For parents
Thank you for your interest in The Copenhagen Daycare Project – Enhancing the role of daycare providers in supporting young children’s social and emotional development. In the following you can read more about the research project.
Background for the research project
Our objective with The Copenhagen Daycare Project is to investigate whether a training program aimed at enhancing the interactive skills of the daycare providers is effective in promoting the quality of daycare providers’ interactions with the children in their care, and thereby make the daily interactions between daycare providers and children even more positive and conducive to children's well-being and development.
We examine this in two ways:
Firstly, we offer the daycare providers a Dutch training program called “Caregiver Interaction Profile” (CIP), where we through video feedback focus on how the daycare providers meet the children's needs and support their development.
The CIP training program is aimed at daycare providers who work with children aged 0-4 and focuses on some of the most important competences of daycare providers: creating emotional security for children and promoting their social, emotional, and language development. The CIP training program is based on video feedback which means that we make video footage of the daycare providers in their daily, regular interactions with the children in their care. Next, a trained CIP trainer watches selected parts of the video footage with the participating daycare providers. Together they reflect on the daycare providers strengths and opportunities for improvement. Video feedback gives the daycare providers the opportunity to get targeted feedback on their pedagogical competences, and it is a frequently used method in other training programs in Denmark, which aims at promoting the competences of daycare providers.
The CIP training program has previously been investigated in a research study from the Netherlands. The study showed that the participants' pedagogical competencies were improved by participating in the CIP training program. The program has not previously been studied in a Danish context, and it has not previously been investigated whether the program has a positive impact on children’s social, emotional, and language development.
In our research project, we therefore seek answers to these questions:
- Does the CIP training program work as intended in Danish daycares?
- Does the CIP training program also promote children's social, emotional and language development?
- Is the effect of the CIP training program influenced by daycare-specific factors (such as group size and estimate of staffing needs)?
Secondly, based on the video footage, we will observe the behavior of children in relation to their daycare providers during ordinary daily activities in the daycare centre. We are interested in the many ways in which children express and regulate their emotions. The second part of the project will therefore contribute to the development of a new systematic, evidence-based observational method, which aims to strengthen the daycare providers in their understanding and supporting of children’s emotion regulation.
Copenhagen Daycare Project is a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen, the City of Copenhagen and University College Copenhagen, and is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and Tryg Fonden. The project is led by Professor Mette Skovgaard Væver, Associate Professor Katrine Røhder and Assistant Professor Ida Egmose Pedersen at the Centre for Early Intervention and Family Research (CIF), University of Copenhagen.
If you need more information or want to talk to an employee, you can write to cdp@psy.ku.dk or call our coordinator on tel. +45 93 56 51 67.
The project team
You can see the research group behind The Copenhagen Daycare Project here:
 Mette Skovgaard VæverProfessor |
 Katrine RøhderAssociate professor |
 Ida Egmose PedersenAssistant professor |
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Signe Petterson Platz - on maternity leave |
 Camilla Stejnmejer IversenResearch assistant |
 Clara Christensen VieiraResearch assistant |
Student assistants
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 Anna Fleng NielsenStud.psych. |
 Johanne N. FrantzenStud.psych. |
 Olivia Rode DinessStud.psych. |
 Nina ØstergaardStud.psych. |
 Sigrid BertramStud.psych. |
Stud.psych. |
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Mie Friis Larsen |
 Sofie Lindegaard NielsenStud.psych. |
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Thilde Refstrup Hylgaard |
 Asbjørn Dam Heskjær ChristensenStud.psych. |
Caroline Egeberg Clausen
Ida Marie Jerl Blinkenberg
Elvira Vilsbæk Kongstad
External partners
 Sophie ReijmanAssociate professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
 Vibe LarsenDocent, University College Copenhagen |
Frequently Asked Questions
The CIP training program is managed by employees from the project group. We all have a background in psychology or pedagogy and are trained CIP trainers.
We offer the CIP training program as individual courses, which consist of a weekly session for four weeks, or as pairwise courses, which consist of a weekly CIP session for six weeks, where two daycare providers from the same daycare participate in the program. This means that the CIP training program extend over approx. 4-6 weeks, depending on whether it is an individual or a pair course. The CIP training program takes place in the daycare centre and is planned at times that suit the daycare centre.
