This Ground Work Case in Albania aims to reveal how adults talking with children can build relationships and support children’s appropriate development through the four phases of Bowlby’s attachment theory (1980). 

Phase 1 0–3 months - babies seek proximity from caregiver.

Phase 2 3–6 months - babies demonstrate preference for a caregiver over another

Phase 3 6 months–3 years - babies without trauma are likely to develop fully functional attachments of trust with others, if trauma is experienced beyond their control and beyond the control of the caregiver the child will require healing by taking them back to the time of the trauma through reflection and carefully and slowly exploring the damage and re-layering healthy relationships of trust.  

Phase 4 3 years-childhood ends - dependency on the primary caregiver is exchanged for self-determining/managing in making good decisions with good faculty of judgement about personal regulation moving from fear to problem solving in solidarity with others. 

If trauma is experienced, which is not the fault of the child or the preferred caregiver, the child can become stuck and unable to develop the mental models required to reach phase 4. This has implications for adults who may have experienced trauma, through no fault of their own, who have not passed through the 4 phases of attachment theory. These adults are expected to support children through the phases of attachment theory, with no working personal mental model or social theories, frameworks or guidelines of what that looks like. A survey of 863 kindergarten-staff with a response rate of 78% revealed i) the curriculum of kindergarten-staff’s qualification did not include Bowlby’s attachment theory in four phases, ii) kindergarten-staff were unaware of attachment theory or how to apply it in practice. Findings reveal the Covid 19 pandemic has caused trauma and there is a history of trauma in Albania caused by war after moving to a market economy and this conflict causing trauma continues between Albania and Kosovo coupled to loss/damage caused by climate change.  

Our new contribution to knowledge is A Blueprint for Character Development for Evolution (ABCDE) (Taysum et al, 2020) is recommended to be implemented in further funded research. ABCDE is an incremental model to enable adults and children to evaluate progress through the phases of attachment theory and move from ‘fear’ of the self, the other and the environment to ‘good faculty of judgement required for self-determining homeostasis’ and building security attachment capital.  ABCDE builds ‘security attachment capital’ by developing kindergarten-staff culturally responsive self-review of their knowledge of attachment theory and how to apply it through talk. This needs to be coupled to an informed responsible historical and cultural consciousness of the impacts of trauma and the impacts of trauma on the children’s previous generations (ancestors). There are circa 120,000 Roma in Albania and Kostka (2022, p.2) identifies across Europe ‘many Roma families have little or no access to social support and high numbers of children are removed from their parents due to poverty rather than as a last recourse where up to 60% of Roma children are represented in care homes from populations of 10%’. This prevents Albanian diverse communities working together to become self managing of food, energy, fair labour markets and value chains where diverse groups with an identity of ‘Albanian’ and ‘European’ can combat all discrimination including anti-Gypsyism, experienced over generations, and support real and effective equality (European Commission, 2023). Thus security attachment capital needs to be built, starting in Kindergartens and continuing through to lifelong learning as a foundation to implementingThe Council of Europe Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller Inclusion (2020-2025) in Albania.

The Albanian Groundwork-case addresses three questions: 1. Do education and qualifications required for kindergarten-staff working with young children (0-3 years) include Bowlby's attachment theory? 2. How and in what ways do kindergarten-staff working with young children (0-3 years) describe, understand and apply attachment theory to build relationships through talk to develop children’s working mental models for healthy psycho-motor development? 3. How can the findings be theorised to implement CoE Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller Inclusion by developing attachment security capital? Our position in this research is that social reality is constructed by internal factors that members form and habitualize by interpreting thoughts and activities (Bourdieu, 2000). Further, this process occurs with those with what we call ‘attachment security capital’ for those who have passed through Bowlby’s phases of attachment theory, or attachment insecurity capital for those who have not. The research took a mixed methods approach administering both qualitative and quantitative methods to generate grassroot data. To address Research question 1, secondary data was gathered from educational settings policies and national policies to establish if Bowlby's attachment theory was part of kindergarten-staff required qualifications for working with children (0-3 years). To address research question 2 online questionnaires were administered to 863 kindergarten-staff from a population of 46,000 Kindergarten-staff from across Albania with a response rate of 78%. The quantitative data yielded descriptive statistics (Gorard, 2001) focused on participants’: identifying characteristics of knowledge of attachment theory and how it was applied in practice that could be further explored in the next phase of the research through focus groups; providing a statement of understanding of the research to inform the schedule for the focus groups; present a baseline position in time to measure impact of intervention strategies should our International Consortium's planned future research be funded. To address research question 3, qualitative data was collected by focus groups from three purposively sampled (Denscombe, 2010) kindergartens from a total of thirty kindergartens in the City of Tirana, Albania. Each focus group was conducted in each kindergarten separately. The focus groups were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a constant comparative method. The data was subject to pattern matching, connecting and categorization (Dey, 1993) multiple times to interpret them and generate theories and conclusions (Mertens, 1988). All participants gave informed written consent, had the right to withdraw from the research to the point of publication and were assured anonymity and confidentiality (BERA, 2018).

