Professional expert
Viola started her career as a kindergarten teacher and considers her practical experience to be decisive. For 20 years, she has been working in the field of public administration and public education development in the field of pre-school education, currently at the Education Authority. For the last 10 years, she has been a subject leader and technical manager for EU projects. Her professional interests include the professions of pre-school teachers and managers, project design, programme and training development, interpretation of professional-teaching legislation, also as a lecturer. She is a designer and co-professional leader of the Society of Hungarian American Schools’ overseas kindergarten program development. She was a delegate member of the European Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Working Group between November 2021 and May 2022. Since then, she is a professional consultant of the ECEC.
Research Fellow, MTA–SZTE Research Group on the Development of Competencies, MTA-SZTE Digital Learning Technologies Research Group, Senior Lecturer, Institute of Education, University of Szeged
After her PhD graduation Renáta joined first the Center for Research on Learning and Instruction and later the MTA–SZTE Research Group on the Development of Competencies. She is also a senior lecturer in the Institute of Education, at the University of Szeged. She participates in the reading assessments within the Hungarian Educational Longitudinal Program, and she coordinates research activities on the kindergarten–school transition. Renáta has joined a large-scale Developing Diagnostic Assessment project, where her main responsibilities were to contribute to the development of a reading framework and develop instruments to assess precursor skills for reading. She has been creating innovative multimedia items and supervising the item development processes within the eDia system.
Hungary has traditionally been committed to providing high-quality, child-centred early childhood education. The institutional system of early childhood education and care in Hungary is divided into two parts: nursery (ISCED 0.1) and kindergarten (ISCED 0.2). The Council Recommendation of 22 May 2019 on High-Quality Early Childhood Education and Care Systems (2019/C189/02) contains a quality framework whereby five key components have been identified: access to services, staff, curriculum, monitoring and evaluation, and governance and financing. The present study, which covers four dimensions, sheds light on the situation, recent measures, and expected challenges of some of the elements of this proposed quality framework in pre-school education in Hungary (ISCED 0.2). In Hungary, several elements defining pre-school education that represent quality have been subject to definitive regulation. These reinforce the preventative role of pre-school education and the associated responsibilities, while at the same time signalling challenges in making pre-school professions attractive and valued.
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