needed was a rich and relevant dialogue between parents and nursery staff which could be sustained over time, a dialogue which focused on the children’s learning and achievements and our own pedagogic practice.
Because the services offered by Pen Green were still radically different from those available in other early years provisions, there was a great deal of interest in our practice from social scientists and educationalists in universities and research institutions. We were actively involved as ‘subjects’ in a number of other programmes and research projects, but found these experiences helped us to become more effective practitioners. We were increasingly interested in being participants in the research process and developing our own small scale action research projects to address our own questions and concerns about issues raised in practice.