Danish School of Education

Bente Jensen, professor emerita  Ph.D, has participated in several interdisciplinary research studies and research teams focusing on social inequality, daycare and children’s well-being. She has been a principal investigator on two large scale RCT studies (HPA, 2005-2009; VIDA 2010-2013) investigating the impact of professional development in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) on child outcomes. Both studies targeting children 3-6 years of age were funded by the Danish Ministry of Social Affairs. From these studies developed the interest for designing an intervention targeting the youngest children 0-3 years of age and thus Professor Jensen and her team conceptualized and launched the pilot study  “Abecedarian Approach within an Innovative Implementation Framework” (2015). Bente has participated in several interdisciplinary research studies and research teams focusing on social inequality, daycare and children’s well-being a part of the WP-leader group in the in the international European FP7 Programme: CARE Early childhood education and care: promoting quality for individual, social and economic benefits. (2013-2017) and as such she is responsible for studies of the impact of professional development and innovation within the ECEC field. Current projects are a major research study, 'Educational quality in day care - emphasizing close social relationships between children and adults’, which seeks to augment quality in family daycares by supporting an interactionist approach to early childhood education through continuous professional development (CPD) and practice-based learning for managers and staff. The ultimate goal of this study is to enhance opportunities for all 0-2 year old children to develop to the best of their potential (especially in terms of social-emotional and language development), regardless of their background. This is integrated to the new Danish Curriculum (Styrket Pædagogisk Læreplan) and supported by TrygFonden (2019-2023): http://childresearch.au.dk/paedagogisk-kvalitet-i-dagtilbud/. Bente is the danish projectleader of VALUE an Erasmus + project on Continous Professional Development (CPD) based on innovative approaches to collaborative practices focus on diversity in daycvare .

Bente Jensen has mainly focused on the following research areas:

 • Professional development (PD) and practice-based organizational learning and social innovation as theoretical foundations for high quality ECEC and professional development.

• Creating and evaluation of a participatory approach to ECEC aimed at improving all children's well-being and development and tackling social inequality through high quality PD.

• Social inheritance, inequality – empirical and theoretical investigations of a societal problem and conceptual studies of inequalities and potentials for reducing the gaps between children from different social and cultural background.