Early Childhood Education and Care
The work area deals with questions of early childhood education and care.
The work focuses primarily on the following areas: educational quality in ECEC institutions (preschools and crèches) and their pedagogical concepts, professionalisation in elementary education, leadership styles and behaviour as well as work stress, well-being and health of preschool teachers, educational disparities in preschool age, relationships and interactions between preschool teachers, parents and children, personality of children and preschool teachers.
Questions of early childhood education and care of zero to six year old children are of high social and political relevance. The work area deals with current conditions, opportunities and limits of early childhood education institutions and families. The area works with both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as theoretical and systematising work.
News
4th Innsbruck Conference on Elementary Education
On 26.09.2025 and 27.09.2025 the 4th Innsbruck Conference on Elementary Education takes place on the topic "Learning in Early Childhood Education and Care".
Further information can be found here:
Scientific staff
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wilfried Smidt
Professor of Educational Science with a focus on early education and care (elementary education)
Mag.a Mag.a Laura Zöggeler-Burkhardt, PhD
University Assistant
Eva-Maria Embacher, BA BSc MA MSc PhD
Principal investigator "Work stress, health and educational quality in preschools"
Secretariat
Student employees
Franziska Aspmair
Student assistant
Hanna Lorenzin
Student assistant
Leonice Bair, BA
Student assistant
The Department of Early Childhood Education offers various courses on changing topics both in the Bachelor's programme in Educational Science and in the Master's programme in Educational Science. Courses are offered on the following topics, among others:
- Early childhood education and care
In the lecture (module 13 in the Bachelor's degree program), central concepts of education and care in early childhood are discussed and theoretical approaches and empirical research findings are presented, historically classified and compared. In the seminars on education and care in early childhood, various topics are addressed. The seminars focus, for example, on developmental psychological aspects of early childhood (e.g. emotional, social, cognitive and motivational aspects of early childhood learning), educational quality (e.g. process, structural and orientation quality), pedagogical concepts of action (e.g. Fröbel, Reggio, Montessori, Freinet, Pikler) or professionalization in early childhood education.
- Education in the family and daycare center
This course describes and analyzes theories and research findings on the understanding of learning and educational processes in families and ECEC institutions. The focus is on pedagogical intergenerational relationships and the interaction of family and ECEC contexts during transitions in the education system. In addition to their importance for individual learning and educational development, the family, crèche and kindergarten are also discussed as social institutions with culturally and historically different structures and functions.
- Seminar on the Bachelor's thesis
The topics of the Bachelor's theses are in the field of early childhood education. The seminar serves to support the individual and independent process of writing a Bachelor's thesis.
- Seminar on the Master's thesis
In this course, the research topics of the Master's theses in educational science (possibly with a focus on early childhood education) are presented, discussed and specified. The progress of the Master's theses is also discussed.
Supervision of Master's theses
If you are interested in writing a Master's thesis with a focus on early childhood education please contact Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wilfried Smidt (wilfried.smidt@uibk.ac.at), Laura Zöggeler-Burkhardt, PhD (laura.burkhardt@uibk.ac.at) or Eva-Maria Embacher, PhD (eva-maria.embacher@uibk.ac.at).
Brief description: This cooperative research project aims to shed light on the topic of early language support in the context of early childhood education practice and training in Lower Austria, Tyrol and Vienna. The aim is to develop methods and educational materials for early language education and support.
Brief description: The project aims to outline Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a global challenge, to discuss various social and early childhood education concepts and to gain an in-depth insight into examples of good practice of sustainability-oriented education and educational work.
Brief description: The research project conducts a comparative analysis of preschool teachers’ training at pedagogical colleges (Austria) and universities (Ukraine) by doing document analyses, surveys, and guided interviews.
9/2022 – 8/2023: Research project “Assistenzkräfte in Kindergärten – eine bedeutende, aber kaum beachtete Berufsgruppe“ (Assistant teachers in preschools - an important, but hardly noticed vocational group) (funded by the Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Tirol; with Prof. Dr. Bernhard Koch, University College of Teacher Education Tyrol)
Brief description: The research project investigates different aspects of the professionalization of assistant staff in preschools in Tyrol.
3/2021 – 4/2022: Research project “COVID-19 Pandemie und elterliche Förderung von Early Literacy” (COVID-19 pandemic and parental support for early literacy) (funded by the State of Tirol)
Brief description: The research project examines aspects of parental support for the competencies of children in the field of early literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is targeted primarily at parents of children in preschools who are almost of school age (last year of preschool).
7/2020 – 12/2020: Research project on home learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic (with Junior Prof. Dr Melanie Jester, University of Koblenz-Landau, internal University funds)
10/2018 – 3/2022: Research project InKi “Interaktionsqualität von Kindern im Kindergarten” (Quality of Children´s Interactions in Preschool) (funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF)
Brief description: Children primarily acquire fundamental skills through interactive processes. The quality of these interactions is very important for their linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as for the educational success of the children. Particularly in the context of disadvantages in access to education, findings about the quality of interactions in preschools are therefore extremely relevant. The study’s goal consists in examining the quality of the children’s interactions with preschool teachers and peers as well as the quality of task orientation in preschools in a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of a sample of 360 preschool teachers from 90 preschools in Austria (Tyrol).
9/2018 – 8/2021: Research project LeiKi Leitungsqualität in Kindertageseinrichtungen” (Quality of Leadership in Preschools) (funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, Germany; with Dr Thilo Schmidt, University of Koblenz-Landau)
Brief description: In the project “Leadership quality in kindergartens”, the researchers investigate the role of people in leadership positions in kindergartens with regard to their pedagogical process quality. The study will also highlight the institutions and the personal characteristics of the leadership staff (including professional qualifications and subject background, professional goals), in order to capture the relation between leadership quality and pedagogical process quality. A special focus will be on the leadership behaviour in heterogeneous educational teams. The project will make use, amongst other tools, of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System commonly used in English-speaking countries to gather the data.
10/2017 – 6/2018: Research project “Qualitätsindikatoren von Waldkinderbetreuungseinrichtungen in Tirol” (Quality Indicators of Forest Day Care Centers in Tyrol) (funded by the State of Tyrol and the Vice-Rectorate for Research of the University of Innsbruck)
2013 – 2015: Participating scientist of the project „Teaching and Learning Processes” (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG, Information at: http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/person/230656202)