The Early Childhood Student Journey (Phase 1)

Metrics offer useful information about the student journey through the Q89 (Early Childhood) programme, but there is less insight into the ‘lived experiences’ (Frechette et al., 2020) of students, including the barriers and enablers, as they move through the programme and develop an Early Childhood student identity. This identity is important in terms of their work with young children and the impact they can have. This project is the first stage of a longitudinal study; tracking the participating Early Childhood students’ journey. In this way, it affords insights into issues on the programme in terms of achievement, retention and progression to be addressed. Students share their experiences of studying Early Childhood modules at level 1 and their comments are considered through the conceptual lens of ‘Mattering’.