Associate Professor

E-mail: kpetrogiannis@eap.gr

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Konstantinos Petrogiannis is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at Hellenic Open University (Patra) and country coordinator for the CARE Project. His main areas of research interests concern effects of early child care and education experiences (parent-child relationships; attachment behaviour; working mothers role and relationship with young children) and impact upon children's development, children’s behaviour problems and children’s resilience, adolescent transition difficulties (family-school relationships, coping and resiliency), computer use and preschool children’s socio-emotional development. He has participated in a number of international research projects such as the “Provision of primary health care for the promotion of children's early psychosocial development” (BIOMED I), the “European Longitudinal Study for Pregnancy And Childhood” (BIOMED I), the “The prenatal screening in Europe: The past, the present and the future” (BIOMED II). Relevant to early childhood care and education is his participation as principal researcher in the “Computers and socio-emotional development of young children” project, and “Development and validation of the Psychological Well-being Scale for Preschool Children”. He has been involved as an external evaluator in Comenius projects regarding a cross-cultural educational training  program for primary school teachers. He was team leader in two large scale projects regarding Roma children schooling inclusion and learning. Petrogiannis collaborated extensively with Prof. E.C. Melhuish (University of London and Oxford) in review studies of ECEC.

Phd

E-mail: effieped55@gmail.com

I have been working as a kindergarten teacher since 1996, in the private and public sector. I am member of the Laboratory of Pedagogical Research and Educational Practices of the Department of Educational Sciences in the Pre-school Age, Democritus University of Thrace. I have worked in the same Department as practice-tutor for prospective kindergarten teachers and in in-service training courses for kindergarten teachers in the public sector. I participated as a researcher in the Collaborative Research Project (CRP), “Establishment a knowledge-base for quality in education: Testing a dynamic theory of educational effectiveness”, European Science Foundation 1/9/2009-31/8/2012. Main area of research interests: family-school connection and parental involvement in early years. 

Professor of Developmental Psychology

E-mail: rentzou@ucy.ac.cy

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Dr. Konstantina Rentzou has graduated from the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care, Technological Educational Institute of Epirus, in 2002. In 2004 she has finished her Master of Arts in Early Childhood Education at the Brunel University, West London (Dissertation topic: “Working with parents in the UK and Greek preschool settings: A case study”. In April 2011 she has finished her PhD. The title of her thesis is “Evaluating the quality of care and education provided by pre-school centers. An approach by researcher’s, educators’ and parents’ perspectives”.  

From 2005 onwards she has worked as a Casual Lecturer at the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care, TEI of Epirus, Ioannina, as an instructor in post-secondary education institutions and as a researcher in a research program funded by the Research Committee of Ioannina University. Currently, she works as a research associate in the University of Cyprus, Dept. of Social and Political Sciences, in a program aiming at examining family involvement in Higher Education.

She has published 25 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Her research interests are mainly about issues concerning parental involvement, parent caregiver relationships, involvement and recruitment of males in early childhood education, burnout syndrome, the organization of the preschool environment, quality of early childhood education and care, children’s play, children’s – early childhood educators’ relationships and parental attitudes towards early childhood education and care.