This presentation focuses on the results of a qualitative study of the experiences and needs of early childhood educators regarding diversity and anti-bias education in Belgium, Norway and Poland. The study was conducted as part of the first phase of the process of designing a professional development program (PDP) in the ABC4T project. In line with Educational Design Research principles (McKenney & Reeves, 2012), we began the process by exploring educators’ existing practices, perceived needs, challenges, and questions related to diversity and inclusion. Individual interviews were conducted with 30 educators, varying in age, work experience, and ethnic/national origin. The interviews followed a structured guide shared across the participating countries to ensure consistency. They were recorded with participants' consent, transcribed, anonymized, and translated into English. To increase reliability, two researchers in each country conducted a thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). In the presentation, we will discuss the results of the comparative analysis of the interview data and demonstrate their application for the subsequent phases of the PDP development. Although early childhood educators in all participating countries have experience working in diverse settings, they often feel insecure and uncertain about how to carry out anti-bias work. In line with prior research (e.g., Daniel & Escayg, 2019; Van Lombergen et al., 2022), early childhood educators face dilemmas regarding how to address diversity, including whether such topics should be discussed explicitly with young children or approached more implicitly to avoid unintentionally stigmatizing certain individuals, and whether to take a proactive or reactive approach in guiding such conversations. Moreover, while educators stress the importance of parental engagement, they struggle to connect with parents from different cultural backgrounds. Across participating countries, educators lack both “general diversity knowledge” and “diversity pedagogical knowledge” (Dursun et al., 2021). There are some significant differences related to political, cultural and societal specificities among the three countries concerning the attention paid to specific areas of diversity and anti-bias practice. For instance, in Belgium, there has recently been greater focus on multilingualism; in Poland and Sweden, neurodiversity attracts significant attention among educators; and gender expression emerges more prominently in the narratives of Belgian and Norwegian educators than in those of Polish educators. While there are many similarities in educators’ needs across the participating countries, the differences identified pose challenges for designing a shared professional development program. In the presentation, we will reflect on possible ways to address these challenges.

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