The CIP training program focuses on six interactive skills that are important for supporting children’s development. In the CIP training program, we make use of video footage of the daycare provider and the children in the daycare centre. During each CIP session, the daycare provider and the CIP trainer will watch selected fragments of the video footage together. By closely watching and discussing the video material, the daycare provider and the CIP trainer will reflect on how the daycare provider may develop or improve specific skills that can support him or her in their daily work. At the end of each CIP session, the daycare provider chooses a focus point, linked to one of the six skills, that he or she wants to continue working on until next session.
The six interactive skills are:
- Sensitive responsiveness: recognizing, understanding, and responding appropriately to children's emotional and physical needs
- Respecting the child’s autonomy: supporting and recognizing children's agency, ideas and self-determination
- Structuring and limit setting: communicating to children what is expected of them, as well as structuring and organizing situations, activities and tasks.
- Verbal communication: engaging in verbal interactions with the children, including how and how often the daycare provider talk with the children
- Developmental stimulation: to offer "extra" stimulation to promote the children’s motor, language, cognitive and creative development.
- Fostering positive peer interactions: initiating, encouraging, and noticing positive interactions between children.
The first three skills are important as they contribute to 1) the children feeling secure and "at home" in their daycare centre, 2) their development of self-confidence, self-esteem and independence, and 3) that they develop an understanding of the expectations and rules that exist within the daycare centre.
The last three skills are important as they help stimulate the children’s social, cognitive, and language development.
The video footage of the daycare providers is made by psychology students who are employed by the Centre of Excellence in Early Intervention and Family Studies (CIF). The students receive training and supervision in how to film and act in the daycare centre. If a child expresses that he or she is negatively affected by the footage, we will interrupt the footage immediately. We always try to be as neutral and "invisible" as possible when we are in the daycare centre. The videos are always recorded before each CIP session and are recorded once a week while the daycare provider participate in the CIP training program.
The video footage is always recorded during the morning. We make video footage of four different situations: lunch/snack, free play, transitions and diapering. When we film a diaper change situation, we only film the children from the navel up if they are not wearing a diaper.
You have the option of consenting to only part of the research project. For example, you can choose to consent to your child being filmed, but not consent to the daycare providers answering questionnaires regarding your child’s development. In this case, your child will be part of the video footage used in the CIP training program in your child’s daycare centre, but the daycare providers will not answer questionnaires about your child's development.
If you do not wish that we make video footage of your child, and thus be part of the daycare provider’s CIP training, we make sure that your child is not filmed. It is a prerequisite for holding a CIP training program that most children in the “stue” are filmed. If you do not consent, it may therefore have an impact on the daycare centre’s opportunity to participate in the project. The reason is that the video footage must reflect the daily life in the daycare centre as much as possible for the learning to be linked to the actual daily activities in the daycare centre. At the same time, it is not possible to make “natural” video footage in a “stue” if there are many children who are not allowed to be filmed.
If you wish to participate in the research project, but there are parts of the project that you do not wish to consent to, you can indicate this by marking with an “X” in the NO box on the declaration of consent.
All daycare centres in the City of Copenhagen can sign up for the research project. It is voluntary for the daycare centres to participate, which means that it is your child's daycare centre that signs up to participate in the research project. It is the head of the daycare centre who registers the daycare centre, with the support from the employee group. One of the reasons why the daycare centres sign up for the research project may be a desire to offer competence development to the daycare providers.
We expect that the data collection for the research project will be completed in 2025, after which the research group will start analyzing the collected data. If you would like to read about the results of the research project, you can follow the Centre of Excellence in Early Intervention and Family Studies (CIF)'s list of scientific publications, which you can find here.
If you wish to stay updated about CIF’s work, you are welcome to follow us on Facebook and/or on LinkedIn.
Contact
If you need more information or want to talk to an employee, you can write to cdp@psy.ku.dk or call our coordinator on tel. 93 56 51 67.