Bowlby’s attachment theory is not part of Kindergarten-staff qualifications and not known or applied by Kindergarten-staff. Kindergarten-staff build relationships with children spontaneously without referring to theories, frameworks or guidelines. The framework of the Council of Europe (2020) CoE Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller Inclusion (2020-2025) identifies member states and CoE delivering action plans for systematic, regular and structural co-operation with Roma civil-society organisations can facilitate working towards jointly implementing projects. Transformation for democracy can start by building security attachment capital with equal concern for all drawing on European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) expertise. Implications are significant because i) people experiencing trauma for example from terrorist acts by Hezbollah, al-Shabaab and ISIS in Europe, African Union, MENA, and Asia have low/no security attachment capital increasing their vulnerability to radicalisation, particularly in contexts of extreme poverty and loss and damage caused by climate change (Taysum, 2022). Recommendations for future funded research: ABCDE in five stages is implemented with Kindergarten-staff: A Encourage questions about security attachment capital; B Deepen Kindergarten-Staff culturally responsive self-review of their knowledge of attachment theory and how to apply it to develop children’s security attachment capital. C Collect data to develop informed historical and cultural consciousness of the impacts of current traumas and historical traumas experienced by previous generations (ancestors) on i) passing through the phases of Bowlby’s attachment theory for attachment security capital, or ii) getting stuck at a phase resulting in low/no security attachment capital D Talk as an intervention strategy mobilised by ABCDE builds ‘rich vocabulary-emotional-life capital’ (Imam and Taysum, 2022) linked to cultural, and textual literacy, critical and analytic historical learning of causes of Trauma (De Gruy, 2008), and responsible historical consciousness to develop security attachment capital to support education for democracy. E Principles transferred to other classroom learning experiences.

British Educational Research Association (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research fourth edition, bit.ly/3Hlt7IW Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and Loss. Vol 3. Loss. New York: Basic. Council of Europe (2020). CoE Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller Inclusion (2020-2025), bit.ly/3Jwr2wj De Gruy, J. (2005). Post traumatic slave Syndrome: America’s legacy of enduring injury and healing. Portland: Joy Degruy-Publications. Denscombe, M. (2010). The good research guide for small scale social research projects. Berkshire: Open University Press. Dey, I. (1993). Qualitative Data Analysis: a user-friendly guide for social scientists. London:Routledge. European Commission. (2023). Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023-2024 Cluster 2. Culture, creativity and inclusive society, bit.ly/3wlXgCJ European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (2023) https://eriac.org Gorard, S. (2001). Quantitative Methods In Educational Research the role of numbers made easy. London: Continuum. Harlow, H., Dodsworth, R., & Harlow, M. (1965). Total social isolation in monkeys. National Academy of Sciences 54(1), 90. Imam, H., and Taysum, A. (2022). Adults and Children Using ABCDE to Facilitate Self-Reflection Through Talk to Manage Emotions and Self-Regulate for Continued Good Life in Post Covid-19 recovery., Journal of Groundwork Cases and Faculty of Judgement 1, (2) 214-230. Kant, I. (1785). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. London: HarperCollins. Kostka, J. (2022). Social care: how Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children face discrimination across Europe and UK, bit.ly/3HJeCQh Marcinko D, Jakovljevic M, Jaksic N, Bjedov S, Drakulic A. (2020) The importance of psychodynamic approach during COVID-19 pandemic, Psychiatr Danub, 32 15-21. Mertens, D. (1988). Research Methods in Educational Psychology. ThousandOaks: Sage. Pipp, S. and Harmon, R. (1987) Attachment as Regulation: A Commentary, Child Development 58 (3) 648-652. Pring, R. (2021) Education, Social Reform and Philosophical Development: Evidence from the Past, Principles for the Future. London: Routledge. Taysum, A. (2022). Scoping How To Optimise Education Outcomes in Nigeria Journal of Groundwork Cases and Faculty of Judgment 2 (1.1) pp. 46-68. Taysum, A., Beutner, M., Kallioniemi, A., Canfarotta, D., Casado Muñoz, R., Ruşitoru, M., Hysa, F., Pathak, R., Mynbayeva, A., Yelbayeva, Z., Timchenko, V. Trapitsin, S., Pogosian, V., Tropinova, E., Ueda, M., Newton, P., Saboor, A., McGuinness, S. (2020) ‘EYSIER Charter Mark with ABCDE and Assessment for Personal and Social Learning; a bottom-up approach to building faculty of judgement with Open Access knowledge bases of Science with and for Society (SwafS)’, European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research 3 (2) 129-150 available at: http://journals.euser.org/index.php/ejed/article/view/4704