Preparation if there is an interest in your country

1.      The OMEP national executive committee will appoint one person from each participating country as the ‘National Project Coordinator’.

2.      The National Project Coordinator must check and apply for ethical approval for children’s involvement and participation in the project. (In addition, the project has already been approved  by the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research for the coordination of the project, but you need to follow the guidelines in your own country.)

3.      For countries with minority or disadvantaged groups, we encourage their participation whenever socio-contextual circumstances allow.

4.      Make a project/action plan on how the collaborative exploration can be carried out in the participating kindergartens and schools

Implementation with local adjustments

1.      Select at least one Early Childhood Care & Education site near a waterscape (river, pond, ocean, fjord, reserve, dam, well, estuary, or lake).

2.      Provide a consent form for project participants. A template based on the Norwegian regulation will be provided, and you can adapt it to your country's national guidelines if necessary.

3.      ‘National Project Coordinator and/or other project members go to the field and collect/generate data, involving local waterscapes. .

4.      On a national level, these data should be interpreted, or connected, involving basic concepts, theories, and contexts, which are helpful for readers outside the context to understand.

5.      The OMEP national executive team responsible for this project will oversee the collection of material storage. You follow your national guidelines. The OMEP national executive committees keep the original material for local dissemination to the participants and communities, and share copies of the data for the project research and dissemination. The shared material from all countries will be stored in the database at the KINDknow Research Center, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. A team of researchers (an international project group) and filmmakers will first assess the material. The material will later be opened to researchers and students for more analysis upon request.

6.       Languages accepted: English (preferably), French, Spanish, German, Chinese, and Scandinavian.

7.        Funding: A small hardship fund will be allocated to the project to subsidise three global south countries (USD 460 funding stems from OMEP NORWAY and will be administered by OMEP Norway). The KINDknow Research Center will fund the translation of the Policy Brief to three Languages, data coordination and storage, and open-access publication. The Research center and OMEP Norway seek further funding for dissemination purposes.

Data will be collected about different kinds of relations, connections, and access to water: practices with water, knowledge, stories from children or local traditions (e.g., tales and myths), aesthetic creations, and ceremonies, rituals about water to understand these different kinds of relations.

Methods could be to talk with kindergarten teachers and leaders, write mini-stories about their experiences and points of view, and use children’s drawings conducted at kindergarten/school premises or any other relevant natural learning environments where collaborative exploration occurs. Children will be ethnographically observed in their natural settings, and their drawings, sayings, and, eventually, photos of their local waterscapes about water and landscapes will be collected for documentation and dissemination purposes.

Videos/films or animations are welcome, as they provide possibilities for effective project dissemination, but are not a requirement. If you plan to make a video/film, please contact the project team, as we will be able to plan the overall dissemination better  

OMEP upholds high ethical standards and is committed to the wellbeing of children and their families. Given the international nature of the project and variations in countries’ laws and regulations guiding research practices; in each country, the OMEP executive committee should take a leading role in observing ethical research practices including applying and obtaining ethical clearance.

The OMEP national executive team responsible with this project will oversee storage of collected data. The collected data will be shared with the KINDknow team and the OMEP national executive committees may keep copies of the data. Collected data from all countries will be stored in the data bank to be created at the KINDknow and open to researchers for analyses upon requests. The overall qualitative and quantitative analyses will be carried out at the KINDknow and disseminated in the form of OMEP conference papers, IJEC journal articles, policy briefs, and posters.