This month European Early Childhood Education Research Journal features an open access article by Dr. Anne Fitzpatrick, a founding member of the TOY Project and Dr. Ann Marie Halpenny about children’s voice and agency in research about intergenerational learning (IGL). The article has a focus on the role that early childhood educators play in supporting young children’s participation in research. As Fitzpatrick and Halpenny note, educators, because of their close relationships with children, are more likely to be aware of their experiences of older adults beyond the context of a research study. This can be seen in one of the examples they write about:
“… I miss him up in the sky … (Child C)
The concept of death was introduced by a child after a visit to the older adults’ service although no specific death had taken place. The educator was aware the child’s grandfather had died recently and supported the child by listening to him. The following day the child brought a sympathy card from his grandfather’s funeral to the ECE service and the interaction continued”.
You can access the full paper, entitled, Educators as enablers of young children’s voice and agency in research: messages from an Irish study on Intergenerational Learning here.
Another significant recent publication about IGL is The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Connections. Edited by the late Dr. Elizabeth Fielder, the 30-chapter Handbook provides a very comprehensive look at intergenerational initiatives in the United States, as well as in Australia, Canada, Japan, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Singapore and Spain. The TOY Project and the development of Intergenerational Learning training in Europe is the focus one of the Chapters. A central theme of this chapter is the importance of values and attitudes in the work of intergenerational learning practitioners. Other chapters address such wide-ranging topics as the sociology of age-diversity; intergenerational mentoring in the workplace and the climate crisis from intergenerational perspectives. An outline of the Handbook’s contents is available here. Print copies will be available from October 2025.
