Tove Mogstad Slinde is a Senior Adviser in the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research in the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care. Since 2012 she is the elected Chair of the Network on Early Childhood Education and Care in OECD.

Michel Vandenbroeck is professor in Family pedagogy, at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University.
His research interests are about early childhood care and education, parents support and family policies, with a special interest for issues of in- and exclusion in contexts of diversity.
He is President of the Board of VBJK, the Centre for Innovation in the Early Years; member of the advisory board of Kind en Gezin (the governmental agency on child care and parent support in Flanders) and a member of the editorial board of several academic journals, including the European early Childhood Education Research Journal.

Working in the field of early childhood education as a:
·         Kindergarten teacher in Switzerland and Sweden
·         Professor of early childhood education at the University of Teacher Education Central Switzerland
·         Professor of early science education at the University of Münster in Germany
·         Professor of early science education at the University of Landau in Germany (from 1.4.2016)

Main interests:
·         Researching beliefs and knowledge of pre-service and in-service teachers
·         Researching young children’s knowledge structures and learning processes in science
·         Creating, implementing and researching learning opportunities for young children
·         ECEC and primary school teacher education

Athanasios Gregoriadis
Department of Early Childhood Education
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Athanasios Gregoriadis is an assistant professor in early childhood education, in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In the past he was a visiting professor in the University of Bielefeld and a visiting research fellow in the University of Oxford. His main research interests include teacher-child relationships, quality of early childhood education environments, professional development and the support of home learning environments. He has participated in several international research projects funded by the EU regarding the quality of early childhood education. He is currently co-directing the students' teaching practicum in his department.

Paul Leseman
Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Paul Leseman is a professor of education, coordinator of the two-year international research master program Educational Sciences and coordinator of the interdisciplinary research focus area Education for Learning Societies at Utrecht University.

Paul Leseman was trained as a psychologist. He is the author of a research review paper on efficacy of early childhood care and education for low income and immigrant children, commissioned by the OECD in 2002, and author of a research review on early childhood care and education, commissioned by Eurydice/European Commission in 2009. He frequently acts as an advisor to the Dutch government on day care and preschool education, works with local municipalities to improve preschool education and teacher professionalization, and supports organisations of child day care to increase the quality of care. He was involved as external advisor and evaluator in the EU Comenius Program TODDLER on early years professional education. He was a policy advisor on early childhood care and education to the Taskforce Early Childhood Education and Care of the European Commission. He was advisor to the German Robert Bosch Stiftung and dean of the postgraduate summer school Research and Study Program on Education in Early Childhood of the RBS. Currently he is principal investigator of the Dutch national cohort study Pre-COOL into the effects of early childhood care and education on children's development and school achievement, starting in 2010. Research publications concern emergent literacy and numeracy, bilingual development, development of executive functions and self-regulation, and effectiveness of home- and center-based preschool education programs.

Chair: Clara Barata, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Coimbra