Giving every child the best start in life must be the highest priority to promote equality, life opportunities, and a sustainable society. “Schoolification” within early childhood education and increased levels of physical inactivity in young children are worrisome trends that are not in the best interest of the child. In MoveEarly, we will conduct intervention research to solve key child developmental challenges by addressing these societal trends curtailing young children’s natural inclination to move, play, and explore. We will design a professional development for staff to promote movement, play, and exploration as cornerstones for good educational practices in early childhood education. In this way, we aim to promote young children’s health, development, and learning. The professional development will be designed with strong involvement from teachers and stakeholders to ensure the development of useful and sustainable solutions. We will conduct a large intervention study, including 50 preschools and 500 children in the western part of Norway, to evaluate the intervention’s effects on teaching practices and holistic child development over 18 months. We include a thorough process evaluation of the project to learn how staff understand, use, and develop their practices. Research activities involve theory development and didactic design, development of new assessments, co-creation of continuing professional development, effect evaluation, process evaluation, and knowledge transfer. We hope a broad evaluation will provide rich knowledge on sustainable solutions for early childhood education and population health. Through MoveEarly, we aim to build a nationally and internationally leading transdisciplinary research group on intervention research integrating physical activity, public health, and early childhood education. In this way, we will shape future public health and early childhood education policy and lay the foundation for a sustainable society.
