The overall goal for HIB, ECNU and BNU is to establish a sustainable collaboration in Early Childhood Education based on ongoing research cooperation as well as through generating new research. A sustainable collaboration will contribute to quality in education and internationalization of master programmes and research. In order to create a sustainable collaboration it is crucial to combine established research, educational collaboration and the placement arenas, i.e. the kindergartens as well as to establish administrative procedures. The main goal for the proposed UTFORSK project is to contribute to this through developing a intensive course/ joint master course (15 ECTS): Field work and research approaches in International Early Childhood Education that will involve both e-learning and student mobility. The research based course will build directly on ongoing research involving researchers at HIB, ECNU and BNU as well as generate new research through involvement of students and local kindergartens in both countries. Focus will be given both to course contents and framework, and includes developing a joint virtual classroom with virtual tasks and triggers that will constitute an important learning arena in the course.
